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Further to your story regarding comments made on the BBC's Pile up programme by a senior police officer who thought, for safety reasons, that trucks should run only at night (CM 12-18 March), I thought you would be interested in a report published by Commercial Motor back in May 1961.
It refers to a dry-cleaning company which had adopted night-time deliveries, and a speech by John Hay, then Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Transport, suggesting that other hauliers should re-schedule deliveries to night time.
Commercial Motor crossed swords with Hay: "Dry cleaners are one of the few operators who can deliver to their retail outlets when no one is there to receive the goods. Does Hay think that. operators have never thought of delivering outside peak hours, or at night? If that were practicable, more operators would have done it long ago.
"Hay seems never to have heard of unions, who will not hear of their members starting earlier or finishing later. He also appears to have overlooked the question of perishable foodstuffs and the markets from which they are distributed, or the fact that 70% of the housewives' pur chases are made well before midday.
"Goods vehicle operators are not insensible to traffic problems—they have on many occasions done what they can to help. But in this matter they are just one link in a chain..."
A true déjà vu situation. I wonder how far our attitudes have progressed in the last 37 years.
Dick Bolton, UK sales manager, Woollen Trailers, Grantham.