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John Copland
• Spare a thought this weekend for John Copland who begins a new career in road transport as the managing director of the newly constituted Scottish Road Services Ltd. The company begins its official operations on Monday morning, January 1, which, of course, to a patriotic Scot like John could mean two headaches!
John Copland was appointed to the post in August but only on Monday will SRS Ltd become an operative company. When, last August, the NFC was carrying out its restructuring policy and it decided to call its Scottish organization BRS (Scotland) Ltd, John Copland almost choked on his porridge. "Scotland is a country," he cried with patriotic fervour, "not a region."
It is as a company md in the international transport field that John Copland sees his new job. He intends to offer a personal service from any part of Scotland, from the industrialized Forth Clyde Valley or the wild moors of Ross and Cromarty to any part of the world, through the international transport network.
John Copland believes that transport is the most personalized industry in the world. Every chairman, managing director, branch manager or traffic clerk must know his customers, each at his own level, he says. Every driver must know his contacts at pick-up and delivery points and every foreman must know his drivers and mechanics.
This will be the thinking that the md will bring to his desk in Bothwell Street, Glasgow, after the New Year celebrations. • The man who now heads State road freight in Scotland was educated at Dumfries Academy, and has spent his working life in transport. He was a clerk with LMS Railways and later British Railways, then in the accounts office of BRS and in the traffic office of Road Services (Caledonian) Ltd, progressing to become director and general manager of Road Services Forth.
For a short period at the beginning of 1972 he was md of the NFC company Tankfreight Ltd until his appointment in August this year as md of SRS Ltd.
What manner of man is John Copland? "With British Rail it was a case of filling dead men's shoes," he said, "and I was ambitious." Like his compatriot Robert Burns, John Copland is an honest man. "In the Royal Engineers, I was a corporal," said John — one meets so many ex-"brigadiers".
John was almost "survived" by a wife and two daughters when he was ko'd by a golf ball last October on the fourth fairway of the King's Course, Gleneagles — perhaps because in his own words, he is a golfing "rabbit"! I.S.