if . HE petrol-driven industrial truck described and • illustrated in
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this issue is of unusual interest, because it represents the incursion of the internal-combustion-engined vehicle into that which hitherto has been the domain of the electric. . The term "industrial truck" is applied to the 'type of vehi61e employed in works and at railway stations and depots in the handling of parcels and of loads of materials that require to be transported within a short radius at a speed which rarely needs to be faster. than walking pace. [Page 820.
THAT the speed of commercial goods vehicles and haulage vehicles and hackney vehicles should be based on their unladen weights is being strongly urged, on the ground that the category in which a vehicle falls is clearly indicated by the weight marked upon. it. [Page 802.
MR. HENRY STURMEY, in an interesting article in this issue, deals with some of the probable effects of the new taxation. So soon as the new scale of taxation becomes understood, vehicles will be built to secure admission into the different categories. Mr. Sturrney raises the question of the passibility.
of the trailer char-it-bancs. [Page 808.
* * * . THE SCOTTISH Motor Show is being held at a period when the motor industry finds itself faced with unusual difficulties. For this very reason. it may serve to create that-, confidence among potential buyers which is required to get trade moving again. Our report deals with the exhibits, and draws special attention to everything aim:int the commercial vehicles likely to interest visitors. [Page 809.
THE WORLD will recover from its tremendous body blow only through agriculture; agriculture will develop enormously as the agrimotor displaces the more limited power of horse and man. It is, therefore, interesting to watch the introduction of power into farming operations in our overseas possessions, as, for instance, South-east Africa, to which reference is made in this issue. [Page 818.
THE maintenance, overhaul, and repair of electric motor vehicles are matters of which the average garage proprietor and repairer would fight shy. For , this same reason, he is loth to recommend the purchase of electric vehicles even to tradesmen for whose work they are well suited. Our article on overhauling an electric vehicle will, we hope, convince the average repairer that there is nothing about the job which is beyond the capacity of his plant or his :works staff. [Page 825.
Favouring Agriculture and Ignoring the Undertaking Trade.
IT IS MORE than passing strange what a number of matters have ' been overlooked in drafting Schedule 2 of the Finance Act of 1926.
Examining the composition of the Committee which inquired into the question of motor vehicle taxation in order to guide the Minister of Transport, we are amazed that so many problems should have been left for decision by the Courts. But, it is not an unfair deduction that, when the first decision of the Committee to recommend the retention of the duty in petrol as affording the simplest, fairest, and best method of taxing motor vehicles was ruthlessly rejected by the Minister, the members of the Committee showed little , interest in the further discussion, the technical knowledge possessed by them being thereby virtually wasted.
So far as concerns the taxation on tractors, we can only come to the conclusion that it was the deliberate intention of the Committee to give every possible advantage to agriculture, and that the farmer gets off with a 20 tax on the five-ton tractor and a £10 tax on any heavier vehicle, whilst the owner of a precisely similar tractor, not used solely for haulage in connection with agriculture, must pay £21. It certainly is a substantial preference.
Agitating a considerable section of home industry is the problem of the suitable classification of a motor hearse. We have had a number of letters from members of the undertaking trade and, enriously enough, the majority show clearly that they imagine the motor hearse to be exempt froml taxation. It is certainly not so classed in any document that we have seen, the only vehicles declared to be exempt being motor fire-engines and vehicles used by a localauthority for fire brigade purposes, road rollers, ambulances and some official cars.
Our advice to each applicant under this head has been to pay the tax on the lowest basis on which he can get it accepted. If the rated horse-power be less than le or 21 (according to the 'unladen weight. of the vehicle) he should apply for a licence under paragraph 6 of the Schedule as falling in the category of vehicles other than those charged with duty under the previous provisions of the Schedule. If the vehicle unladen weighs less than a ton and the horsepower be more than 16, application for a licence as a commercial goods vehicle should be made : for a vehicle over a ton weight and under 21 h.p. a similar licence should be demanded. The hearse is not a passenger car or a hackney vehicle : it is a vehicle used in the course of trade, and it can-be contended that this is implied in the description of the vehicles intended to belicetiged as commercial goods vehicles.
,. Sixteen Miles an Hour for Buses.
ARESTRICTION that should go and, unless we
. are greatly mistaken, will go when the new regulations are formulated, is that which limits the speed of passenger service vehicles—to wit, omnibuses—to 12 miles per hour. The average bus accomplishes easily, and with perfect safety, 16 miles per hour, and, even on busy routes in London, with traffic checks and stops to pick up and set down, in the busiest hours of the day, the speed is generally about 12 or 13 miles per hour. In the evening, when the streets are much clearer of traffic, and when passengers are rarely picked up or dropped between the recognized stopping places, the speed is inevitably higher, and then, towards the end of the journey, the driver is compelled to slow down to a crawl over the last stage. This is not only a wasteful procedure, tending to reduce the number of journeys that could use-fully be -made by' the bus and to increase the incidence of wages and other standing -charges, but it is intensely irritating to passengers. Many of the bus routes endat railway termini, many of the fare stages coincide with connecting points with other services, and it is a common experience in the evenings to find the driver spending 10 minutes over what, at Ordinary bus speed, eould beecovered in three. Trains and connections with tramcars and other bus services are being lost nightly in London and other large centres, and we can say from experience that the bus companies lose many a fare, because a passenger, knowing the procedure, will not board a bus on •its last stage towards a railway terminus unless there be actual evidence in its movement that the driver is in a hurry or is not under the repressive influence of an inelastic timetable. We know the bus companies fret at the restraint, but their time-tables must not show a speed in excess of 12 miles per hour, because officialdom knows no elasticity, preferring the letter of the law and of regulation to common-sense and considerations of public convenience.
Modernizing the Country Carrier.
FOR MANY years (in fact, so far back that this advent is lost in. the obscurity of the past), the country carrier has occupied a most important position in village and market town life. Upon him the people living in the outlying villages depend to a considerable extent for the transport of themselves, their goods and their chattels, whilst the market towns owe much of their prosperity to the influx of visitors and buyers rendered possible by this useful means of transport.
With the great increase in the use of motor vehicles for the transport of goods and passengers, it is only natural that the country carrier should be affected, and in a great Many cases he has supplanted his horse or horses by motor vehicles of various types, ranging from the ancient converted touring ear and the ubiquitous Ford to the latest model three-tonner of some well-known make.
Where there is little or no competition, the unenterprising country carrier who still retains the use of horses in his business may feel quite satisfied with the profits accruing from it, but immediately a rival who is the possessor of a motor vehicle arrives and makes his presence felt, he will find his profits turning rapidly into losses. Such a man should not have waited until his hand was forced, but should have been enterprising enough to have purchased and run a motor vehicle himself and thus obtained the goodwill of the business; it would then not be so necessary for him to fear competition from outside. The success or failure of the country carrier's business depends, to a considerable extent, on the suitability of the vehicle chosen foe his work. Before listening to the arguments of interested persons, he B20
should decide in his own mind what it is that he wants, as to whether a vehicle carrying, say, 6 cwt. or 7 cwt. loads will be sufficient, or whether he will require a vehicle capable of carrying a. total load of 30 cwt. or more, in which weight he must, of course, include any passengers he expects to convey in addition to goods. It will pay him much better to ran a commercial motor vehicle with the full load for which it is designed rather than to run it partially loaded, but, at the same time, he must be prepared for a considerable increase in the quantity of goods and number of passengers carried. The motor vehicle will almost certainly prove considerably more popular than the older type of transport which has been replaced, and, therefore, it will be advisable to leave room for expansion, unless the carrier has the necessary capital to purchase another machine when this course becomes necessary.
A Warning to Tractor Owners.
WE ARE informed that in a fair number of cases local taxation officers have endeavoured to obtain from the owners of tractors and of road locomotives the payment of duties in respect of the trailers drawn. Any such attempt should be resisted, and, in cases in which payment may have been made, application should be made for the return of the amount paid on the grounds that the original demands, and therefore the payments, were incorrectly made.
The regulations are quite clear on the point. In Section 5 of the Schedule of duties which is the section dealing with vehicles for the conveyance of goods, the following wards appear :—" With an additional duty in any case, if used for drawing a trailer, of 22." These are the concluding words of the fifth section, and obviously refer to that section only. All the provisions with regard to tractors and road locomotives are coatainecl in Section 4. It is, for example, provided that if a tractor is used solely for transporting its own necessary gear and farming implements, it shall pay only 5s. per annum. If it is usedssolely for haulage in connection with agriculture, and weighs undeii five tons, it pays 26 per anuum ; if its weight exceeds five tons, 110 per annum. "Tractors of any other description," that is to say, tractors used for general haulage work on the roads, pay 221 per annum.
Now, it is obvious, in the nature of things, that a tractor cannot be used for haulage unless it has a trailer attached to it. The trailer is then, part of the load that is hauled, and there is nothing whatever in the paragraph to suggest that a special tax should be paid in connection with the trailer. The duty of 22 in respect of a trailer applies only to vehicles used solely for the conveyance of goods—that is to say, vehicles which carry goods on their own platforms. If these vehicles draw additional loads behind them in trailers, it is not unreasonable that their tax should be slightly increased. 'Tractors can only do useful work by drawing and not by conveying loads, and the tax provided in their case is, therefore, an inclusive one, no additional payment for the trailer being necessary. Exactly the same argument applies to the road locomotive, and, in fact, to any machine which hauls the whole of its useful load and is not so shaped that it can carry any of it. Incidentally, it is rather curious to learn that in one particular district the local police are advising motor owners that, if a steam lorry is used in conjunction with the trailer, it thereby becomes a tractor, and. thus gets off somewhat more cheaply ! Por some reason, only known to the local police themselves, the same thing does not apply to a petrol lorry. The underlying cause of this silly mistake is, of course, that many people have got Into the habit of describing any conventional steam vehicle as a tractor, quite regardless of whether it is in fact a tractor, a road locomotive, an agricultural engine, or steam wagon.