Vic Ashby
Page 68
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• Driving, operating and maintaining artics carrying aircraft components over the years have given Victor William Ashby an insight into articulation that is uncluttered by the profit-earning incentive.
On the way to being appointed transport manager of Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd, Coventry, 14 months ago after a five-year term as transport superintendent, he drove Queen Marys and other artics for Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Ltd from 1946 to 1956, when he won Class H in the LDoY eliminating contest in Coventry; later he came fourth in a Contest in which he was invited to take part in Paris.
He started with Armstrong Whitworth in 1938 driving a light delivery van, and as sergeant mechanic in the Royal Armoured Corps during the war he drove all types of vehicles, including artics, as well as being responsible for vehicle maintenance.
In his capacity as chairman of the FTA Coventry area, he is concerned with all aspects of maintenance and with many problems of articulation that do not strictly relate to the type of fleet he operates. Because his vehicles carry fragile and bulky high-cost aircraft equipment, including complete fuselages, the cost of transport is secondary to providing a service that is as reliable and accident free as it is possible to make it. Coventry is one of eight depots of Hawker Siddeley, and the combined fleet comprises some 50 artics as well as a number of rigids and between them they carry a large proportion of the aircraft parts produced in this country, mainly on inter-depot work.
So Vic and his fellow transport managers are in the envious position of being authorized to apply premium maintenance to vehicles carrying premium loads. His drivers and mechanics are in the premium class too in that they are veterans who generally stay until they reach retiring age, and Vic looks forward to the time when an increasing number of operators has the benefit of employing a staff of like calibre. In his first job he was a butcher's boy delivering premium class meat and the concept of quality has remained with him. He does not make use of the FTA maintenance scheme because his vehicles tend to be over-serviced anyway. He considers that the majority of own-account non-users would be well advised to take advantage of it.
Vic is 52, has a wife who is interested in his job, a son of 10 who could be later on and three girls with ages ranging up to 17. He is quietly boastful that his is a very close family that does everything together and that he doesn't need a hobby. But he does derive pleasure from making things grow in the
garden. P.B.