DEATH KNELL
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• The shock waves from the collapse of AWD diminish the further away you get from the epicentre. At the heart is a large manufacturing company which, like so many others, has failed to survive the recession. Then there are the 502 members of its workforce laid off on Monday.
Next come the suppliers who have kept AWD afloat, followed by the dealers. And somewhere out on the fringes are the operators of AWD trucks, many of whom have seen their major supplier collapse twice within the last five years. Beyond these dwindling numbers life goes on pretty much as before.
We'll leave the obituaries to the historians and sentimentalists who regularly bemoan the death of British truck manufacturing. Just don't expect to find too many operators getting mistyeyed over the demise of the great "British Truck".
The stark reality is that sentiment and nostalgia are expensive cost centres which truck builders, and truck operators, can ill-afford.
Against all conventional wisdom the receivers insist their objective "is to sell the business as a going concern". As CM went to press on Tuesday they were even talking about restarting production.
And according to the receivers a "number of substantial concerns" have already expressed an interest in the business. They sound a lot like the kind of people who want to buy national newspapers.
Certainly there is a strong parallel between truck manufacturing and the ownership of national newspapers. Both are glamorous businesses that pay dividends when times are good, but have a nasty habit of turning into poison chalices when the going gets tough.