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What every brewer wants
Page 51
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Your report in the issue of March 28 relating to "Our Ideal Vehicles " put forward by the Brewery Transport Advisory Committee raised a rueful smile.
The firm for which I was working, in about 1948 or so, had the bright idea that, since brewers' operations were very similar and they were all handling the same commodity in terms of crate sizes, barrel sizes, etc, a standard brewers' vehicle body should find great favour. I, and most of my colleagues, had not been long returned from our war-time service and, I suppose, it was rather unrealistic to think that we were going to set the brewers' world to rights any more than the world at large.
However, we developed what we thought was the perfect brewers' truck body, together with the necessary skids and the sack trucks and the fenders and the stowages and all the bits and pieces gleaned from our conversations with various brewers and the experience, up to that date, of actually building several types of bodies for various brewery companies.
It fell to my lot to demonstrate this vehicle. I loaded it with barrels and all the various brewers' appurtenances, kindly supplied by our friendly neighbourhood brewer. I took a lot of lessons in the handling of the equipment and familiarised myself with the brewers' terminology, etc, and I set off to sell.
The most that can be said for this effort is that, although I had seen a lot of the world whilst in the Royal Navy, for the first time I had the opportunity to see a lot of England.
As for selling standardised brewers' bodies, however, as the saying now is "No way." I had overlooked the fact that each and every brewery transport manager was possessed of his own secret knowledge of problems applicable to his own particular operation, but from which no other brewery manager throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom suffered.
To mention to one manager any other manager by name was sufficient to evoke the beginnings of, whilst not quite sneer, certainly not a smile. To go further and say that another particular manager thought that our standardised body was a good idea had the same results as if I had been the well known guardsman who dropped his rifle.
I notice in the specification of the " ideal vehicle " put forward there was no mention of shafts or horse brasses. More's the pity, because I now know that the individuality of the brewery transport manager was matched only by the individuality of his colleague, the brewer. The lorries from brewery to brewery might have been different but then so, thank heaven, was the beer ! It is only to be expected, I suppose, that the brewer having conceded his individuality totally, it could not be long before the brewery transport manager followed suit!
D. W. H. FREER, Executive Director, Lex Tillotson, Totton, Hants.