letters
Page 48
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Disappointed? Not us
Has it eVer occurred to you that some people have all the bad luck? Is it just a coincidence?
I raise the matter because a letter {CM December 25, 1970) from a "Disappointed enthusiast" contained a chronicle of woes that this gentleman attributes to the organization and personnel of BRSL, but in which I discern evidence of a petty, unenterprising, and immature attitude.
"Disappointed enthusiast" criticizes BRSL in three ways. First, poor organization; second, that nobody cares; third, that they insist upon traffic office trainees studying for "irrelevant" exams. He implies that he has been "mucked about" and that BRSL's training is "not to be recommended to anyone," being "a do-it-yourself course".
We have nearly finished a heavy haulage training with BRSL, and disagree completely.
So nobody cares. "Learn what you can; it's up to you now." What is wrong with that? That is a challenge. In BRSL we want people who will accept it. This is as much part of the training as the compilation of facts. The company does not spoon-feed people, nor should it. If a man doesn't have the initiative to find out what he needs to know, has he enough to make a successful career in road haulage?
And BRSL is wise to encourage its trainees to take the loT exams. It may be a "specialized and technological age" but let us not
confuse specialization with narrowmindedness. In today's competitive markets, the successful haulier must be prepared to innovate. So it pays to know about the specialized services operated by other people. Further, an loT pass is more than a certificate of knowledge on a certain date. It is proof of the ability to think and learn, which is far more important.
Our disillusioned enthusiast is right about one thing. BRSL is desperately short of "young blood". We reject unsuitable candidates for all that.) To any person sincerely interested in making a career in road haulage and prepared to propel himself, it offers great scope. No firm is perfect and BRSL has its faults, but of all road haulage companies none is paying more attention to training than this one. (And it's salary policies regarding trainees appear to give satisfaction.) Finally,. a genuine attempt to improve one's lot usually takes the form of consultation with one's superiors. It is a novel and unpromising step to whine in the trade Press.
Management Development Course, BRSL, Brom ford Lane, Birmingham.
IS. J. Colvin, Nigel E. Hannaford, B. Flailey, D. Hayhurst, Brian Robinson. K. Fox, David N. Macleod, Peter S. Kerr. B. G. Kite. P. M. Humphreys, P. Knowles. J. Barrett, Doug{as W. Thomas, D. Howell, A. R. W. 'Archer, Alan D. Buckle.)
The Minister for Transport Industries may well have employed amenity-type phrases when rejecting the industry's claim for 44-ton juggernauts but in a democracy, it is but fair that the wishes of the majority should prevail over minority interests however powerful they may be.
The heavy vehicle industry has enjoyed a long run. It had to end sooner or later and we welcome the new trend. To date the Ministry had obsequiously licked the boots of manufacturers and operators alike bending over backwards to give them not only what they wanted but far more, as in the case of the ridiculously permissive noise levels of 1968 which apprehended only 12 offenders in 2 years.
No thought was spared for the feelings of the captive audience still forced to listen to the noisy results, Had the Government adopted the Society's proposals eight years ago that all heavy loads be carried on the railways using small trucks to collect and deliver from railheads, much noise nuisance would have been avoided, hundreds of millions of pounds would have been saved on road repairs (it is said that a heavy lorry causes 160 times more damage than a car). The railways would be making a vast profit instead of a huge loss and the industry would be able to export all its monsters and win Queen's Awards. Although how long people in other countries will tolerate this invasion of their privacy is anybody's guess.
It seems to me that this craze for bigness for its own sake is a disease paralleled only by that suffered by the Pyramid builders who used slave labour for their grandiose ideas. True our modern pharaohs pay union rates to their workers but to the public slaves whose environment they ruin they pay no more than did their predecessors.
Let us hope the new Government's physic will cure the disease!
JOHN CONNELL, Chairman, Noise Abatement Society, London W1.