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Page 62
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John Wells
• Provided events follow their usual pattern John Wells, who was elected chairman of the Road Haulage Association on Wednesday, will remain in that office for the next three years. This is an office for which John has fitted himself having served an "apprenticeship" of seven years — one year longer than normal — under three national chairmen.
When the RHA was restructured John was vice-chairman to Phil Turner, a man he had known for almost 20 years as a London haulier. His next two periods he served under Welshman Noel Wynn and the retiring Scot, Willie McMillan. While John has no intention of being a carbon copy of any one of these three illustrious gentlemen he acknowledges that some of their influence has rubbed off on him. Undoubtedly the Association will benefit from his "apprenticeship" and the influence of his "masters".
The Wells family have been in transport for five generations but for 11 of his 49 years John was away from transport. Immediately after leaving Brighton College at 17 he joined Pickfords but one year later he was off to the Fleet Air Arm where' he served until April 1946 and was discharged after service in India as an air engineering officer. For five years while the family company was nationalized John worked with Darham Industries, of Basildon, on the construction of rbad tankers. During that five-year period much of his time was spent in travelling in America, the Middle East and West Africa. So that the enormous amount of domestic travel in which he will engage as RHA chairman will cause little concern either to him or his wife.
John's ambition during his three years of office is to make further improvements in the lines of communication from the executive and headquarters staff of the RHA to the rank and file through area and sub-area organizations. He feels that much is lost to the members because so often the written word is not followed up by the more direct means of the spoken word. He is not a man for formal speeches but enjoys free, open and controversial discussion.
He plays golf with a 17 handicap — which he questions, and has a wide range of reading tastes. Those who have met him know that he revels in sartorial elegance. I.S.