Service and Statistics
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ADVICE ON TRANSPORT PROBLEMS by S. BUCKLEY, ASSOC. i NST.T.
THE provision of an efficient service is the universal objective of transport organizations. So universal, in fact, that such a statement appears self evident to the point of being trite. But pose the questions "service to whom?" or "efficient by what standards?" and a whole field for discussion and possible disagreement has been opened.
Recent additions to official publications of statistical • surveys of road transport have been particularly welcomed because of the previous dearth of such information. But even after publication of such surveys correct evaluation of the data provided is vital if they are to be put to practical use.
When comparing the respective merits of two or more commodities there is at least a tangible object to be discerned, even though aesthetic values, assessment of durability and similar factors may largely be a matter of opinion. But where the provision of a service, such as transport, is under consideration, there is a greater area of evaluation which is dependent on personal opinions. Whether, for example, an individual uses a bus or a taxi • for a particular journey will hot only be dependent on the • relative costs and the person's resources, but also on the urgency of the occasion. The following day he might well make a different decision.
At the other end of the scale in providing transport services are the trunk vehicles, often travelling overnight, which are loaded to maximum capacity and so obtain minimum costs per mile for every ton of goods carried. In between these two extremes there is a wide range of transport operation with varying degrees of urgency attached to the traffic moved and with equally varying levels of loading. With the advent of these recently published statistical surveys, often prepared by experts in the statistics or economic divisions of the publishing authority, there is the danger that such information might appear to highlight inefficiency in the road transport industry, which implication would not be justified if all the relevant facts were known.
Loaded and Empty Running Thus, for example, in Table 18 of the Survey of Roads Goods Transport 1962, part 1, details are given of loaded and empty running of goods vehicles. finder the heading
"End-to-end journeys out of a total mileage for Alicensed vehicles in 1962 of 1,400.6 nn. the mileage run when empty is shown as 381-5 m. The relative figures for C-licensed vehicles, however, are 3,044.1 m. total and 1,148.9 m. when empty.
Particularly during the long term of office of the last Government there has been continued comment in Parliament—and indeed elsewhere—that far too many goods vehicles were being operated only partly loaded or empty and that these often ran under C licence. A similar complaint has been made against lightly loaded buses continuing to operate during off-peak periods.
Leaving aside the issue that these complaints were often raised by individuals or sections of the public with vested interests, these criticisms were too often based on insufficient information, or even complete ignorance of the many factors governing the provision and operation of a transport service.
At the outset an impartial observer must find it hard to accept that a businessman who was apparently efficient in his own line of business, whatever that may be, should lose all sense of basic economics when it comes to operating a vehicle to deliver his products. There might be some grounds for doubting whether he has the technical know-how, for example, to set up an efficient ancillary department to maintain his fleet of delivery vehicles. But the trader or manufacturer alone has all the information on which to determine the correct balance between the costs and standard of service in his particular case.
Priority and Emphasis In deciding this balance much depends on the priority and emphasis given to the several factors involved in distribution. Even within the same organization the balance between the cost and standard of a transport service might be changed with other developments in the organization. So when a sales drive is being conducted in a new area, for example, additional transport costs may well be deliberately accepted for an interim period until a satisfactory level of orders had been established in that area. But in the meantime much of those additional transport costs in this particular instance may well have been occasioned by relatively light loading of the vehicles concerned because the customers in the new area were initially few and far between. In theory, if some "overlord" were to decree that goods vehicles should not operate below X per cent loading then it is conceivable .that expansion of this nature would be curtailed, if not prohibited.
Emergency Services But in less obvious form, yet more frequently in occurrence because it is virtually part of a transport manager's daily routine, there are innumerable occasions when the urgency of the situation demands a service being provided, although uneconomic in a limited and academic sense. It is every transport manager's duty to endeavour to reduce such urgent demands as far as possible and incorporate them in the standard delivery programme by reasonable anticipation. Where the internal accountancy system permits, rendering the literal cost of such emergency services to the originating department will do much to reduce future demands. But, nevertheless, with every cooperation from all concerned there will still be occasions when extra delivery services have to be provided and which are not justified purely on the grounds of cost alone. Incidentally, with the expanding use of mass production and now automation, the degree of urgency in trade and industry—and therefore in the delivery services they require—is likely to become more intense rather than the reverse.
Closely related to efficiency in transport operation is the problem of back loading. The word " problem " has been deliberately included here because all too often efficiency experts with no practical experience of transport expound the self-evident advantages of backloading with no allowance—or indeed apparent knowledge—of the many snags that can thereby arise. On many occasions the disadvantages can outweigh the apparent but, in practice, superficial gain by such practice.
Academic Approach When approaching a matter such as this from a purely academic standpoint, it is too often erroneously assumed that the decision to be made is between economic and uneconomic running. This, in fact, is invariably an oversimplification. Obviously every transport manager will take advantage of return loads where these reasonably can be obtained in terms of time and mileage. More recently, unfortunately, the probability of loading at all has to be taken into account.
A common misconception in connection with back loading concerns the straight outward and return journey compared with one relatively circular in pattern which, with minor variations, is a common form of delivery service. If, for example, a vehicle travels from A to B—a distanceof 40 miles—with a full load and then returns empty, the extent of the empty running is apparent to all. But if the same vehicle is engaged on a circular run of 80 miles (that is, the same as the return mileage in the previous example) and gradually gets rid 'of its load and so returns empty then in aggregate the amount of running when not fully loaded is equivalent for practical purposes to the empty running in the previous example.
1320 All-important Factor An all-important factor in determining the cost of operating a commercial vehicle is the average yearly or weekly mileage of the vehicle concerned. In other words, the continuity of operation is vitally important no matter how urgent individual journeys may be. Correspondingly, however convenient it might be to consider the problem of "back loading in the largely hypothetical isolation of one journey, this is not the medium in which transport managers have to operate. They are continually compelled to be thinking of tomorrow's journeys and the journey after that as well as today's load.
As a result decisions as to whether a particular return load can be conveniently collected is often determined by the extent to which, by so doing, the load arranged to be collected, say tomorrow, would be adversly affected by late collection. Bearing in mind that Much of the success of the road transport industry has been built up on the certainty of the collection and delivery times it promises and the reliability of the service it provides, decisions of this nature cannot be taken too lightly by prudent operators anxious to maintain their reputations for providing a good and reliable transport service.
Difficulties Increased
The substantial deterioration in delays at terminal points, together with the almost universal acceptance of the fiveday week, has increased the many difficulties facing the road transport operator today. Important though it is to keep operating costs to a minimum, it must not be overlooked that this admirable objective is a means to rather than an end in itself. For the haulier the ultimate objective is the margin between revenue and expenditure. In practical terms this can mean that the most crucial event in the weekly working of many commercial vehicles is to ensure that the load (and corresponding revenue) arranged to be collected on Thursday is, in fact, so done. Friday loading may well be too late for delivery that week, with a corresponding loss of revenue of 20 per cent or more on the vehicle's earnings for that week. It is against just such eventualities that the pros and cons of a particular back load has to be judged.