DEAR
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SIR
• Following your recent Scania roadtest (CM 25 June-1 July), regarding inaccessible adjustment levers on Bostrom's suspension seat as fitted to Scania's G Cab, I would like to make the following observations.
As a major seat supplier to Iveco Ford, Scania, Volvo, Seddon Atkinson, Foden etc, Bostrom is fully aware of the needs to satisfy all market place requirements and where requested, offers leftor righthand controls for left-handdrive or right-hand-drive vehicles.
In the case of Scania Trucks, all engineering specifications are dictated by its Swedish operation, and for some time Bostrom Svenska, our Swedish operation has requested a right-hand-drive release for the UK To date we have had no positive response to this request, although we are told our new V714 air seat is to be released in 1988 with a right-hand version for the UK.
I am sure you appreciate the statement in your recent article regarding Bostrom seats gives a false impression of a company who since its management buyout in August 1984, has gone from strength to strength, by not only offering excellent products, but by also providing attention to detail.
R G Allen UK Sales Manager Bostrom Europe Northampton
GO SOUTH, YOUNG MAN
• Congratulations on your article concerning Lancaster Trucks new facility on which I must also congratulate and wish all the best for the future to Lancasters. However, I take Commercial Motor to task in that you have moved the Borough of Dartford north of the Thames. Obviously this is not so and it is in the County of Kent where Sparshatts of Kent has the main MercedesBenz truck franchise with its equally prestigious premises at Sittingbourne and soon-to-be additional premises at Dartford.
For the record, Lancaster Trucks is situated at Heron Way, West Thurrock, Essex, RM16 1WJ.
I hope Geoff Hadwick doesn't have to visit Lancaster Trucks in Dartford as he'll wear himself out looking for it. Roger Sparshatt Chairman Sparshaits of Kent
• Having spent the best part of my working life in the transport industry on the operational side initially, followed by sixteen years of selling and sales management, I have decided to cancel my order for Commercial Motor and to turn my back on the industry that I have enjoyed working in for so long. The reason for this is that having spent a few years running my own company I decided recently to seek employment as a salesman or sales manager. This was about two years ago, since that time I have attended numerous interviews all of which followed a similar pattern. I was greeted with enthusiasm and told that someone with my experience would be just the person they are looking for.
Unfortunately, this is as far as it went. Nobody has had the courtesy to contact me with justifiable reason for not being appointed. In fact, it was very rare to receive any reply at all.
I am happy to say that I am now employed in a selling position within the computer industry and I am doing very nicely, thank you very much.
I would conclude by saying to all the companies that I had interviews with (and at the risk of sounding conceited), it was your loss.
Finally, thank you for an enjoyable and informative journal and goodbye.
D T Buckley Southend Essex • I would like to write in support of your legal commentator, John Lawton, concerning his overloading comments in the May Legal Bulletin. Having been a fairly recent sufferer at the hands of Mr Hurley's West Yorkshire Standard Department I can only endorse John Lawton's advice of 'tell them nothing'.
I would explain that a weight check near Wetherby last year found one of our draw bar trains overloaded on the drive axle by 13% and on the tractor vehicle as a whole by 8.8%. The GVW was not exceeded and the movement of one pallet from the vehicle to its trailer corrected this terrible overload! The origin of the overload was faulty paper work by their consignor and the lack of a local weighbridge at the pick-up point. A layman might imagine great potential damage to the road surface by this apparently overloaded drive
axle until one sees that the axle was still safely within design limits and the legal requirements of most EEC countries, whose weight limits will no doubt by applied here when the DTp 'bridge weight' mokescreen blows away.
As our case preceded the Dowse judgement at Leeds Crown Court we pleaded guilty but Dowse gives us all some hope surely that where we have no 'moral responsibility' we may well get justice at last in the form of a discharge — surely better than West Yorkshire's 'big brother' caution with its presumption of a permanent black mark against the haulier.
It would be interesting to know how many so-called 'cautions' Mr Hurley's staff has issued against the number of prosecutions undertaken, Until then, I think we should consider West Yorkshire with its reputation for persistent persecution of transient lorry traffic as an authority which deserves no assistance from the haulage industry in its 'empire building' policy. They surely illustrate the ever present danger of individual local government departments taking advantage of the powers of possibly over-wide laws and turning into yet another prosecuting agency: in this case, without the knowledge and expertise that one normally finds with the police and DTp, whose vital efforts must be maintained if we are to reduce the problems caused by the deliberately overloaded vehicle, Persecuted Haulier Name and address supplied