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bird's eye view by the Hawk
Page 39
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• I recognize it!
Will Richard Thomas please stand up and prepare to be voted BBC producer of the year by the road haulage industry? At least, he's my nomination; and if you saw last Thursday's programme on the lorry driver which he produced in the BBC 1 That Monday Morning Feeling programme I'm sure you'll agree.
This was road haulage as I recognize it, road haulage fairly and squarely presented, warts and all.
The leading character could not have been better cast — not, perhaps, a typical lorry driver, but then, is there such a mythical person? Bob Harman, a long-distance man with Geoffrey Reyner, of Manchester, was perfect for the part. Trained as a school teacher, he turned lorry driver just like his dad and his three brothers. He was opinionated, articulate and a living, breathing example of why lorry drivers don't take factory or office jobs.
• At the wheel
Simply by doing his job in front of the TV cameras, he showed the public that lorry driving these days has a lot more to it than sitting behind a wheel and pushing pedals. There he was, at a Victorian factory, trying to get 17 tons loaded legally when the overhead loading crane only reached about twothirds of the way up his 40ft trailer. We saw him on the phone trying to get a return load at the right price from Hull clearing houses; and taking his time over sheeting and roping a load — and expressing his pride in the result. And we saw him stopped by the police and warned for a "chalked on" rear number plate, dirty rear lights and an empty windscreen washer bottle.
Then we were left in suspense wondering whether he was really going to take a chance and run a bit over his 10 hours in order to make Manchester that night, or whether he was going to stick to the letter of law and park up just short of home.
Great stuff!
• Roadside sights
I'm also grateful to driver Bob Harman for giving me a looked-for excuse for mentioning a book which really has nothing to do with road transport. Bob said he was a mine of useless information about the countryside. I don't think he really regarded it as useless, nor would many others.
He knew where the first lambs were this year, the state of the crops and countryside on all his routes, was obviously interested in wildlife and, as a frustrated jockey who still has a go at weekends, is obviously a great man for animals.
The book is AA Book of the British Countryside, which is 536 pages representing two years' work by a team of 30 experts, and it covers just about every mortal subject in the rural world — from castles to farming, from birds to geology. It's a mass of colour and black and white illustrations — I've never seen anything like it.
It costs (aft, there's the rub) £4.50 plus 30p postage to members and it will be on general sale later at £6.30. Not to be purchased at whim, I agree, but a great piece of publishing, possibly of interest to many people in this get-about industry of ours.
• The big tip
The third London airport at Maplin Sands, Essex, could produce the biggest tipping job on record. National Coal Board member John Brass suggested at a Commons meeting with Yorkshire MPs last week that pit-tip material from around the country could provide the foundations for the airport and at the same time clear away a great deal of the industrial dereliction of the past 200 years.
The NCB has proposals for 400m tons of colliery shale to be moved from pithead sites to reclaim land needed for the airport. They reckon that there could be 200m tons from Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, 100m tons from the North East and a similar quantity from South Wales.
The suggestion is that such a bulk transport operation would be handled mainly by rail and coastal shipping. I think the road tipping industry might have some views about that.
• Making a splash
A lorry driver friend of mine has been telling me about the fortunes of a Class Llicensed acquaintance who emigrated to Australia and tried to break into various fields of tanker work out there with his own secondhand vehicle — with little success.
Then, just as things were at their blackest, he was asked to do an "errand of mercy" job by delivering several thousand gallons of water to a township in the outback which had been hit by drought.
To his surprise, he found he was not only paid a good rate for transporting the water but was then paid a handsome price per gallon by the grateful local inhabitants to whom it was delivered.
Like most hauliers, he knew when he was on to a good thing, and when last heard of was leading a somewhat nomadic life touring Australia as a latter-day Gunga Din!
• U pti me for downtime
If you have recently seen a light aircraft flying at full speed in a southerly direction towards Luton there is a fair chance that it was builder Harold Baines minimizing vehicle downtime.
For when Harold learned that he might have to wait up to two weeks for lorry gearbox parts because stocktaking was in process at a certain Luton factory he decided to take matters into his own hands and flew down from Tholthorpe, North Yorkshire, to collect them himself.
Harold, who is a keen pilot and owns his own Jodell 117 aircraft, said afterwards that it had cost him only £20 to make the trip whereas it would have cost £200 to hire a replacement vehicle for two weeks. He added that the factory staff were so enthusiastic at the idea of him flying down that they had the parts all ready and waiting when he arrived.