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Bah, humbug!
Page 12
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Take a stroll with us through the little side roads of haulage, the diversions and detours, the quirky, the quixotic and the downright strange...
As On the Margin has long known, thanks to the odd after hours wrestling match outside the Dog and Ferret, it's one thing to quietly promote your product over that of your rivals and quite another to stick two fingers up at the opposition while trumpeting your own worth from the rooftops, draped in a banner that reads "Best thing since sliced bread". However, we're not sure the message has filtered down to those at Volvo's Warwick HQ. Take for instance, the Swedish truck giants latest press release following the sale of a new vehicle to recovery firm Mansfield Group. There's nothing in the release itself that you wouldn't expect from any manufacturer (umpteen lines of self-aggrandising piffle seasoned with a hint of hyperbole and rounded off with a dash of techno-waffle) but it's the accompanying photograph that puts on its size 1-1s and gives the opposition a hefty clout in the swingers. It's a recovery truck you see, and what do you think it's dragging behind it like a piece of old scrap iron?
Why, if we're not mistaken that's a Scania 4 series it's towing. Short of actually captioning the picture "Buy Volvo, the opposition are bobbins" and sending a dozen copies to Scania, we're not sure what more they could have done to insult their Swedish rivals.
While we have the opportunity we'd like to send out a big thank you to everyone that sent us a Christmas card (or indeed a bottle of Beaujolais), However, a special mention is reserved for those oh so seasonal chaps at The Pallet Network who sent us the card below. Now, while we appreciate the season's greetings, sending everyone a picture of your new warehouse on the front of the card seems curiously lacking in Christmas cheer; akin to us (assuming we ever sent any cards and weren't merely grumpy old Scrooges festering away in a pool of bitter resentment) sending people a picture of our office chair. Bah, humbug.