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That was the year...
Page 13
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CM was launched in 1905; for our centenary year we're bringing you stories from years gone by. This week we're back in 1913 and 1963.
1913
Although Jack London's book Return to the Valley of the Moon claimed all society's ills could be cured by a return to nature, the technological revolution continued apace. Stainless steel was invented in Sheffield and Ford introduced the moving production tine. Russia's Romanov family celebrated 300 years on the throne:little did it know that it only had another four left.
Steaming ahead
CM was concerning itself with the rising cost of, wait for it, fuel. As it noted: "The continued rise in the price of petrol is being watched with a considerable amount of anxiety by all those users of commercial vehicles who are dependent on petrol as a fuel." It also suggested that a resurgence in the popularity of steam-power could be on the way as a result.
CVs to the rescue
CM asserted the fate of UK manufacturing depended on the use of CVs: "The only solution to the existing menace to the ...Lancashire and Yorkshire textile industries the appalling delay over deliveries— is to organize, and to extend the use of commercial motors contemporaneously." It added: "Teminal conditions [are] apparently based upon the idea that the time element does not matter..."
Finally, a sweetener
CM reported on Cadbury's putting the last of its horsedrawn transport out to pasture in favour of shiny new Thorneycroft vehicles. The firm, in only slightly hyperbolic fashion said: "We have crossed the Rubicon and discarded all our horses."
1963
President Kennedy somewhat mis-timed his visit to Dallas. Elsewhere, the Great Train Robbery netted thieves £2.5m and John Le Cane published The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The Beatles knocked out their first two albums Stanley Kubrick released the nuclear war satire Dr Strangelove and Robert Kearns invents the intermittent windshield wiper.
Spurious speed limits
The Ministry of Transport announced a higher speed limit of 40mph for goods vehicles on de-restricted roads. Lord Chesham in the House of Lords asserted the present limits were "out of date and widely disregarded"—words which resonate 42 years later with today's operators battling archaic speeding laws.
Oh please
A think tank set up to figure out how to prevent congestion and delays at the nation's docks came up with the novel idea of loading and unloading goods "by appointment". Even more pie in the sky was the suggestion the haulage industry could introduce demurrage charges to "penalise tardy traders".
Art not science
"If any road haulier had clung to the belief that the future would hold in store for him what the past had offered,Dr Beeching has shattered the myth." So started The Commercial Motor's leader conunent in March 1963, claiming The Reshaping of British Railways report by the British Railways Board's chairman would create the "greatest threat to medium and long distance road haulage yet devised".