Contract-A . Parties
Page 35
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Called Before LA.
THE Metropolitan Licensing Authority, Mr. D. I. R. Muir, after being given assurances on behalf of a customer company that they would employ a haulier for at least a year and would pay him the guaranteed minimum specified in the contract, granted a contract A licence to Breezecraft, Ltd.. of London, last week.
He had taken the unusual course of calling the applicant before him to enable him to question the contract customer, F. E. Charman and Co., who, during the past three years, had entered into 47 contracts with different hauliers, no fewer than 26 of which had been surrendered.
Questioning Mr. D. Dearlove, a representative of Charman's, about the surrender of 18 contract A licences before the expiry of one year, Mr. Muir asked: "How am I to be satisfied that this present contract is likely to last forat least a year?" He was told that the reason why so many contracts had been surrendered was because the hauliers-unbeknown to Charman'sl—were not financially stable, and after operating for a short period finance companies had ' repossessed the vehicles.
Asking if inquiries had been made before the contracts were entered into, Mr. Muir was told that only recently, having realized that there was a possibility of hauliers being financially unstable, had the company made inquiries, when they knew that a vehicle
was subject to a hire-purchase agreement.
Mr. Muir: "Have you done anything about suing the hauliers?" Mr. Dearlove: "No. What can you do; they have no money."
Mr. Muir said that he accepted the company's explanation.
"The situation is very serious. The record of your company is very bad. I really must ask you, in future, if you are entering into a contract, that you should take the greatest care to see that the people you are dealing with are able to carry through the terms of their contract," he concluded.
TRAILER AGREEMENT A N agreement for reciprocal distribution, co-operation in development and construction, and common representation has been signed by the French Traitor and German Blumhardt trailer manufacturing concerns.