Companion to British Road Haulage History

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2004 by Kirby, Tony

John Armstrong, John Aldridge, Grahame Boyes, Gordon Mustoe and Richard Storey, Companion to British Road Haulage History, Science Museum, London (2003), 544 pp., £39.95.

In 1957 the British Transport Film Unit produced Fitted Freight. Portraying the overnight journey of a vacuum-braked freight train from Bristol to Leeds, it showed cinema audiences the crucial role of rail in the carriage of consumer goods. Within a few years making such a film became difficult: it would be impossible today. From playing a supporting role to the railways before 1914, road haulage had replaced them for most non-bulk commodities by the 1970s and the abandonment of BR's Speedlink network in 1991 effectively signalled the end of the railway as a general freight carrier. More positive signs in the late 1990s, such as Enterprise and the use of rail for trunk haulage by some road carriers to avoid motorway congestion, were eclipsed by the Post Office's 2003 decision to transfer all its traffic to road and air: Night Mail would follow Fitted Freight into oblivion. Road-served industrial estates are everywhere: private sidings decay and goods yards have long since become car parks or been redeveloped for housing or retailing. Yet, as Professor Armstrong and his colleagues note in their introduction to this handsome volume, there has been no sustained academic treatment of the haulage industry's history. They disclaim any intention to provide one but they provide the raw materials from which one might be written.

The book is explicitly modelled on Biddle and Simmons's Oxford Companion to British Railway History (1997) and shares a degree of common authorship. Some 600 articles cover the industry from A to Y (the compilers evidently failed to find a Z). The largest group (some 180) cover manufacturers and models, a further eighty-six engineering and design. A hundred and fifty entries survey the history of individual haulage companies; inevitably, the availability of source material means that coverage is biased towards larger concerns in London and major provincial cities at the expense of the 'one man and a WD chassis' operators who sprang up in areas like the Fens in the 1920s. Most of the expected firms figure, although some major operators (e.g. Knights of Old, Prosper de Mulder, Norfolk Line/Lijn) are missing. The politics of an industry that seems to have organised itself with a degree of purpose (and bloodymindedness), and that puts the nineteenth-century 'railway interest' in the shade, account for another 100 entries. Logistics, types of goods and biographies (including two women, equally redoubtable: Alice Walker and Barbara Castle) account for most of the remainder.

The bulk of the book is devoted to motorised transport in the United Kingdom. (CIE is included in the bibliography, but otherwise the Irish Republic is omitted.) Passenger transport is largely excluded, although the carriage of mail and parcels by tram and bus merits entries. There is good coverage of other forms of propulsion (including cycles, motor bikes, hand carts and horse-drawn vehicles) and transport modes (inland waterways, coastal shipping and railways). The culture and image of the industry account for several interesting contributions, ranging from 'Transport cafes' and 'White van man' to the 1970s BBC television series The Brothers and Granville's delivery bike in Open all Hours, although surprisingly David Jason's famous creation, Del Boy, does not merit a mention under either 'Popular culture' or 'Reliant'. There are excellent surveys of specialised carriage, ranging from flowers and furniture to petroleum and pigeons. Business historians will welcome these and those covering the logistics activities of such companies as the John Lewis Partnership, Harrod's and Sainsbury's.

In contrast to Biddle and Simmons the book is well illustrated with 190 photographs, sixty-four of which are in colour; however, captions tend to be minimal and too many plates are undated and/or unlocated. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there are no maps, but a relative lack of attention to the historical geography of road haulage is reflected in there being only three articles on specific locations (Felixstowe, Shap and Slough Dump).

Inevitably, there are gaps, omissions and occasional failures of cross-referencing. The Road Board features in several entries but does not merit one of its own; 'Ro-ro' has a q.v. under 'Shunters' but no article; post buses appear under 'Post Office' but not in 'Bus carriage of goods and parcels'. And, as with any 'companion', it takes a degree of luck to find what the reader is searching for: internet shopping, for example, appears under 'Home delivery', distribution centres under 'Depots'. Legislation is nowhere considered in its own right: there are no articles on the Road Board (1909), the Road Act, 1930, and the Road and Rail Traffic Act, 1933, or the 1947 and 1968 Transport Acts. More seriously, the 'companion' format makes it difficult to discover why or how road transport in Britain grew so rapidly from the 1920s. With a degree of perseverance it can be done: an article on 'Structure of the industry' offers one way in, but who would think to look there first? It would be ungracious, however, to conclude on a critical note. Professor Armstrong and his fellow editors have produced a work of immense value to transport, retailing, industrial and even local historians as well as the 'enthusiast' market. It is to be hoped that - to use their own analogy - with the 'bricks' in place the 'cathedral' will be built, and that they will be the master masons.