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Benelux operators like our prices

TE the effect of the British motor industry on the Benelux area can be taken as a guide it is not surprising that some members of the Six have shown some reticence about our entry into the EEC. The number of British-built vehicles operating in Holland and Belgium and the variety of makes is clear proof that Benelux operators are buying British because they are well satisfied with our products.

In Amsterdam I spoke to Mr. Seik Meyer, of Lucas Bols, which operates vehicles in the Rootes group range. The company, one of the world's largest distillers and wine merchants, has 23 subsidiaries throughout the world. The present range of Rootes vehicles has replaced the American White truck which served the company between the wars. The locally built DAF has also been used but these also have been replaced by the British product. The fleet comprises 16 vehicles, two Karrier Gamecocks and 14 Commers, two of which are platform lorries with the two-stroke engine.

The Gamecocks are used for bulk delivery to ports and railheads with Bols exports. These loads are palletized and the low loading height and relatively high payload are considered to be major points in the Gamecock's favour. The other 14 vehicles are used on local delivery work throughout Holland. the main selling point according to Seik Meyer was the low, capital cost.

This low capital cost appeared to be a selling point wherever I went in Benelux. At Coca-Cola (Export Branch), Amsterdam, Mr. De Vries gave me the same reason for using Rootes and Bedford vehicles. There were, however, other reasons. Amsterdam is a very old city and is segmented by canals. Add to this the innovation of oneway streets and the less modern tramway system and you can readily appreciate that Mr. De Vries has very special transport problems. To add to his problems, most of his customers are located in cafes in the very attractive but not very accessible old town.

In this type of delivery the operator requires a vehicle with an extremely tight turning circle. "The Karrier Gamecock has a turning circle of 10 metres", said Mr. De Vries, "and this is ideally suited to our purposes." To prove his point he took me into the congested delivery area. Any delivery problems we may have in our major cities is multiplied tenfold in Amsterdam, and the advantage of the short wheelbase of the Gamecock was apparent.

To achieve a desirable low loading height the standard chassis is lowered by 20 centimetres. This is considered an essential feature in the reduction of driver fatigue. Coca-Cola drivers make about 40 deliveries daily and cover only 16 miles in doing so, consequently it is important that the driver fatigue feature should have been fully explored. One other innovation in this connection is that the company purchases British home market models. Mr. De Vries explained: "This allows my drivers to leave the vehicle from the nearside door with immediate access to the sidewalk. In this way they are saved the unnecessary risk of accident and are immediately in a position to unload the vehicle". Such thinking is not confined to Coca-Cola, as I later learned that Dutch Railways are operating 800 such vehicles on collection and delivery work.

Specifying with exactitude

British Petroleum fleet engineer Mr. H. De Jong is a man for detail. He takes good care that he buys the vehicle for the job. He believes in his fleet being adequate —neither over-powered nor under-powered —and so he has a mixed fleet, hand picked with a particular job in mind. He was looking for a vehicle with a two-speed axle and a horsepower of just over 100. There are available two machines in the DAF range which nearly met the specification he sought. One with 100 h.p. but no two-speed axle and one with a two-speed axle and 120 h.p.—"nearly but not quite". Mr. de Jong is not swayed by patriotism, he is an engineer, and so he purchased an Austin with two-speed axle and 105 h.p.— exactly the vehicle he required.

In total, BP are operating 66 WE K100's, 20 8KDF models and 33 vans. This fleet is dispersed over seven depots, with two engineers at each depot. The company employs two inspectors who make spot checks at each depot once a week and vehicles are serviced every 2,500 miles. This appeared less than adequate to me at first sight but I was assured that, as petrol tankers, these vehicles are subjected to the most rigorous inspection by Government inspectors twice a year.

The BMCs are replaced after 190,000 miles or seven years service and I understand the after-sales service has proved completely satisfactory.

Probably the largest, certainly the most adventurous p.s.v. operator in Holland is Maarse en Croon of Alsmeer. The company started in 1923 but it was not until 1934 that British vehicles came into the fleet, when Mr. Maarse senior attended the Commercial Motor Show at Earls Court. He was attracted to the Leyland diesel chassis, decided that this was the vehicle of the future and despite advice to the contrary from his Dutch friends and associates he bought his first Leyland.

From this humble beginning the company now operates 190 Leylands on 20 regular services and international lines. When the new Schipol Airport opens this week Maarse en Croon will have a further 30 coaches in service, on airport service work.

• This company is not content with production line models for chassis and bodies. From experience they modify and experiment and produce coaches with the most luxurious and acceptable modifications. The Jules Verne coach is the pride of the fleet. It is luxury plus, with heating and ventilation meticulously controlled, seating giving armchair comfort and the vehicle suspension is such that cocktails are poured and consumed at the rear-end cocktail bar without any loss of spirit.

During the war when the company were unable to procure Leylands they developed the slow combustion fuel engine in their pre-war models. This wood-pulp boiler and 3 in. pipe injection system meant the modi

fication of the CI engine to an IC engine. Even during these difficult times Maarse en Croon found time to collate information and they found that the modified engine retained 90 per cent of its original power. This fact, and the faith that Mr. Maarse had in Leyland, ensured that the company would return to Lancashire with its order book in 1946.

The company is well equipped to modify and repair units—in fact after 10 years of service and 600,000 miles the units are stripped and rebuilt on a new chassis. Vehicles are, however, replaced generally at about 14 years, when they are taken out of regular hire service and put on as duplicates or special "one off" runs.

Rotterdam's rubbish movers The 750,000 population of Rotterdam produces almost 2,000 tons of refuse daily. Eighty-four Bedford TKs collect it and dispose of it into barges. From the barges the material is discharged into the city's new disposal plant where it is transferred into electrical power and distributed to light the homes where a few hours before it was garbage.

Rotterdam, in addition to its 84 TKs also operates 15 Bedford 33 models with side-loading bodies. These are used for the collection of street sweepings. One unusual feature of these vehicles is a steering and throttle control protruding from the cabin on the nearside. This allows the driver to walk alongside the vehicle at the same pace as the sweepers who collect the road sweepings, and keep the vehicle constantly available. This is a system which would not be permitted in this country and I understand that Mr. R. J. Henrich, the Rotterdam city engineer is seriously considering discontinuing this method in favour of a less costly system.

The TKs which are fitted with the German Kliko 12/30 constant compaction bodies are engaged on kerbside collection. All domestic premises are cleared twice each week and the volume of refuse collected is increasing by 7 per cent a year. The cost of running the vehicles, excluding the threeman crew, is about 28s. an hour.

In Holland the official policy is to purchase DAF, and all municipal operators are encouraged to do so. It was therefore something of a surprise to find a local authority using Bedfords. I put the point to Mr. Henrich. "I have been asked many times by my council to change over to DAF", he said, "but I have told them that at the price I cannot buy a better vehicle for this work."

The other points which impressed the engineer were that he could put a three-man collection crew into the cab without having to modify it.

The Dutch passenger vehicle organization, Twee Provences, although almost 20 years old has, I believe, still to exploit its potential fully. When the Dutch Govern ment was issuing concessions to public service vehicle operators to operate regular services four companies amalgamated and between them they gained the area bounded by Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Dordrecht.

That was back in 1946 and so far as I can make out they have gained very little since.

Although their operating techniques are intertwined the company is still adminis tered as four separate operators. Each has its own livery, each its own purchasing organization, each its own spares stock holding. The company has an administra tion department in the heart of Rotterdam, they have in Mr. G. van Galen Last a president and director who has a wide operational knowledge. Why they have not used these assets to greater advantage mystified me. The only obvious possibility is that they cannot agree on which make of coach to standardize their 600-strong fleet. At the moment they are operating Guys, AECs and Leylands together with Bussing, Mercedes and DAF.

One operator in the consortium with no doubts is A. W. Pot, who operates 92 Guys and 17 Leylands and I believe he has been trying to persuade his colleagues to change over. The Guy fleet is in regular line service with about 10 per cent held in reserve. These vehicles are of course only in reserve during the winter period as during the touring season they are in constant service.

Mr. A. 0. Pot, the proprietor's son, told me that while his British vehicles perhaps cost a lot initially, and despite the fact that spares had to carry a heavy transport cost, at the end of the day their operation was costing well below the figure of their Continental counterparts. He reminded me, too, that a comparable Mercedes coach would be 10 per cent dearer to purchase.

Soon the passenger transport system in Rotterdam will change. The new Metro will capture many city passengers but this 'should not substantially affect the coach operators of Twee Provences. Their passengers are from the catchment area around Rotterdam. The many inland waterways are now being successfully bridged and the constant development is making heavier demands on passenger services.

British vehicles have a strong grip on this market. In Namur, Ternuzen, and at

Europort there are Guy, AEC and Leyland operators, some on hire services, some on special contract runs, all of them high in 4 their praise of these British-produced vehicles.

Belgians are Choosey In Belgium there are many fleets large and small using British vehicles—and for a variety of reasons. Van den Heuvel the brew ers use 75 Bedfords on local delivery work and 11 AECs on their long-distance and inter-city work. Van den Heuvel use Bedfords for the very good reason that it is the type of light vehicle which they particularly want and, what is possibly more important, Bedford had it when Van den Heuvel wanted it. Bedford produced a light vehicle with a diesel engine just when the company decided they required this type.

While they are prepared to accept a factory produced chassis/cab, Belgian operators are very selective in their bodywork, and this is particularly true of brewers. The General Motors representative has, I gather, tried to impress on the operators that if they would accept completely factory-built vehicles, the capital cost would fall considerably. The operators believe that they show more individuality by having their own type of body.

Van den Heuvel have equally wellestablished opinions about their longdistance fleet. The 11 AECs deliver bulk loads to ports for the export market and supply warehouses throughout the Continent. "We get 625,000 relatively trouble-free miles from our AECs", I was told. The company agreed that the initial cost of the AEC was greater than some other vehicles of similar capacity. "But," said the transport engineer, "we have little or no repair costs." In a country where there is no driving test and in a company where a driver graduates to long-distance work after an apprenticeship on local work, this speaks volumes for the quality of the vehicle.

While there is no official driving test in Belgium most companies have an internal driving test. These tests vary in application and in standard but I was particularly intrigued by that set for prospective drivers by Impremire Periodica, a daily newspaper in Brussels. Before a driver is employed by this organization he is required to drive down an extremely narrow street with vehicles parked on either side and only centimetres to spare on either side. Having done so he must then reverse along the same street. If the double operation is completed without damage he is employed. So simple but undeniably effective—within limits. Having once qualified, the driver is then allocated one of the company's 16 delivery vehicles of which 10 are British, five BMCs and five Bedfords. It is at this point that he really becomes a company driver.

This daily newspaper has a circulation of 321,600 copies and in addition the publishers print 2m. copies of various periodicals weekly. These are distributed throughout Belgium each evening over 16 separate routes. The vehicles have petrol engines as a matter of policy. "In this business, speed is essential", I was told. Every night the vehicles leave on their 150-mile run, which is timed to four hours. Thus an average of almost 40 m.p.h. has to be maintained with 40 delivery stops along the route.

While the company are well satisfied with their vehicles they are not very happy with the

overall transport system in their organization. The cost of operation of their own fleet is so far in excess of the cost of hiring that soon they may be required to hand over the distribution to a private haulier.

The company's drivers all belong to a branch of the Belgian newspaper union and there is a union condition that vehicles must be double-manned, and despite the fact that the man is employed as a night worker he must be paid a special rate for night work. These and other factors produce an operating cost of 10s. a mile. Private hauliers can operate at 6s. a mile and show a profit. It is not surprising that the transport may soon change hands—but I understand that the likely private haulier is also a British vehicle operator.

Establishment Gossetts SA are the largest cigarette manufacturers in Belgium; they are also 100 per cent Ford. This was clearly a case of "first in" after the war. In 1945 Ford offered immediate service and won this company's confidence, which has been maintained ever since. Mr. De Weyer, the transport manager, is proud of his company's fleet and their economic operation. Excluding drivers' wages, he operates at 5s. 6d. a mile for a D.600 boxvan.

The company have their own warehouse and factory and two vehicles are engaged daily in running tobacco leaf from the warehouse to the factory. The drivers engaged on this type of work are the new boys and this is done for two reasons: (a) the work is inclined to be monotonous, and only really loyal employees would stick at it; and (b) tobacco leaf is a marketable commodity.

If a driver remains with the company on this type of traffic he proves himself both loyal and trustworthy, and is therefore fit for the more amenable work of delivering the manufactured product.

Vehicles cover their allocated territory once every nine days and deliver about 5m. cigarettes daily. Such a load in my opinion posed a security problem but not to Mr. De Weyer. "Anyone stealing the load would require to take it to Italy to dispose of it."

The company's maintenance is carried out strictly in accordance with the manufacturer's specification, and vehicles are serviced once very 10 days. J.P.B.S.