Out and Home. By " The Extractor."
Page 14
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The Agent's Status. One Notes that-My Steel-rubber Treads.
Mr. Joseph Stafford, of the M.T.A., and formerly the Secretary of the Agents' Section of the S.M.M.T., is nothing if not an enthusiast, He is certainly an interesting person to meet. His point of view, his atmosphere, his accent are such a change, and if, at the back of your mind, you possess some subtle intention of acquiring information from him, the chances are that you will quickly bear resemblance to those who go out for wool and themselves come home shorn. There was something I wanted to ask him at a chance meeting a few evenings ago, but the sight of me inspired him to deliver an essay on " Should agents handle commercial motors? Why not?" He put a good case forward for the agent, but it was not proven that agents had done much, with one or two notable exceptions, for the advancement of the business vehicle in the past. If the agent is to come into the business-vehicle side of the business, as he has undoubtedly on the pleasure side, he must do some spade work. At the moment, with the existing organizations of the larger firms. I do not see where there is a foothold for him, but I think it will be useful and interesting to win readers to the agent's point of view, and Mr. Stafford has agreed to
write me a letter for publication on this topic.
Some odd items of information which reach me are: (1) That the Saurer commercial vehicle holds the sway in Brazil, to the exclusion of almost every other make. (2) That, Mr. Searle is now in Canada in the interests of the Daimler
agrimotor. LHis departure was mentioned in our issue for the 20th ult. —BD.] Nothing is left to chance with the Daimler Company. It, is in the large tracts of land where large agrimotors are destined to be used mostly, and it is important, therefore, to observe carefully the requirements. (3) That Commercial Cars, Ltd., is engaged on an agrimotor which has passed the experimental stage and will be ready for sale before the year is out. It is not the intention of the Commer Car people to offer it for sale in this country ; its field of influence will be overseas, and I have reason to believe that already several orders have been received. (4) That the competition of America in commercial vehicles is hardly felt at, all in our dominions overseas. They have not got down to the right
models yet. They are too unstable, they change their types and models with every wind that blows, hut sooner or later we shall have a serious problem to face with their light vans which are likely to be dumped here in large numbers.
" We are not superstitious but we believe in signs " : thus runs the clever advertisement of a signwriter up in Yorkshire. I am not superstitious, but when a friend, who was accompanying me on a motor ,run last week-end, wanted to know all about my tires, and if I had had any punctures, I replied in the negative, and one hand quietly left the xylonite steering-wheel to find some wood on the body of the car. I begged him not to talk about it, but he was persistent, and the Wood-Milne tire people would have blushed if they had heard my high praise of their tires. These are, perhaps, early days, but I have driven them 1600 miles, and only two of the tires have had a pump near them, only on one occasion, and only a trifle to bring the tires to the requisite pressure. I have had every kind of road surface, good, bad, and very bad; a studded cover on the " off " hind wheel seems to have checkmated sideslip, and so I have not had a moment's uneasiness over tires. I do hope by this admission that I have not broken the spell.