The consensus on here seems to be that, from a driver’s point of view, a “re-incarnated BRS” would be a good thing. It may well be from that side of the fence but as someone who was on the other side of the equation it was a total screw-up. From what I experienced during my time in the late 70’s to the mid 80’s the standard of management was extremely poor. Most managers were weak and promoted way above their ability, normally due to nepotism and cronyism. Local industrial disputes were to be avoided at all times as they could well spread into a national one. This meant that members of staff who weren’t pulling their weight were allowed to affect the running of the depot. I remember one depot I was at in the late 70’s when they introduced the computerisation of back loads (I think it was called datafreight or something along those lines). The system was linked between all the depots so in theory you could access the details of every back-load in every part of the country. The back-loads were available to not only BRS companies but to independent hauliers. This system relied on drivers calling a dedicated phone line and the traffic clerk would look at his screen and let the driver know what loads were available. The traffic clerk in this depot seen this as a threat to his job and actually pulled the telephone cable from the socket (in those days they were hard wired so no mean feat) so no calls were received. There was no way the branch manager could not have been aware of this but for some reason he never challenged the traffic clerk about it. This particular manager was the son of a, by then, retired former director. He ended up being a director himself. This is only one example of lots of bad practice that I encountered. With management like that you stood very little chance. In saying that making a profit was never encouraged as the attitude was that “if you make a profit this year they will expect you to make a profit next year”. It was a crazy mindset whereby running at a loss was almost sanctioned by those in command. That attitude appeared to change slightly post privatisation but the problem was that the same management team were in place so in effect nothing really changed.
In my opinion a 21st century BRS would suffer from the same disease.