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WHAT THEN?

16th March 1926, Page 10
16th March 1926
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Page 10, 16th March 1926 — WHAT THEN?
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Thoughts and Ideas Arising Out of Many Reminiscences of the Days When this Journal was Young.

By Edward S. Shrapnell-Smith, C.B.E., M.Inst.T. (Editor of "The Commercial Motor" During the Years 1905-1917).

T WELL recollect my preliminary conversations 1 towards the end of 1904, on his initiative, with Mr. Edmund Dangerfield, anent his intention to bring out a weekly journal devoted wholly to • the utility branches of road motoring.

It was explained to me that secrecy was essential, and, although I had agreed within a very few weeks to accept the responsibility of editing the first paper of its class, a public announcement was not made until January 31st, 1905. I came to my new work with nine years of pioneering experience to my credit, and this was rapidly enlarged.

No. 1 was published on March 16th, 1905, its appear ance practically coinciding with the coming into force of the Heavy Motor Car Order, 1904, under the terms of which statutory document commercial motors for the first time enjoyed the benefits and suffered the restrictions of a series of new regulations. The increase of maximum unladen weights from three tons to five tons was the outstanding change in the law at this time.

Insurance Rates.

The pioneering of combined third-party and damageby-collision risks was undertaken by the Law Accident and the Royal Exchange. By a strange coincidence, Mr. Frederick Thoresby, who in 1917 saw the Car and General win the backing of the Royal Exchange, was at that time responsible for the original scales of the Law Accident. They began, in my early days, at £3 3s. a year for a steam wagon. This did not last long.

Totals of Commercial Motors.

When I addressed the members of the Automobile Club on November 5th, 1903, under the chairmanship of Sir John I. Thornycroft, F.R.S., there were comparatively few commercial motors in use. By midMarch, 1905, there were fewer-than 2,000 heavy motor vehicles, and probably fewer than 4,000 in all of motor vehicles of all sizes used for trade and utility purposes.

Those were days of faith and hope as to the future, but few of us, if any, anticipated corresponding figures by 1926 in excess of 330,000 vehicles. Yet that is to-day's position.

London's Motorbuses.

Mr. H. G. Burford, with his Milnes-Daimler, sold to Tillings in 1904, had pioneered the modern era of motorization of London's omnibus services. There had been earlier attempts, but this one connoted achievement. Slowly, but surely, L.G.O.C. stock dropped, from its one-time high pinnacle of -FM, to £17 in 1910. Then, largely thanks to Iden, Green and Searle, it mounted to £380 in 1912, Those were hectic days, the culminating transfer to London Underground interests being the literal outcome of advocacy in The Commercial Motor of the superiority of surface to underground financial returns. Sir Edgar Speyer saw it, 'and Mr. Albert Stanley (as Lord Ashfield then was) was quick to grasp that co-operative pooling lay in the not-far-distant future as the ultimate solution.

The country bus and the char-it-bancs, side by side with London progress, put out tentative feelers in country areas. Prior to No. 1 of The Commercial Motor, a nine-seater in a rural area had been a relative monster. No man pinned his faith to the provinces more than Sidney garcke, now chairman of the British Automobile Traction Co., Ltd., and many were our

c4 exchanges of view. The country work was less spectacular than that in the Metropolis. Isolation from the concentrated public gaze and of the just interest of the Press had its advantages, the while lessons were absorbed. The pioneers of country services both gained and suffered by reason of London's prominence and preeminence. Too much was pushed at them which did not apply. To-day, happily, their own models and practices are established. Alas too, their own licensing and other troubles.

Motor Fuels.

Then, and for some years afterwards, we enjoyed cheap and good petrol. Supply kept a bit ahead of demand and competition was not cabined by conference. Petrol had to be good. Carburation and ignition were intolerant of that which had a laggard end-point. It was distribution that was inferior. The cost of universal distribution was not appreciated, but it was tackled with a will. Many of our higher prices nowadays are due to the incidence of labour and other transport charges, both internal and oceanic, more than to any suggestion of better quality. But, and, it is a large reservation, bad not the field of supply been widened by discoveries of large petroleum deposits and by effective cracking processes, the 9d. or 10d. a gallon of 1905 must have been quadrupled by 1926.

Nothing has served the commercial-motor owner so well as petrol, nor enabled him to pay his way as it has done, unless it be rubber tyres. Without this commodity (as he was in part during 1917 and 1918) his plight becomes a sad one indeed. To-day, without question, there are better chances of using paraffin than there were, so long as there is no interference with its shipment to this country.

Tyres the Saving Element.

The fashion is, just now, to call the rubber people by hasty names. Why, exactly, I cannot understand. My first set of solids in 1902, on a one-tonner, worked out at 10d. a mile run. In 1905, for a three-tonner, they cost about 4d. a mile run.

Had there not been continuous and progressive improvements in tyre manufacture, alike in respect" of pneumatics and solids, commercial motoring must have cut a sorry figure ere this. Nothing could have saved it, had rubber tyres failed it I hesitate to place a figure on the cost of research to the Dunlop Co. alone, and here we are concerned not merely with outlays upon salaries and experimental apparatus, but with enormous sacrifices of plant and material from time to time. Owners at large are reaping the benefit.

The rubber tyre, in the past of the solid varieties and quite recently of the pneumatic, has been the saving element of our industry On the cost side. It has permitted improved performance ever since 1905, and has been amongst the prime causes of dividends or earnings.

Repairs and Overhauls.

Time was, 21 and fewer years back, when facilities for either running or periodic repairs were crude or non-existent. To change a wheel was a big job—even a nightmare. Brakes were a make-believe. Tyres came off when they should not; the solid-band tyre was unknown. Those who lightly handle hydraulic tyre-presses little dream of the relief they brought. Breakdown equipment was limited to a tow rope.

Genuine repair shops were few and far between. .11akers of vehicles had no branch depots. Genuine standardization and sensible unit construction were more talk-ed about than observed until, shall it be suggested, as late as 1910? An annual overhaul, as we know it in 1926, was at once a necessity and an impossibility.

The 'Speeding-up has been marvellous. Progressive improvements in organization to deliver spare parts furnish great testimony to the enterprise of manufacturers. Once the need was realized and the responsiveness of owners became apparent, definite systems became almost general.

Ford's service methods really shook things up all round from 1911 onwards. The war broadened ideas; it taught people to be less afraid of the large scale and the long. vi4w. Post-war competition, too, has been of real advantage from many . angles. Resources are increasingly evident in Service provision to keep customers'. vehicles on the road.

Steam Still Esteemed.

The British steam wagon in 1905 was as much to the fore and in possession in -Great Britain as was then the electric truck in the United States. It was heavier than many thought necessary, but Some of the lighter types had paid the penalty of that inevitable overloading which seems to be inseparable from numerous branches of haulage contracting. The controversy between protagonists of loco-type and vertical boilers was in full blast. Slowly the vertical boiler has come into its own with buyers, despite those staunch adherents of the horizontal, who still do good business. The struggle almost depended on the boiler alone, until the end of thce-war. Other circumstances and factors have been of effect since 1918. Theratio of output of steamers with vertical boilers to those of the older types grows year by year,. and it will. Sentinels, over the basic designs for which the late D. H. Simpson collaborated with Stephen Alley so far back as 1901, have been the 'chief contributors to this remarkable cliange-over.

The case for steam was, originally, flexibility coupled

with solidify. Internal combustion,thanks to scores of detail improvements in engines and transmissions, crept up. The taew challenge was accepted, and steam, not yet at its zenith, goes on. Its all-British characteristics of material, labour and fuel employed are in harmony with the trend of the times, and those who fancied that steam was " done " are silenced. It will go farther, conquer fresh fields, and disclose additional refinements.

Petrol Vehicles Dominant.

Then (in 1905) the petrol vehicle was in the nursery. There were grave doubts that it would ever deal with five-ton loads. Speed-changing was comparable, all too often, with buck-jumping. The utmost perseverance and tenacity, coupled with generous assimilation and development of suitable points from car engineering practice, have been essential to success —to the dominant position reached and held by petrol vehicles. One does not seek to deny this.

Cradled as I was in commercial motoring as "a steam man" from 1896 to 1905, the time came when, on taking the editorial chair of The Commercial Motor I at once broadcast the scope for both. If my acknowledgments to steam in this short anniversary article have been considerable, they have not been more than steam deserves, but to-day's ratio of steam-driven to petroldriven commercial motors in Great Britain is, roughly, as 1 to 22. Comment is superfluous, except that for loads of five tons and upwards it is more like 1.5 to 1. The six-wheeled petrol wagon, of which Rommel' was the pioneer, may enable internal combustion to catch up. We shall see.

Roads.

Limestone macadam and flint roads were the bane of commercial motoring in 1905. There was, possibly, reciprocal antipathy. I had broken up the PrestonBlackburn road with steel-tyred (5 ins, wide only) Leyland steam wagons in 1902 in a few months. It was, I . claimed, a public service to do so. The limestone

metalling was quite unsuitable. at the sante period, the local grit setts forming the tramway track on the Prescot-St. Helens (Lancs.) road "went West." A progressive county council, guided by the late Sir Harcourt E. Clare, their clerk, had these main highways put right at no expense to road transport. They acted in the national interest, and must have saved the ratepayers and tramways -company, respectively, thousands of pounds by their intelligent and timely action. The tramways people didnot think so when they received the order to relay.

One scraps an out-of-date tool in an engineering shop. Let this sound course be extended, I have always maintained, to roads and bridges. There is money in it for the ratepayer, the taxpayer, the trader, the agriculturist and the motor owner. In short, it is true economy for the community.

Policy and Staff.

One does not seek to be reminiscent, beyond a point, in these days of looking ahead rather than backwards, but it may not be out of place to refer briefly to others who were associated with the founding of this journal, its pioneering work, its growth of circulation at home and overseas, and its enterprise withal.

No. 1 (of which a facsimile reproduction was printed four weeks ago) spoke then, again, for itself. Later issues largely depended for their contents upon my associates and colleagues, Charles E. Esse (formerly engineer to the Road Carrying Co., Ltd., in the North), Ernest Legh, of Glasgow; Geo. '417 . Watson (formerly chief draughtsmau to Thornycrofts), and Arthur W. Windsor (formerly on the engineering staff of Wolseleys, and engineer -to the London General Cimnirms Co.). G. Mackenzie Junner and W. A. Vacher joined later. They all helped to build up the reputation of the text pages the while J. A. Jackson pulled his not inconsiderable weight on the business side.

The present Editor completes, on the very day that c5

this -birthday number appears, thirty years of service with Temple Press Ltd. in an editorial capacity, so that when he came into the editorial chair in July, 1917, continuity of policy and the upholding of Temple Press traditions were assured.

How we, in common with the industry, lived through the " slump " of 1907-1909 might well fill a volume-in some respects a sad one ! The brunt of it fell upon the management rather than upon the editorial side. It was, however, going through that " mill " which really made the industry and The Commercial Motor ready for the very big share which they took in rendering possible the establishment and maintenance of the R.A.S.C., M.T., and the continued turning of the wheels of industry during the Great War.

The Commercial Motor Users Association.

Already, in March, 1905, the Commercial Motor Users 'Association (then the Motor Van and Wagon Users Association) had been established some 16 months. I carried, as its first hon. treasurer, a bag none too well filled at the outset.

Devious and numerous have been the efforts, both interested and disinterested, to establish other national bodies with like aspirations and objects. Apart from national bodies with which it forks in close touch, such as the London and Provincial Omnibus Owners Association, these Rave, without exception, come to naught. The C.M.U.A. has lived through all the ups and downs, backed wholeheartedly by The Commercial Motor, and has since 1920 had H.M. the King as its patron and a 52-county membership roll. Scotland now has its own C.M.U.A.

There can be no better note on which to close than this : What next, in taxation? What, then, if it is abnormal, harsh, penal or vindictive? To whom can owners look for action, guidance and a concerted programme? I say—to this Association.

It will be a sorry day for owners if they find their taxation for vehicles of 2i tons and upwards increased before they have moved a hand to write a cheque to help resistance. Educational and publicity work Cannot be done without money. Why be late? I am confident my successor in the Editor's chair will back me up in this admonition and advice—

JOIN THE C.M.I.T.A.—NOW

—by remitting £2 12s. (Id. (entrance fee and normal subscriptiou—three vehicles or less--:for 12 months from date of receipt) to Mr. F. G. BristOw, F.C.I.S., general secretary, the c.M.U.A., 50, Pall Mall, S.W.1. It will be money well spent and a simple act of duty on the part of any owner in his own business interest. It is an incorporated body with limited liability. I have the honour of being its president.

Taxation.

We lived an easy life in those early days so far as direct taxation went. Registration numbers were not carried until January 1st, 1904, and annual taxation was never more than the £1 paid on original registration, until January 1st, 1911. Petrol vehicles then came in for lid, a gallon net of petrol tax. Steam, the home production, was again favoured by exemption, bar the

paid once only (on registration) until January 1st, 1921. All hackney carriages paid local taxation licences up to £3 3s. per annum, according to weight, until this date. These fees then merged into the new vehicle taxes.

Space cannot be occupied by a recital of the current schedules. They are known only too well to all interested persons, who are now on the alert—or, at least, one hopes they are'—as to Mr. Churchill's intentions. He has not yet shown his hand, and it may be a bad one for us. Certain it is that a stern opposition must be set against any suggestion to increase the impost upon commercial motors, whether in relief of private vehicle taxation or for the purposes of obtaining an increase in revenue.


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