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Sidelight on Mor test
Page 96
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The managing director of a furniture remover member of the NAFWR reports that he took great care to submit his new Bedford pantechnicon to a MoT test centre in the Metropolitan area before it was one-year-old, so as to be sure that it was tested and plated by the time it was legally necessary. Even though he was confident that the vehicle was in good mechanical order, he asked his usual firm of motor engineers to give it a pre-test run over and they declared it to be in fine condition. The test appointment was made, the vehicle was washed and polished and sent off all spick and span first thing in the morning to cover the nine or 10 miles to the test centre.
You can imagine the managing director's sense of outrage when the driver brought the vehicle back and said that the test certificate would be withheld on the grounds that a filament in the nearside parking lamp had apparently failed while the vehicle was being driven to the testing centre (it had obviously been working at the time of the pre-test).
Yet the inspectors refused to give the vehicle a certificate and insisted that unless it be driven back to base, fitted with a new bulb and driven back to the testing centre before 5 p.m. it would be failed. In such a case, of course, a fresh appointment would have to be made and a completely new test undertaken, with all the additional expenses involved.
Apparently the driver was not even allowed to look at the bulb to see if by some chance it was loose (it had in fact failed) so that even if he had happened to have a spare bulb in the cab, he would not have been able to fa it on the spot. Now the managing director is worried in case this "failure" to "maintain" his vehicle in a "fit and proper condition" will be held
against him when he comes to renew his operator's licence, or if he ever wants to expand his fleet.
Surely reputable firms can be expected to replace defective bulbs without having to bear the expense of physically presenting the vehicle (and its driver)—or are we not to be trusted to do anything?
HUGH W. WILSON, General Secretary, National Association of Furniture Warehousemen and Removers, London SW?.