Bird's Eye
Page 65
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ViewBY THE HAWK
Stores Treble
TT SOUNDED like a leg-pull. The man at the other end of the line 1said: "I'm speaking from the stores department of the North Western Road Car Co. Ltd., Charles Street, Stockport. And I thought you might be interested to know that 10 blokes here earned £14,661 between them this week".
"Intriguing", I said. "Overtime?"
The caller laughed mockingly. "I'll prove it", he said. And did. The Pools, of course: Littlewoods Treble Chance—and an outlay of lls. 3d.
Sabre point
SSABRE, the London-based vehicle repairs equipment group, said this week that it welcomed the PIB findings (CM last week) concerning repair costs and claimed that only by separating the totally different activities of selling vehicles and servicing them could garages achieve viability.
Added SABRE: "There is a good analogy. When a man buys a new suit, he goes to a tailor—or perhaps a specialist 'off-the-peg' shop. But he does not take his suit back there to be pressed and cleaned; he sends it to a cleaners. Tailors make their money on selling suits, cleaners on cleaning them--and the efficient cleaner has an efficient costing system."
Floored!
WITH pained surprise, the British Industrial Floor Machine Association discovers that "many people vitally concerned with the cleaning and maintenance of buildings of all kinds do not know of the many machines available, the many purposes to which they can be put and the money they save".
So BIFMA secretary R. H.13urdon-Cooper acts. Result: BIFMA will demonstrate industrial floor machines "wherever an adequate audience can be arranged". (Write to 15 Tooks Court, Cursitor Street, London, EC4, or 'phone 01-242 7161.)
Starring Role
T HEAR that a 1908 Leyland X—original cost, £665; present-1day value, £3,000—is being groomed for stardom: Granada TV is featuring it in a period play later this year.
The 59-year-old goods vehicle, one of a number sold to Carter Patterson, was bought back by Leyland in 1932 after clocking 379,873 miles—and restored by apprentices. Last week the Chorley Round Table borrowed it as an attraction for the Chorley Carnival.
Another Club
TSSUE NUMBER ONE of a new club bulletin gets off the mark with an impressive list of customers for the product it represents. I refer to the Kingpin, the journal of the Hope anti-jackknife drivers' club, just set up by Fred Hope's company. Significant, perhaps, that most of the big users named are C-licensees, and most of the others are tanker people.
If you want to get in touch, write to 20, New Road, Datchet, Berks.
Deflation
HERE'S proof that it can and does happen! The scene: a bridge at (appropriately named) Trerulefoot, Cornwall. Clearance height: 15ft 3in.
And facing the bridge—a Reeves Ltd., Totnes, artic driven by B. Green, escorted by PC Cyril Hocking of Saltash and carrying a 4211-long wooden bridge. Height of the load: 1511 9in.
The Green-Hocking solution? Yes, you've guessed it: they deflated the tyres—and squeezed under.
Potential
THE NEWS (CM, last week) that Tate and Lyle haulage subsidiary Silver Roadways Ltd. has joined the Unit Loads Ltd. container-operation set-up is hardly surprising. For Tate and Lyle —world's largest sugar-refining company—is firmly (and factually) convinced that road haulage of containers for short to medium distances "will always hold an advantage over rail transport because of flexibility".
The Unit Load partners, incidentally, have retained Knight Wegenstein, the international management consultants, to help with the development of marketing and operations aimed at expansion. Tate and Lyle estimates that less than 15 per cent of potential containerizable UK imports and exports are at present carried by containers.
Memo To . .
The Hawk.
From: P. A. C. Brockington, AMIMechE, DLC(Hons), Technical Department, COMMERCIAL MOTOR, Perry Barr, Birmingham.
Subject: Bodywork.
The design committee of Perry Barr Shopping Centre, assisted by Aston Villa football team, has awarded the "crown" for streamline proficiency to Patricia Smith (my secretary). Picture and caption attached.