The growth of road haulage, 1921-58 An estimate

Journal of Transport History

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 138-155

  Scott, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

RAILWAY TRANSPORT; ROAD TRANSPORT; TRANSPORTATION HISTORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

UNITED KINGDOM;

EID: 0031760874     PISSN: 00225266     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002252669801900206     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. G. Walker, Road and Rail: an enquiry into the economics of competition and State control (1942), pp. 119-24;
2. H. J. Dyos and D. H. Aldcroft, British Transport: an economic survey from the seventeenth century to the twentieth (Leicester, 1971) pp. 333-15;
3. P. S. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution from 1770 (1974), pp. 222-8;
4. T. C. Barker and C. I. Savage, An Economic History of Transport in Britain, third edition (1974), pp. 173-85;
5. D. H. Aldcroft, British Transport since 1914: an economic history (Newton Abbot, 1975), pp. 35-9;
6. T. C. Barker and D. Gerhold, The Rise and Rise of Road Transport, 1700-1990 (Basingstoke, 1993), pp. 85-8.
7. See K. F. Glover, 'Statistics of the transport of goods by road', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 123A (1960), pp. 107-39;
8. K. F. Glover and D. N. Miller, The outlines of the road goods transport industry', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 117 (1954), pp. 297-330.
9. Ministry of Transport, Survey of Road Goods Transport 1962: Final Results, Part I (1964).
10. Glover, 'Statistics'.
11. Glover, 'Statistics', pp. 119 and 137. Glover argued that these factors tend to work in opposite directions and, during the post-war period, 'it has been thought best not to try to make allowances for any net effect' (p. 137).
12. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Road Research, 1958 (1959).
13. Glover, 'Statistics', p. 121;
14. Glover and Miller, 'Outlines'. 8 Ministry of Transport, Survey, p. 21.
15. These adjustments took account of revisions made since 1958 in the statistics of numbers of goods vehicles. They also incorporated revised estimates for some of the unsampled totals in the 1958 inquiry, based partly on 1962 data. Furthermore, the method of estimating annual figures from the results of one or more survey weeks used in the 1962 survey was also applied, with certain modifications, to the results of the 1958 survey week.
16. Adjusting the 1952 sample survey value in Table 1, column 3, to account for seasonality, was considered by the author. However, as there was no information regarding what seasonal adjustments were made to the 1953-57 data, it was not practicable. Given that the percentage increase between the Glover and revised data is lower than that for subsequent years, a downward adjustment to account for seasonality (based on the earliest available monthly data, from 1958) appeared likely to increase, rather than reduce, data distortions.
17. D. L. Munby and A. H. Watson, Inland Transport Statistics, Great Britain, 1900-70,1 (Oxford, 1978), p. 99.
18. Department of Transport, Transport Statistics Great Britain 199S (1995), table 9.3. Figures expressed in billion tonne kilometres.
19. 11-6 million ton miles, using Glover's original data; 11.9 million, using the 1952, rather than 1958, sample survey as the base year.
20. Glover, 'Statistics', p. 137.
21. Other forms of domestic goods haulage accounted for an insignificant proportion of national ton mileage during this period, with the exception of coastal shipping, which averaged 9,000 million ton miles from 1952 to 1955, rising to 9,800 million from 1956 to 1958 (source: Ministry of Transport, Survey, table V).
22. These were granted Special A licences, valid for five years.
23. E. T. Bayliss, The Small Firm in the Road Haulage Industry, Committe of Inquiry on Small Firms Research Report No. 1 (1971), pp. 36-9.
24. Ministry of Transport, The Transport Needs of Great Britain in the Next Tti'enty Years (1963), table 1.
25. The growth of road competition led to a considerable reduction in the differential between haulage rates for different classes of goods after 1945.
26. G. L. Turnbull, Traffic and Transport: an economic history of Pickfords (1979), pp. 150-3.
27. A. Plummer, New British Industries in the Twentieth Century (1937), p. 75;
28. Bagwell, Transport Revolution, p. 224.
29. C. T. Brunner, The Problem of Motor Transport: an economic analysis (1928), p. 23.
30. R. J. Howley, 'Road transport in relation to the general transport problem of the country", Journal of the Institute of Transport (March 1924), pp. 192-208. Comment by J. L. Clewes, p. 204.
31. PRO, RAIL 421/146, LMS Railway, 'Freight transportation in container trucks', 31 December 1926.
32. PRO, RAIL 1080/672, 'Road motor transport in relation to the railways', Railway Clearing House, 29 July 1925.
33. British Library of Political and Economic Science Archive, Ward Papers, report of the sixth meeting of the Transport Section, Management Research Group No. 1, 12 December 1930.
34. Bagwell, Transport Revolution, p. 254.
35. A 'grandfather' clause in the 1933 Act allowed all operators who had been in business for a year before its introduction to obtain licences automatically, though the licences could be challenged when they came up for renewal.
36. Walker, Road and Rail, p. 23.
37. Including A contract licences. These were granted when the haulier was under contract to a customer for at least one year and were much more readily available than open A licences.
38. The average size of road haulage contractors (as measured by operators with A licence vehicles) therefore increased slightly, from 3-26 vehicles per firm to 3-46.
39. It had been estimated in the Royal Commission on Transport's Final Report that in 1929 about 80 per cent of roadborne goods was carried in traders' own vehicles (cited in
40. Barker and Savage, Economic History of Transport, p. 174).
41. However, in January 1932 an LMS memorandum estimated that in the areas served by the LMS goods conveyed by road transport in competition with rail were conveyed 60 per cent in traders' vehicles and 40 per cent in hauliers' vehicles (PRO, RAIL 418/105, LMS report to directors, January 1932).
42. British Road Federation, Basic Road Statistics (1950), p. 22.
43. PRO, RAIL 1080/699, 'Annual review of standard revenue', March 1937.
44. C. I. Savage, An Economic History of Transport (1959), p. 110.
45. 'The railways and road transport', Economist, XCIV (11 March 1922), pp. 487-8.
46. PRO, RAIL 418/106, LMS report to directors, 6 January 1933.
47. No more detailed information is available regarding the methodology of the composition of the estimates.
48. PRO, RAIL 418/102, 'Road transport operation by railway companies. Road motor competition in general', memorandum to LMS Directors from Executive Committee, March 1929.
49. With the exception of 1928.
50. Bayliss, Small Firm, p. 33.
51. Market conditions and undue preference restrictions often resulted in the railways preferring to wait until a large proportion of traffic had been lost to the roads before introducing exceptional rates, which were then set at levels substantially below standard; see P. Scott, 'British Railways and Road Haulage Competition, 1919-39', University of Portsmouth Economics Department Discussion Paper No. 100 (1997).
52. The data for 1932 were originally presented in annualised form. Data based on May or November surveys may be subject to some degree of upward seasonal bias. The earliest monthly figures for the volume of road haulage, from 1958, indicate that these were months of relatively high road freight traffic. Using monthly data for 1958 and 1959 (rather than 1958 alone, as the MoT indicated that it might, in some respects, be an atypical year), May road haulage traffic exceeded the annual mean by an average of 4-0 per cent, while that for November exceeded the mean by 8-1 per cent (using months of standardised length). However, given the changes in the nature of road freight traffic over the intervening thirty years it was not felt appropriate to adjust the LMS data by these amounts.
53. For years in which separate figures for merchandise and mineral traffic were unavailable the data were grossed up using a figure equivalent to the aggregate multiplier used in the following year.
54. PRO, RAIL 418/209, LMS, 'Review of the LMS commercial organisation and its achievements, 1932 to 1939', February 1940.
55. Munby and Watson, Inland Transport, p. 85.
56. If a tonnage weighting of 60 per cent merchandise and 40 per cent mineral traffic was assumed, it would increase the estimated value by only 1-4 per cent.
57. Walker, Road and Rail, p. 15.
58. Walker, Road and Rail, pp. 119-24.
59. Calculating the difference between rail merchandise tonnage in a given year and what rail tonnage would have been if it had grown at the same rate as the tonnage of output for goods in the general merchandise classes since 1907.
60. Ministry of Transport, Road Traffic Census, 1935 (1936).
61. Given evidence that during this period vehicles may have been regularly overloaded by up to 50 per cent (T. C. Barker, The Transport Contractors of Rye: John Jempson 6-Son, 1982, p. 20.), the assumed laden weights could, in any case, be expected to be accurate to only a very rough order of magnitude.
62. Ministry of Transport, Road Traffic Census, 1931 (1932), p. 4.
63. PRO, RAIL 1080/234, Report on the effect of road competition on the carrying of livestock by rail, June 1938.
64. Evidence examined in this memorandum regarding the location of herds and other factors which may have altered the travel patterns of livestock over this period indicated that any such distortions were not likely to have been substantial. In the pre-road competiton era, it was noted, there were rarely fluctuations in livestock rail carryings per 1,000 head of population of more than 5 per cent.
65. See Munby and Watson, Inland Transport, p. 189.
66. Sources: road tonnage -table 3; rail, coastwise, and canal tonnage - Walker, Road and Rail, p. 16.
67. Walker, Road and Rail, p. 16.
68. Source: Munby and Watson, Inland Transport, tables A10 and A13. Includes livestock, mail and parcel traffic.
69. Examples of mineral and heavy merchandise traffic in which road hauliers had gained substantial business from the railways by the early 1930s included iron and steel, roadstone, bricks, other building materials, and sand (sources: PRO, RAIL 418/102, LMS board papers, March 1929 and October 1929; RAIL 418/105, LMS board paper, January 1932; RAIL 418/106, LMS board paper, 6 January 1933).
70. Including coal traffic.
71. This was evident to the railway companies, which by the late 1930s had begun to press for further legislation to alter the statutory regulation of rail and road transport further in their favour.