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Backing for Truck Week
Page 29
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CONGRATULATIONS on the idea of National Truck Week, but why has it taken so long for someone to stand up for the industry? I have been reading Commercial Motor for 53 years and in recent times! have found that it focuses too much on the negative aspects of the industry. It's high time that the public was made aware of the vital role that road haulage plays in their everyday lives.
This mindless anti-truck attitude that most people have has been the fashion for as long as I can remember and it all arises from ignorance. So get out there and promote the industry in a positive light!
Years ago, and no doubt it is still true today, truck driving demanded a variety of skills — you needed a good command of maths and physics just to load a lorry safely, not to mention strength and agility. You also needed to be skilled in navigating, processing paperwork and sorting out minor repairs. All this and the average motorist still sees a professional lorry driver as a thick, Yorkie-munching Neanderthal. That's rich, when you think that most motorists have to call the AA out to change a wheel!
As a good friend of mine who has been in haulage all his life says, if only all haulage firms took their annual holiday at once, so that everything closed down for couple of weeks, it would soon make folk realise the importance of road transport. They'd be doing nothing illegal and, in a way,they'd be giving all these whingeing anti-lorry politicians and the public exactly what they want — a world without trucks.
When the shops were empty and there was no petrol to run their cars they might change their tune.
Peter J Davies Flitwick, Beds