BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Page 26
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BY THE HAWK
• Brother Stephen Geddes who gave up a haulage business, a luxury home and a Jaguar XIS for a life of chastity and austerity as a monk (Bird's Eye View: CM 19-25 Dec), has hit the road in a bid to save his abbey.
The 44-year-old Benedictine is touring schools and universities in an attempt to recruit young men to Fort Augustus Abbey on Loch Ness-side.
He admits it is difficult competing against high-powered managers offering big salaries and trappings of success, but so far his religious roadshow has signed-up nine would-be brothers, who will sample monastery life before deciding whether to take their vows.
• The Hawk was in the Flemish town of Kortrijk last week (place dropper) attending the Trailer '87 trade fair. The exhibition halls there are well known to British bus and coach operators. The trailer show, however, held in alternate years in the same place, aimed at professional road hauliers, seems almost unknown on this side of the Channel.
There were many French, German and Dutch visitors to Trailer '87 as well as the native Belgians, but I only met two other British visitors during the two days I spent there.
The show is unusual in not being dominated by truck manufacturers. As the name implies, the emphasis is on trailers, semi-trailers and bodywork, though components and accessories were also well represented.
Many computer applications to road haulage were on display. I was especially impressed by the Belgian equivalent of the Cargofax system which sadly failed to take off in this country. The Belgian version has 300 subscribers, and breaks even financially, despite the extra expense of having to be bilingual in French and Flemish.
One novel touch is that it links into the Belgian equivalent of IRFO — a haulier needing a permit keys in his demand and gets back an instant "yes" or (more rarely) "no". • A wine merchant has won its fight for compensation for 100 cases of vintage spirits that mysteriously vanished en route between Cognac, France and Britain.
A High Court Judge concluded the bottles had been • Eminox certainly has something to boast about. The exhaust stack manufacturer has brought my attention to a particularly good little story.
It's a rare thing to see the exhaust still in good condition when the vehicle is scrapped. This happened at Anglo Danish Food Transport of Grimsby last month.
Seven years ago Anglo fitted a stainless steel exhaust stack to a now-retired lorry. The firm was so pleased with the stack that they have removed it and fitted it to another truck still in service! stolen — but when, where, or how he could not say.
Liqueur, Cognac, and Armagnac dating back to 1940 and worth an estimated 27,000 was loaded into a sealed trailer in Cognac by a French subsiduary of City Vintages Ltd, London, in December, 1982.
It was shipped via Le Havre and Portsmouth to a warehouse in Exeter, by SCAC Transport International of Dieppe and its British subsidiary SCAC (UK) Ltd.
The container arrived with the security cord around it still sealed, but with about a sixth of the load missing.
The vintners sued SCAC for the loss — but the transporter claimed it had either never been loaded or had been lost at the warehouse.
Mr Justice Steyn ruled that the crates had probably been lost in France. Beyond that he left the mystery unsolved.
"I'm not in a position to make a positive finding as to what exactly happened during that period. It's sufficient for the present purposes that I find it proved on balance that the goods were lost in transit."
He ordered SCAC to pay 25,750 to City Vintages. • The RHA and FTA will no doubt end the year very pleased with themselves at both having got the Princess Royal as guest of honour at their respective annual dinners. But what next?
The professional haulage association in the Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders used to be called "Syndicaat der Autocarnionititbaters van Vlaanderen" (Association of Road Haulers of Flanders), normally abbreviated to SAV. On its 50th anniversary last year, however, the association applied to King Baudouin for permission to add the word "Royal" to its title.
This honour was duly granted, but there was one unfortunate side effect — it lengthened the association's name in Flemish to 12 words containing 81 letters, mercifully the initials SAY are still used.
So any reader at a meeting with either Freddie Plaskett or Garry Turvey should study any doodles they may make. They just might be the first drafts of logos round the letters "RRHA" and "RFTA" or, after ths week's news, the RRHFTA?.
• To mark 40 years of Land Rover production, Land Rover Parts and Equipment is producing a celebratory calendar which never stood a chance in the tacky calendar competition — much too sensible.
The twelve sheet 1988 calendar charts the evolution of the Land Rover marque with pictures of vehicles from 1948 to the present day. It also contains a resume of major technical advances during that period.
Priced at 25.50, the calendar is available from Land Rover dealers during December.