BUYERS AND SELLERS AGREE.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3927, 16 July 1937, Page 4

BUYERS AND SELLERS AGREE.

THE value of conference has been revealed in Te Awamutu this week, the agreement reached between the local branch of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union and the Master Carriers’ Association being an outstanding example of the forces now operating for the orderly arrangement of key services in industry. The contract reached is a natural outcome of the processes which began three years ago for the regulation of transport by the machinery of licensing. To appreciate the position fully it is necessary to span the years from a time when over-ser-vicing and wasteful capitalisation brought inland transport perilously

near to the. point of collapse or, rather, self-annihilation. The old order of competition which was supposed to work out its own destiny on the rule of supply and demand had become an exploded theory. On the one hand it created a waste by ill-usage of public capital in the roads, and on the other hand was the totally uneconomic and unstable drift in private investment. The whole thing became self-destructive, and it was at the point of collapse that the Government intervened. Traversing the recent years there can be found in the story of licensing only a full and systematic inquiry into ascertainable needs with a gradual paring down of the number of vehicles to conform with demand. The tendency, on the face of things, has certainly given a measure of protection to the licensed operators, and from that aspect there may arise the suspicion of monopoly. Actually, however, there is no such thing. Underlying the whole Act is a principle which is expressed as “ necessity and desirability in the public interest,” and around this there has been, created a system which funds statistical data in connection with each application. The authorities have, therefore, an intimate knowledge of the costs of equipping and maintaining service, and they are thus fully informed in readiness for the price fixations which can be levelled in terms of actual costings. The agreement reached in Te Awamutu last Wednesday concludes negotiations and inquiry which have been in progress for several months past. Every point has been watched. The carriers, clearly beset with rising costs, have had to increase their charges, and it became evident in the final conference that they sought an amicable understanding. In proof of this were the reductions they conceded in the originally-suggested tariff. The farmers drove a hard bargain, and were willing to concede more orderly servicing so as to replace overlapping and wasteful competitive traffic. Indeed, the farmers’ claim that instead of allowing existing costs to determine prices effort should be devoted to still more systematic servicing was a feature of the discussion. In. this there is the suggestion that transport should be treated more as a public utility than as an individual business. The Licensing Authority strengthened this opinion when he mildly censured the farmers for calling so many individual carriers into the districts, and there is much virtue in his suggestion that the associated carriers should more fully apportion the work. The true economy in transport reposes not so much in vehicle costings as it does in effective vehicle mileage. Every mile a truck runs empty has to be paid for by somebody, and it is not beyond the sphere of practical possibility to suggest that the day will dawn on a new order in which a central directing office will assure the maximum of use for every mile run. That can never be while individual carriers fulfil individual orders. The aim can well be a systematic centralisation for a pooling of orders so that vehicle mileage can be given a maximum of use for twoway pay loading. In this it is folly to sense monopoly. Actually all that it means is systematic or planned servicing so as to secure the maximum of use for costs that are inescapable, and by the effective use of mileage bring about still further economy in transport charges.