bird's eye view by the Hawk unshine drivers ;rs Road
Page 47
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Services, of Wednesbury, nit their drivers into a sunshine league: maintain an accident-free record from er 1 1972 to September 30 1974 they'll -1 all-expenses-paid seven-day holiday ajorca. To cinalify, they must avoid for damage, neglect, loss of goods tipment.
s Graham Cooper "We'll be highly led if our entire driving staff manages Lain accident-free for two years— even the holidays would cost us a great f money."
Fact a lot of things are happening on ooper front. Quite apart from having nicro-skirted company dollybirds who, nitially distracting the lads, have now to cheer them to the top of the Premier in of West Brom's district league, the my has just launched a staff newspaper opers Courier.
a significant enterprise; as RHA an John Wells says in the first issue, communications are a boon in any my these days.
pecial talk
that used to be holiday mind-benders, replaced at the last minute by some Lc sign language, are going to become If our lives now that the politicians have drained the Channel (well, spiritually) and integrated us with Europe, to use the jargon.
Quick off the mark to cater for the new situation, two publishers have come up with phrase books for the traveller and the tyre specialist.
One is the AA, which has just sent me a copy of the excellently produced Car Components Guide, which works just about as effectively for commercial vehicles. And being in no fewer than 12 languages it will help to get drivers out of a hole from Helsinki to Heliopolis.
The languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish — and Serbo-Croat, would you believe!
Regrettably, there is no mention of postillions being struck by lightning, but how about "Could you tell me the final-drive ratio?" in Serbo-Croat: Molim navedite konacni prenosni omjer.
The guide costs 25p net.
• Zona piatta
The European Dictionary of Tyre Terminology is on the same lines, but comes in only the four most commonly used European languages and deals with a more specialized subject.
It also has a certain panache. Rupture des nappes does not indicate an embarrassing disaster with baby, but a fabric break. The quotable examples are legion. I think my favourite is diva ricatore per inserimento della camera, which is Italian for "bagging-up machine" — and I'm still no wiser.
There cannot be a tyre eventuality which is not covered — especially the basics like trou de clou (nail hole). It costs 35p from Tyre Industry Publications Ltd, 136 Valley Road, Clacton on Sea, Essex.
(Oh, yes — the paragraph heading is Italian for flat spot.)
• Road-railer
Just off to away-from-it-all retirement in the Cotswolds is Arthur Knight, the National Freight Corporation's ever-helpful information officer, whom I first met, I recall, when he had the unenviable and eventually totally frustrating job of sales manager to British Roadrailers Ltd. The Roadrailer, for those who weren't around the transport scene in the mid Sixties or earlier, was a semi-trailer with flanged rail wheels which could be folded up to bring the tyred wheels into road contact for use behind a road tractor unit. Flexible, but heavy.
Several attempts to put it on a commercial footing had come to nothing, and then the Freightliner came along and put paid to the idea.
Arthur himself is one of those transport people who has been totally immersed, so to speak: he started with the Great Western, then, after war service, was with British Rail, transferred to the Docks and Inland Waterways Executive, moved to the BTC, then to the British Waterways Board and successively to British Roadrailers, Transport Holding Company and NFC.
I wonder if he could be persuaded to write it all up — from the inside?
• Extra Dangerous
Stories about the Irish used to be funny. In recent times they have tended to become tragic, sick or frightening.
At the end of 1972, Dennis Farrant who is in charge of Packed Distribution at Shell and BP and his colleague Mike Buller' who is responsible for Distribution Developments Lubricants with the company made one of their routine calls to Northern Ireland. From Aldergrove Airport to the depot the local manager was explaining the gruesome sights along the route. Part of the route covered the New Lodge Road area, the scene of many a confrontation between snipers in the high flats and soldiers at the command posts. In pointing out the various "interesting" aspects of the route the driver had unconsciously dropped speed — but let Mike Bullen take up the story:— "I immediately became aware of an Army rifle pointing in. the general direction of the car and the more specific direction of my right ear and when I looked towards the command post there was a British soldier paying more than usual attention to our presence and his comrades keeping the high flats under scrutiny Apparently, this is the treatment to all slow-moving vehicles in Belfast, even when the occupants are as harmless-looking as we were."
Transport men will tell you that their business has always been hazardous but it seems that those who operate in Northern Ireland have something extra to contend with.