bird's eye view by the Hawk
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• Way of the world
Join the Navy and see the world? Not much of a navy to do it with now, at least in quantity, but perhaps road transport is going to take its place: not only through the opening up of far more distant routes for the international driver, but through more companies crossing national frontiers to set up businesses.
It's been going on for a long time, as I'm reminded by the August issue of News Of United, published by the United Transport group, in which is featured Arthur Rees Walters' retirement as chief executive of UTO's East African operations.
Perhaps having a main office in Chepstow, Mon, has something to do with it, but many of United's overseas men have come from Wales, and Mr Walters' career is almost a textbook example of this: He entered transport in 1931 when he joined United Welsh as a young accountant, served there until the war and he commanded a road transport unit and became a Lt Col. had a spell with Red and White Services, went into the Road Haulage Executive when R and W were taken over by BTC, and then in 1952 was offered a United Transport Overseas post in Kenya.
After that he had increasingly senior UTO jobs in England or Africa, culminating in his chief exec post in Nairobi.
• The right mix
This sort of varied transport life has been mainly the preserve of passenger transport men — although UTO, for instance, has freight as well as psv companies abroad — but in Europe in particular, and perhaps farther east, too, UK haulage companies will be needing managers from home to run, or keep an eye on, their developments.
UTO and TDG have long had Continental subsidiaries, and now we're seeing the NFC and others buying into companies or setting up working arrangements over there.
The pattern seems to be to employ local transport men in the marketing and traffic office jobs where their first-hand experience of methods and attitudes is invaluable, and to have a British accountant or chief executive from the home company, at least in the formative stages.
It's a process which will work both ways, of course, so UK hauliers may increasingly find their goods traffic men being sought by companies setting up over here.
Recently an Englishman who'd spent lot of time in road transport on the Continent volunteered to me the opinion that the Dutch were a marvellous people to have working for you, but terrible people to work for. Now sit back and wait for the storm to break over my innocent head.
• Waxing furious?
Do you feel like a pawn in the world oil game? That's just what we are, it seems, and to judge from comments at the press conference of the Motor and Petroleum Companies BTC (reported in CM September 7) the price we'll pay for petrol or diesel fuel in the near future could depend on the level of discord between Col Gadafy of Libya and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.
Interesting points that arose at the conference included the possibility of using residual oil as a diesel fuel. This distillate is about 38 per cent of crude oil and it's used in marine diesels and furnaces. It could be redistilled to make road vehicle fuel if the very high cost of the process were justified — for example, by shortages resulting from the oily politics, which is where the pawn bit comes in again.
Anyway, we're likely to see a new, lower grade of diesel introduced throughout Europe next year, as a result of widening the distillation, band for diesel fuels in the refineries to get more dery out of the same amount of crude. It has a basically greater tendency to waxing (remember the terrible winter of 1963 when operators were adding petrol or — illegally — paraffin to dery to get waxed-up vehicles moving?) but MIRA has arranged a seminar in November to look at the technical problems, so makers and operators should have time to plan ahead for this. Watch out for a report of the seminar in CM.
• The spark that cheers
Assistance of another sort is offered on the hard-pressed technical front this week — but not for the experts so much as the ordinary chaps like me to whom all things electrical are more mysterious than the movement of the stars.
Give me a mechanical problem and I can worry my way through it; let something electrical happen and I'm reduced to the helplessness of the character in a Brockbank cartoon who, sitting terrified in a stalled vehicle, had written on the inside of the windscreen: "Help! There has been a blue flash." Blue flashes become beacons of diagnosis with the arrival of Know about car electrics just published by the AA at 40p. It's apparently for members only, but if you're not a member it's an odds-on chance that you know one of the five million who are.
This is not a book for your autoelectrical expert or your heavy diesel mechanic; but for petrol vehicle fitters — especially on light vans — it provides a wonderfully clear and plainly illustrated guide to electrical systems, with enough theory to justify the practical explanations.
I suspect it's the sort of little book that could save owner-driver vanmen quite a few pounds, especially in the winter.
• Southern prospect
Readers in the North who know Arthur Slater and his pristine fleet of white Fodens will also know that his beautiful yacht, "Prospect of Whitby", is in the running for the Southern Cross series of races being staged round Australia in December.
Already the genial Arthur and his yacht have won the Britannia Cup at Cowes, and he finished as the best placed British boat in three long-distance races, the Fastnet, the Channel race and the Dinard.
Arthur admits to having a lucky mascot which he always takes with him when the going is rough; it is a tiny model of a rhinoceros, in silver, given to him by a Malton businessman and admirer, Sam Ellicott.