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Curing a Cold War
Page 63
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The Answer to a Long-standing Feud
PA A CO LD war had been clearly
,evident in many places in the past between driver and maintenance staff, each blaming the other for any shortcomings of the vehicle, said Mr. P.
• Chapman, in the course of a symposium at the Institute of Road Transport Engineers, Manchester and District meet • ing on Monday.
Recently it had appeared that the trend was changing but, especially in large workshops, the man on the bench had relatively little idea of the hazards of a driver's day or the abnormally rough working that arose for a truck employed on, say, tipping duties.
Condemn a Good Man Fitters engaged inside often condemned a good driver for a failure when the fault was with the vehicle or its task. Encouragement for the right type of man was essential, not only for the operator's benefit but also to promote sound relationship with the customer or passenger.
The driver with the right attitude to maintenance was an encouragement to the engineer. Knowledge of when and • how routine service should be carried out, plus get-you-home ideas that avoided unnecessary breakdown turn outs, lightened the task of successful operation. Mr. Chapman hoped that the industry . would soon see more widespread tuition along these lines.
Past training seemed to have been • Unnecessarily directed to a number of theoretical aspects which might well be regarded as less essential than a good grounding on tyre care.
Too much was left for the ordinary driver to find out for himself. Before counting the costs of training facilities it should. be remembered that in any other
. form of machine handling, for unskilled and semi-skilled labour, a pre-operation course was the order of the day. To ensure a good supply of the right sort of drivers, the only answer was correct instruction, as was the custom in passenger transport.
While the Sun Shines The partial Uncertainty of the driver's job had undoubtedly been a disturbing factor, resulting in so many men having tr" make hay while the sun shines" outlook; A . driver haying roadcraft with " know-how" of his vehicle would avoid much of the mechanical damage and failure that had for long been attributable to ignorance.
The importance of research to the manufacturing side of the industry was stressed by Mr. E. H. W. Hirst. This aspect was all the more important in view of the challenges that had to be met from overseas competitors. Exports of commercial vehicles had topped the £100m. mark, but nevertheless menufacturers would have to adopt a more forward-looking viewpoint than hitherto.
The Japanese were back in Australia and the Isuzu firm were trying very hard to get a foothold in the passenger market there, cut prices and extended credit being part of their stock-in-trade. Isuzu had introduced a rear-engined bus chassis, 31 ft. 8 in. in length and 7 ft. 8 in. in width, with five-speed overdrive gearbox, to sell in Australia at £3,310.
The chassis weighed 3 .tons 5 cwt. compared with 5 tons 10 cwt. for the new rear-engined Daimler. The same people would shortly have a 7-ton Tornado to sell complete at £3,385 with a guarantee for 24 tons gross. The French Berliet people had recently built the largest rigid lorry ever, an 84-tonner, and also produced the largest desert tractor.
Passenger Side On the passenger side, Mr. Hirst felt than an air-cooled vehicle would receive world-wide support. A lot of British vehicles were sold where interior heating was not necessary and in any case drivers in places like Africa were apt to he neglectful of the cooling system. At Earls Court in 1960 the 104-passenger, single-decker Deutz, with a rear engine and air suspension, was reminiscent of a small aircraft carrier and looked just about as manwivrable. The Mercedes all looked good and must be formidable competitors abroad.
Engines grew bigger and bigger, like those offered by Scammell and Thornycroft. As overseas operators called for yet larger vehicles, engine capacities might rise as high as 500 b.h.p. One had to think of Australians demanding lorries that would run 4,000-mile return journeys without being given a second thought.
The efficiency of a workshop depended to a great extent on the qualities of the foreman in charge, said Mr. D. J. Leeming, The versatile foreman was one who knew the capacity of the personnel under his control and had ability quickly to diagnose faults on a vehicle. He should also have a sound knowledge of shop layout and organization, in addition to his practical and theoretical background.
His duties might include the organization and supply of materials and small parts, plus general supervision of work within the shops. There were very, few foremen who possessed all the requisite qualities, although many had achieved a reasonably high standard of efficiency. Unfortunately there had been very few proper training schemes in the past, the majority of foremen being promoted from the bench. As a rule they had helped to train themselves through the hard school of experience. The future looked a little brighter as both industry and the education authorities had realized the lack of training facilities and had introduced courses specifically for foremanship, management and administration.
The Institute of Road Transport Engineers intended to have an examination scheme drawn up in the near future and he thought those present would agree that prospective road transport engineers should be instructed in management principles, workshop organization and administration in addition to the technical subjects.
Complication Mr. Leeming felt that the complication of our industrial organization, together with rapid advances in vehicle design and equipment, demanded that the road transport engineer of the future should possess sound executive and technical ability so that he might discharge his duties properly.
Mr. Leeming (a technical college lecturer) said the majority of lecturers on automobile engineering in technical colleges had plenty of experience in industry before being appointed to the teaching profession. Most of them, therefore, had understanding of and sympathy with the problems that confronted the apprentice in his training and were in a position to give him real help with his problems.