• COMMENT TIDY AND SOUND
Page 3
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• At last weekend's Commercial Motor Truckfest, this magazine gave its annual award for the best-kept working truck present (this year, as reported elsewhere, it went to Kim Rolfe's immaculate Mercedes-Benz). Naturally, it gives a magazine like Commercial Motor a great deal of pleasure to be able to hand out a particular award like this along with its more general sponsorship of a major event like Truckfest.
An award for fine condition is not, however, given solely because we gain pleasure from the sight of pretty trucks. That is a pleasure, certainly, for many people in the industry. It is also true that a clean truck with an attractive paint job — either standard or custom — has an attraction to the public which a scruffy old tipper with a plague of rust spots on its cab and bald tyres will never have. From the point of view of the image and social acceptability of the industry that is also crucially important.
The best reason of all for promoting an award such as ours is, however, that it in turn promotes better condition of the vehicle as a working tool. Although a bit of repainting and an awful lot of polishing can enhance the condition of an already sound vehicle, no amount of cosmetic surgery will disguise a vehicle in poor condition. There is no way that a week's tender loving care can compensate for a year's neglect.
A lorry which is kept in good condition is one that is automatically in good working condition: it will be reliable, and that means it will be reliably available for revenue work, and it will be cheaper to maintain because it will have no costly breakdowns. Such a vehicle will also be, by definition, a safer vehicle, less likely to run out of control or otherwise cause a bad-publicity, public-damaging accident.
The attention which this approach to maintaining a vehicle involves is of just as much relevance to an owner-operator as it is to a large fleet. It is as relevant to a driver as it is to a fleet engineer. It is as relevant to an old vehicle as it is to a new one, It was therefore surprising — and also rather disturbing — to find just how many people seemed to have missed the point of proper, vigilant maintenance when presenting vehicles for judging last weekend. Almost without exception, the vehicles entered had been lovingly cleaned and polished and had paint blemishes touched up. In some cases complete chassis resprays had taken place within hours of the opening of the show.
There is no use in all that, however, if a vehicle is presented as a working vehicle with an illegal tyre fitted to its immaculate chassis. It is no use presenting a vehicle as being a working truck if it has loose components on its fifth wheel. Likewise (although it is not a safety item; there is not much sense in a thick layer of paint applied over the rusty scale of a hot exhaust downpipe. At best it looks stupid, at worst it will flake quickly to something more unsightly then unadorned rust.
The best definition of a truck in good working condition is that it is in a condition which would ensure that it could pass its test at a moment's notice on any day of its working life with no special preparation or repair. An immaculate paint job will not ensure that — but equally a scruffy paint job is a fair indication of neglect elsewhere. Congratulations to those who triumphed in our awards — for the sake of the industry and its image we must hope that next year it will be an even harder job to select the winner than it was this year.