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That was the year...
Page 14
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CM was launched in 1905; for our centenary year we're bringing you stories from years gone by. This week we're back in 1949 and 1999.
1949
Not to be outdone by the US, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. The Allies authorities sportingly returned control of former Nazi assets back to Germany. George Orwell's seminal dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. On a somewhat lighter note.1.2001b Grady the cow managed to get herself stuck inside a silo on a farm in Yukon. Oklahoma, and attracted national media attention.
Jam today...
Despite nationalisittion,"a further increase in road transport in years to come" wasforeseen as a possibility by Political and Economic Planning in a report on the commercial vehicle industry. Industrial evolution and the movement towards decentralisation in physical planning were cited as reasons for the forecast.
There and back again
Two Bedford artics completed a round trip of 3,100 miles from Hull to Trieste and back in what was described by the RoadTransport Executive as"probably the longest and most novel charter journey ever undertaken by British lorries". The vehicles set out from Hull at 5am on Tuesday to deliver engines to two lifeboats, travelling at speeds of well over 40mph on unrestricted French roads. The journey was completed by the following Saturday night, exactly on time.
Signal and sign
Radio control of traffic at abnormally busy periods was used for the first time by Sheffield Passenger Transport Department on Whit Monday.
1999
The British actor Oliver Reed died of a heart attack in Malta while filming Gladiator. In Belgrade, tens of thousands of Serbians rallied to demand the resignation of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Thirty-one people died in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash, in the west of London. Boris Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia, to be replaced by Vladimir Putin. The six billionth person in the world, according to the UN, was born in Sarajevo.
Industry in decline
The haulage industry was on the brink of recession, according to an exclusive Commercial Motor survey. Blame was placed on yet another round of diesel and Vehicle Excise Duty increases. The previous year more than 70% of hauliers had reported a rise in turnover: in 1999 45% of them predicted reduced or static profits over the next 12 months.
All Betz are off
the Department of Transport looked into complaints by UK hauliers that German operator Willi Betz was undercutting them by working outside international agreements. The claims were that Betz was using cut-price Bulgarian trucks and drivers to move large volumes of internal European Union traffic between Germany and the UK, undercutting rates by up to 20%.
Pot and kettle
Britain's ever-increasing army of car drivers saw the haulage industry as the third-biggest threat to the environment, according to the 1999 Lex Report on Motoring.