Road Transport's Part i BRITAIN'S REG
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ITSTRUCTION
By J.
cLintock
Freedom for the Burden of Trans! of All Ki 'three Will Ease the Building Materials ithout Delay
you can make bricks without straw, but you cannot make permanent homes for the people without large quantities of bricks, cement and concrete ddivered quickly and efficiently to the right places. Eastwoods, Ltd., Belvedere Road, London, SE.!, parent company of the £2,000,000 Eastwoods Group, says that these conditions now stand a good chance of being fulfilled, for as long as the Government keeps its hands off the C licensee.
Mr. B. H. Marriage, director of the sales side, told me that the transport charge may be as much as 50 per cent. of the delivered price of building materials. Generally speaking, the most economic way of distributing these commodities is by road transport. In fact, it is, for all practical purposes, the only way. Rail transport is uneconomic for almost all building materials, up to 100miles and, in the case of specific materials, for 200 miles or even more, because of weight, difficulty of transhipment and susceptibility to damage. The great brickmaking industries in the Peterborough area and around the village of Fletton are some 75 miles from London and about 100 miles from the east coast, and most of the materials handled by the Eastwoods group can be delivered by its own transport, economically and efficiently.
It Dates from Waterloo
Like many another great industrial organization, Eastwoods, Ltd., grew from modest family beginnings— in this case as early as 1815, and in the brick-making business. By 1920 a public company had been formed, and wharves, depots, river and road transport fleets were owned. Capital was increased to £450,000 in 1925, and, subsequently, several further public companies were launched, including Eastwoods Cement, Ltd., Eastwoods Flettons, Ltd., and Eastwoods Humber Cement, Ltd.
Eastwoods Lewes Cement, Ltd., Eastwoods Wharfage, Ltd., and the Barrington Railway Co. and other interests brought the combined capital to well over £1,000,000 some years before the Hitler wail, The group then owned some 20 works manufacturing building materials, and maintained over 40 depots and wharves for distribution and shipping trade respectively, a large number of heavy and light motor and horsed vehicles, and a fleet of 40 of the famous Thames sailing barges, together with over 600 private railway wagons now absorbed into the common pool.
To-day the group also includes Leighton Buzzard Tiles, Ltd., Eastwoods Electrical and Heating, Ltd., Eastwoods Specialists, Ltd., Hoare, Gothardl and Bond
(Dover), Ltd., W. H. Pearson, Ltd., Longskle Sand and Gravel Co., and Broxbourrie Sand and Gravel Co., as well as numerous other concerns brought in from time to time by outright acquisition of the assets.
The parent company has as directors Messrs. S. E. Garcke, C.B.E., M.I.Mech.E. (chairman), G. W. A. Miller, F.C.I.S. (managing director), A. Batchelor, C.B.E., Lt.-Col. R. J. C Eastwood, and Messrs. D. W. Massey and E. S. Shrapnell-Smith, C.B.E,
Eastwood Sales, Ltd., the distributing organization for the group, is directed by Messrs. G. W. A. Miller, F.C.I.S. (chairman), P. W. Cook, F. A. Datson, N. E. Hoare, B. H. Marriage and V. S. Niblett. General products include stock and fletton bricks, cement, concrete pipes, tiles and products, sand and ballast, fireplaces, etc. In addition, the company has a substantial interest as builders' merchants, with a network of offices, depots and wharves covering most of the British Isles. There are brickworks in the Peterborough area, at Flettori and Yaxley, and in the Bedford area, at Kempston Hardwick, these all being in the great clay bed which extends across England from Lincolnshire to Dorsetshire and provides " knotts," as the raw material is called. In Kent and in the Shoeburyness area in Essex there are many Eastwoods brickfields. The cement works are at Barrington in Cambridgeshire, Lewes, Sussex, and South Ferriby in North Lincolnshire, and concrete pipe and products works are situated at Camberley, Surrey, and Kilwinning, Ayrshire, and sand and ballast pits at Chertsey, Runfold, and Broxbourne. Cement is, of course, the basic constituent of concrete, one .of the most valuable products of the age.
Transport within the organization is run by a transport committee. The trio of factors upon which distribution policy is based are:—(1) Service to the public; (2) profit; and (3) the advancement of goodwill through publicity value. The chain of command in distribution leads down from the committee, through the sales director—my informant, Mr. Marriage—to the chief engineer, Mr. E. Batchelor, whose organization is responsible for the initial purchase of the vehicles and maintenance of the fleet. Distribution covers the country from Falmouth to Kilwinning and from Dover to Dundee.
Lorries Light and Heavy
Heavy transport is based at the various works already mentioned and light transport at depots, the more important of these being at Doncaster, Cambridge, Dover, Edgware, Greenwich, Hillingdon, Ipswich, Isle
worth, Kingsland, Letchworth, Mortlake, Norwich, Southend, Sudbury, Wandsworth,, Waterloo, Wembley and Weybridge.
In the heavy class are the 8-ton Dennis vehicles and 12-ton and 15-ton Fodens. All the heavy vehicles in the fleet of nearly 200 have double-driven bogies, it having been found that trailing-axle vehicles are unsuitable for any work involving cross-country going. These vehicles are usually the first on any undeveloped building site, and often have to take heavy loads over thick mud, hillocks, ridges, ditches, rubble and so on.
For the same reason, trailers cannot be used to carry heavy loads. The traction-adhesion factor would be insufficient for the total load carried. Thus there are no trailers in the fleet.
Lighter vehicles—that is, those up to and including 6 tons—are Bedford 6-ton tippers, Dodge and Fordson B9 6-ton tippers and Studebaker 5-tonners. Apart from building materials, a considerable and varied fleet of vehicles is engaged on coal distribution. Numbers in use arc constantly changing at this period, when the older somewhat war-weary vehicles are gradually laid to rest and certain new ones are being brought into service.
At present, 33 Bedfords are on order, and the Foden fleet of 12-tonners and 15-tonners has since the war been augmented by a further 12 vehicles. Dates of manufacture of existing vehicles may be said to range from 1936 to 1947, every vehicle less than two years old having been requisitioned at the outbreak of the war and none having been returned.
Replacement is taking place in regular sequence as new vehicles become available. Many were on most arduous tasks during the war, especially in relation to the building of shadow factories, aerodromes and "Mulberry Harbours." There was a tremendous volume of brick transport, whilst cement was, of course, in heavy demand for Tank traps, fortifications, secret control rooms, aeroplane runways and the historic "Mulberry."
Bodies vary and include platform types, flat ones with sides, tippers and coal bodies. All have to stand up to severe wear and tear, but, like the chassis, are kept in excellent trim, both as regards appearance and practical efficiency. A large fleet of hired vehicles is also regularly employed by the group, the great majority of the fleet being on C licences.
As to mileage covered, the figures range from 1,200 per month on the lighter lorries to some 3,000 per month in the case of heavies.
Maintenance depots and garages are based on the works and larger depots, whilst considerable work of this nature is also carried out under special contracts.
As shown by the illustrations, each vehicle is specially selected for its particular job, bearing in mind the important factor of inter-availability between works, thus ensuring the highest loaded mileage and lowest delivery costs.
With the continuing shortage of labour, lorries may wait, but the loading gang must never be held up, and at many of the company's works lorries are being loaded day and night throughout the 24 hours. This is a specialized service, ensuring low cost to the public, which can be maintained only by completely free and unrestricted transport.