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BIRD'S EYE

12th November 1965, Page 175
12th November 1965
Page 175
Page 175, 12th November 1965 — BIRD'S EYE
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

By The Hawk VIEW

Warehouses seldom hit the headlines. But declare a state of emergency and overnight they are recognized for what they are—key installations.

So when I went along to John Marks' house-warming party to launch the National Association of Warehouse Keepers in their fine new headquarters overlooking Trafalgar Square I thought the location peculiarly appropriate.

The very existence of NAWK silently commemorates another victory, as its founding in 1944 arose out of wartime problems of distribution. And today astute road hauliers still recognize the keeping of warehouses as a key factor in ensuring an efficient distribution when allied to their own fleets of commercial vehicles.

Key Installations Take Your Choice Scanning through a sheaf of Ministry of Labour handouts which arrived on my desk last week for news of a date for the setting up of an Industrial Training Board for the road transport industry, I found I had three alternative statements to choose from" in the near future ", "by the end of the year" and "next year". After a phone call from me the Ministry settled for the latter.

At least they haven't called the whole thing off!

Driver's Rest There was a brief break from driving for the roan in charge of the first vehicle through the gates after the official opening of the new H. L. Walker Ltd. depot at Stockton-on-Tees on Thursday of last week. Perhaps. from the look I observed on his face, he could

hardly he said to be "resting But there was no reason to worry, as his artic was in good hands—none less than those of John Hanlon., the Northern Licensing Authority, who a few seconds earlier had cut the ribbon barring the entrance.

Mr. Hanlon had not seen the vehicle before, but it moved off smartly and made a swift circuit of the extensive vehicle park before returning to the gate. At a later stage in the proceedings Mr. T. H. Campbell Wardlaw hazarded a guess that this was the first depot to be inaugurated by a Licensing Authority driving around the park in a unit of this kind.

Guy Fawkes Night I have seen one or two

ingeniously devised Guy Fawkes bonfires in My time, but none that burned so brightly as the fire they had in Rye, Sussex last week. In a field adjacent to the ancient town, the Council had arranged a whopper. The materials used —what must have amounted to hundreds of wooden pallets—were piled up in pyramid fashion. That's one way of sar-ing the traffic manager the headache of arranging for their return!

Home Truths ' Question time provided some

light relief after Ken Turner's apposite paper to the Institute of Transport in London on Monday dealing with transport policy in the post-Geddes era. In passing he agreed that an entry qualification to the road haulage industry based on a knowledge of transport law, costing and so on was not necessarily the perfect answer.

BRS chief George Gibb added the wry comment that if a potential entrant did understand costing he wouldn't go in for haulage anyway!

Less apposite, I thought, was the BRS chief's question as to why a trader ran his own vehicles when efficient hauliers (no advertising) could give a 24-hour delivery service. What more could the C-licensed vehicle do?

Ken Turner rightly replied that there was no substitute to having one's own vehicles and drivers if absolute control was to be continually assured. The same apparently goes in the passenger field, too. Oddly enough, as we left there seemed to be several chauffeur-driven limousines waiting outside for the exclusive use of professional operators!


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