• The Hawk has long held the belief that when
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it comes to keeping the customer satisfied, it is the independent companies, rather than manufacturers and their dealers, who go about things the right way.
Witness the recent incident involving one of Commercial Motor's roadtest team and a Ford Transit parcels van. After a busy day thrashing around the test track at MIRA, imagine his annoyance when filling up to discover the fuel cap was kaputt — locked open, and it would not go back on. Normally this wouldn't worry anybody too much, but when you are doing tank-top-to-tank-top readings, losing fuel out of an open filler spout will obviously muck up your figures.
So what to do? No worries, we thought, there is a major Iveco Ford dealer not a million kilometres from MIRA who is bound to have a simple part like a fuel cap, isn't he? Not on your nelly. After waiting for the obligatory ten minutes in the parts department to be served (what are storemen doing when they're out of sight?) we were finally told "We haven't got one." Was he sure? "We'll take any type, locking or otherwise." Back comes our man with a locking cap — but no keys. "They've been lost." About as useful as a chocolate exhaust pipe.
We try the service department next. Could they file off the plastic locating lugs on the cap so that we can actually fit it back on? Off goes the service man, telling all and sundry in a loud voice that "they've lost the keys" (which of course we haven't).
At last it seems like we're getting somewhere, but back comes our cap with the wrong lugs (ie the metal locking pins) filed off. In silent frustration we give up. Could they at least put our van over their brake tester so the visit won't be a complete waste of time? No, it's not working properly.
So our tester sets off down the A5, stopping at Ford deal erships in Towcester ("Sorry we haven't got one") and Leighton Buzzard. On our quest we blunder into the yard of Chassis Developments, the well-known chassis convertor and bodybuilder. Here things finally start to happen.
Want a Transit fuel cap? No problem! CD's chassis engineering manager David Brain simply "borrows" a cap from one of the many Transit chassis in the yard. Can we pay for it? "No don't worry, we'll just get another one, before it goes to the customer."
So there the story ends. It took an independent company like Chassis Developments to provide the kind of service that the average truck or van dealer should be able to provide standing on its head. Let's hope, for CD's sake, that they have better luck than we did getting a fuel cap, or we could have started a chain reaction!
• It was all happening in Plymouth last week. Tamar Leyland Daf and Plymouth Sound, the local radio station, organised a competition connected with trucks. The prize — an opportunity to sample the award-winning Leyland Daf Series 95 under the instruction of Tony Loughran of Motor Force HGV driving school — was won by bus driver Joanna
Smith of Yelverton.
Said Smith: "It was the chance of a lifetime. I really enjoyed driving such a sophisticated truck; my ambition is to experience as many different types of vehicle as possible and the Series 95 will definitely be one of the most memorable." 0 Another "adventure of a lifetime" was also announced in Plymouth. Five men and a woman will be travelling to Kenya in a 22-year-old Bedford RL. They will be taking a consignment of table tennis equipment, books, medical kits and hearing aids to Nairobi for the London-based Deaf Aid charity.
The six have received sponsorship from BandVulc Remoulds, the truck tyre retread specialist.