Kenneti :harles Turner
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ir0 the layman there seems no obvious connection between the Derby Carriage and Wagon Works and General Industrial Cleaners—nor, commercially, is there any link-up. By the same token there does not appear to be any technical reason why a young executive from the Wagon company should suddenly cut adrift and join a new set-up whose sole mission in life was, and is, to give an engineers' overall cleaning and replacement service to a wide sector of British industry (and by " overall " is meant the protective garment).
No matter. That is precisely what young Kenneth Turner did way back in 1939. He .saw a chance and took it: but not before he had learnt very thoroughly the lesson that hard work pays. "1 had that drilled into me by the Works Superintendent of the Derby Carriage and Wagon Works. He was a man who worked like a demon himself and expected everybody else to do the same. It was a good lesson from a wonderful teacher. I only wish that my sons could meet Ernest Pugson's like at the right moment."
Turner is Derbyshire born and Derbyshire bred, though he is just about the last man to whom the rhyming tag "-Thick i' th' ed " could be applied. He is by training an administrator but circumstances during 1938 and 1939. when the Wagon Works turned over to aircraft production, forced him into what, for want of a bettter phrase, one might call an engineering bias. That has stood him in good stead during the years between, though as he stressed to me: "The art of administration is to get other people to do the engineering, accountancy and so on. I am a believer in delegation."
He does not, however, deny that when your company is operating a fleet of more than 70 vehicles, it helps to know what goes on under the engine bonnet.