Harold William Elliott
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THIRTY-FIVE years ago, or maybe even less, if a schoolboy had been asked what he associated with Pickfords, be would at once have said " removals " or, perhaps, "parcels." Looking back, a layman might be permitted to speculate on the fascination of transport, to wonder where lay the magic which attracted some of the best people in that industry—men like Harold William Elliott, who, although his father was well up the ladder, began at the beginning and found the way so satisfying that he followed it, with never a pause to survey a more distant scene.
"Once you're deep in this business, you never want to leave it," he told me.
Harold Elliott, -then, was virtually born into transport. His father, as oldtimers will recall, rose from a fitter's job in Pickfords to that of director and general manager. Doubtless it was his father's imaginative approach lo the industry which, right from the start, revealed to him its possibilities for a go-getting career. For Elliott pere was an innovator, a man who was a pioneer in heavy haulage; a more-than-parcels man who, with colleague Shirley James, made haste with Continental tourist coach travel after the 1914-1918 war and was a passenger (only illness prevented him from driving) on the first tourist coach ever to cross the Swiss frontier. That was in 1921.
When Pickfords bought Saurer chassis the Elliott associations with Switzerland grew closer. Saurer's liked Harold and invited him to study engineering at their works, an opportunity he seized not only because of the technical world it opened up, but also for the mastery of at least one Continental language. Then Pickfords beckoned. In 1926 he joined his father's old concern and in 1938 became commercial assistant to the general manager.
But before that he had been concerned in some responsible jobs. For a while he was seconded to a leading travel agent in the United States. The opening of the big Bermondsey parcels depot of Pickfords was another Milestone in his career. However, times were changing. Munich came, and 1939. The "phoney war" was upon us. Mr. Elliott, who had been an adviser to the Board of Trade's Food (Defence) Plans Department, now became assistant divisional food officer for London.
There followed a spell as adviser on transport costings in the Ministry of Transport. "Most of my time seemed to be taken up in departmental arguments," he explained to me. It was certainly a frustrating time, as former temporary civil servants straight from highly competitive industry will testify.
Mr. Elliott had not long to wait for real action, for he was given a job to delight, and test to the full, any skilled and enthusiastic transport man. The year was 1940. The bombing of London was being taken as a daily matter of course by the citizens. There were wrecked buildings all over the place, and in the rubble was an unknown quantity of valuable steel scrap. Lord Beaverbrook was at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, upsetting the permanent civil servants no end by applying Fleet Street methods to Whitehall. And he wanted that steel. "Get it to the steelwOrks," was the message conveyed to Mr, Elliott. In the event, gathering his transport where he could without too much regard to protocol (at any rate, there were no guiding precedents), Mr. Elliott moved some 2m. tons. Cairo was next. Between 1942 and 1944 he ran what was almost a miniature Government department there. During those years, as Director of Transport, Middle East Supply Centre, he played a large part in keeping the demands for civilian transport equipment down to realistic proportions, for the economy of material and shipping space, while at the same time keeping the civil economy of the Middle East going. He might well tell me that transport is more than parcels. Then he had to be a diplomat,keeping potentates like Ibn Saud happy and discouraging restless people from getting in our way.
He might be excused for saying that the post-war years were anti-climactic. He does not, although he concedes that wartime for him was packed with new, stirring and exotic experiences. With the flowering of his career since 1947, when he was general manager of Hay's Wharf, Pickfords and Carter Paterson, he has seen a widening horizon in home industry. Of course, he shared in the vexations of alternate nationalization and denationalization, but he is a tranquil man who takes such ripples with a steady stroke. In 1948 he was transferred to the then Road Haulage Executive, and now he is chief traffic manager of British Road Services and a member of the Board of Management.
To outsiders, organization at the headquarters of British Road Services may seem something of a maze. But when you ask Mr. Elliott about it, all becomes clear; officials, as he maps the situation, all have their place, their functions logically allotted. I judge him to be the kind of person who revels in organizational conundrums.
But that is by no means all. He is one of the internationalists of B.R.S. His father innovated with lowloaders. The son, having been a pioneer in the movement of non-petroleum liquids in bulk, is now proud of the B.R.S. Continental Services, which, by the use of semitrailers and in co-operation with Atlantic Steam Navigation Co., Ltd., have supplemented by commercial freight what was once almost entirely military traffic on behalf of N.A.T.O. The vision of the Elliotts has never been limited to the congested roads of the British Isles.