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bird's eye
Page 66
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view by the Hawk
• J. Barry Wild was born into road transport and has remained in the industry for almost all of his 45 years. The son of a haulier, Barry Wild tries to forget that he almost became an accountant. He started to train for accountancy on leaving school but detested it and counted it as something of a blessing when he was able to join the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in 1942.
On demobilization, ex-Sgt. Wild joined his father's company as a lorry driver but within a few months ambition began to press him and he applied for a transport manager's post with an 11 vehiclefleet. Barry modestly suggests that he only got the job because he asked for a smaller salary than the rest of the applicants. In 1950 he joined the tanker company of Harold Wood and Sons Ltd at Heckmondwike as an accounts clerk; 15 years later he was appointed managing director. Apart from nine years in a managerial post at Wincanton Transport this likeable Yorkshireman has worked in his native county since 1950 with Harold Wood.
He contends that the RTITB is too general and argues that in-company training is essential. -This is especially so in our business where most loads are hazardous:' he told me.
Bulk liquids have been Barry Wild's life and one which he confesses to have enjoyed. He recognizes that the future will be tough for the bulk liquid men, since much of their business has been built on Contract A licences and he fears a period of depressed rates. -We enjoyed the protection of carriers' licensing and the relative simplicity of obtaining Contract A's", he says; -we are less likely to enjoy long contract periods in future".
These problems he feels can he overcome in time by good management. Problems arising from axle loadings are causing him more concern. He points out that bulk compartmented tanks can be loaded to suit the topography of the route or legislation but not both.
According to this ex-chairman of the RHA bulk liquid functional group committee, his sector of the industry would welcome increased gross weights. But he adds that even if 44 tons was the permitted maximum, bulk carriers could not fully utilize it because of the lack of storage space at discharge points. It is his contention that even at a ceiling of 38 tons the drift from 32 will be much slower than was the case with the previous change from 24 tons.
Bulk liquid is not only Barry Wild's business but his hobby: he makes wine at home! I.S.
• Real life
Educationists coming into contact with the rude realities of road haulage must sometimes get a shock. (By the same token, they are perhaps also shown that it doesn't pay to be naive.) At the end session of the Training Board's Business Improvement Group scheme, mentioned in this issue, one haulier provided an example of what I mean.
Following instructions, he had costed out the "ideal" life of a vehicle, but then found that disposal would mean a resale price £350 above the written-down book value, bringing balancing charges. So he reverted to his former practice of "jazzing it up a bit, selling it to the local coalman, and putting the cash in my back pocket"!
Not that he was really scornful of businesslike practices: he was in favour of individual vehicle costing, for instance, because it had just revealed to him that the scruffy, rude driver that he was about to sack was the second biggest revenue-earner in the fleet
• Now supertax?
Talking of revenue, isn't it time that the Form PhD return of total remuneration of employees, which has to be sent to the taxman, was given a higher earnings limit than £2,000?
A haulier's accountant has just been complaining tome that this used to mean returns for about half a dozen directors and senior staff, but now it means literally hundreds of returns because there's hardly a trunk driver in the fleet who doesn't top that figure. No, don't bother to write and ask the name. I'm not telling.
• Carr's law Anyone who still doubts that trade unions intend to fight the new Industrial Relations Bill needs only to see the December issue of the TGWU Record. The front page is devoid of normal text; it simply carries in enormous bold capital letters the message: "IF CARR'S LAW GOES THROUGH EVERY WORKER IN BRITAIN WILL BE WORSE OFF!"
• Out of balance
One still keeps hearing cases of apparently unfair weighing of vehicles, or savage penalties for minor weight infringements. Latest to come my way concerns a haulage company which is a pillar of transport rectitude. One of its artics was stopped in the West Country and weighed with a mobile axle weigher. Result: a total (by addition) of 32 tons 16 cwt, and a summons (alleging the vehicle to be a 30-tonner weighing 2 tons 16 cwt too much).
Reweighed soon after on a single large weighbridge, it turned the scales at 30 tons 2 cwt—and in any case it was a wide-bogie vehicle plated for 32 tons. Result: summons withdrawn.
Sounds to me as though it should never have been issued. If the authorities keep hounding the responsible operators instead of getting after the really bad lots, they'll lose the co-operation of the industry, and that would be a pity.
• Painting his wagons
Tesco Stores' delivery vans are a familiar sight and are noted for their red livery on bare aluminium panelling. Now there's going to be a change which may find many imitators. Group transport executive D. R. Baker tells me he'll be having his vans painted in future because he's found it impossible to keep the aluminium finish really shining and clean in today's atmospheric conditions.
• Public fear
An interesting comment on the public concern about the effects of heavier trucks came from the Essex deputy chief constable, K. F. Alston, at the very well-attended inaugural meeting of the RHA Essex group training association, at which I had a most enjoyable and instructive evening.
Mr. Alston revealed that the police often receive complaints—unjustified but nevertheless sincere—from members of the public, about commercial vehicles whose sheer size and noise they found frightening.
Understandable if you walk the narrow pavements of a town which lies on a main industrial route.
He was also concerned about attic accidents. As he put it, although only 18 accidents out of the 430 attended by the Essex police in one year involved jack-knifing, most of these had been "disastrous".
• More trailing
Lew Lewis (or H. C. Lewis to give him his proper name) is well known in South Wales as a senior marketing executive for Highway. Now he writes to tell me that he's started his own business down there—but the connection won't be severed. He'll still be handling Highway, but he's added Crane, Pitt and Boden as well.
Good trailing, Lew.