Feeding the knights
Page 30
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Why did lorry drivers have to wait for an imaginative commercial undertaking to provide them with a guide to good eating at reasonable prices? The Crane Fruehauf Egon Ronay Guide to Transport Cafes published last week at 35p (CM July 12) is a first-class piece of work, but long overdue. I would agree with Jack Jones' comment in the foreword: "This publication is very timely indeed. At long last people who really matter in industry are receiving VIP treatment." But what, pray, has stopped the TGWU or the RHA — or both together — from showing the initiative to produce just such a publication?
The only snag about such a book is that it will fall into the hands of motorists who at holiday times may pack out these recommended establishments — which is good (but casual and seasonal) business for the cafes but may delay the lorry men. Still, nobody could be blamed for following the CF/ Egon Ronay trail — I'm putting a copy in my car. Isn't the joint and two veg in clean surroundings for 28p just the meal we're all looking for?
Coming clean
On the other hand I hear that the Holbeach Anglia Motel, listed in the Egon Ronay guide, is 'banning lorry drivers because, according to proprietor (and ex driver's mate) Harold Payne, their habits are unacceptable. He says they walked in in greasy boots, sprawled across good chairs in dirty boiler suits and failed to wash before eating. They tore down shower units and took away blankets, he says.
By contrast, Continental drivers using his facilities brought their own towels and washed before sitting down to eat.
Fed up, says Mr Payne, with subsidizing lorry drivers who want everything on the cheap, he qas converted the place into a better-class business.
I suppose there are black sheep in every industry, but in any case the lorry lads will not, I guess be too bothered. Just across the road from Mr Payne's Anglia Motel, I'm told, is Payne's Cafe; and that's given an accolade by Ronay, with keen prices for good food.
Stopper lore
For those baffled by energy equivalents and square laws, two little colour booklets produced by Scania (in English) provide welcome simplification. On Fuel Economy and On Braking both use humorous sketches to illustrate basic points about saving fuel and using good braking techniques, but they toss in some general physics in terms which even I can understand.
Did you know, for instance, that whereas a 50-ton-gtw outfit requires 350 bhp to accelerate to 44mph in 100sec, to stop it in 4 seconds from that speed involves a braking power of over 3,500 bhp? And that really heavy braking of an outfit like this can develop 3,000 kW, which has to be transformed into heat and dissipated — not a bad hotplate compared with your domestic 1 kW warmer-upper.
Simple rule when thinking about the work demanded of the brakes in different circumstances: if you double the vehicle weight you double the work the brakes must do, but if you double the speed without raising the weight you quadruple the work that brakes have to perform in getting rid of heat energy.
Hospitable hauliers
No one could call BRS Group and its constituent companies niggardly when it comes to looking after customers. This year constitutes something of a record. To my knowledge they've taken parties to Royal Ascot, Henley, Edgbaston and the Great Yorkshire Show, while Jack Mathers' Southern company has been busily sponsoring shirehorse events.
Latest in the hospitality stakes was the Yorkshire Show at Harrogate last week, where North Eastern BRS m.d. Ron Fortune and his merry men were operating from a smart portable. building painted in the company livery which no one was likely to overlook -it's bright orange. Judging from the shop talk which I overheard, the company must find it well worthwhile.
That's his story
A motorist recently appealed against a two-year disqualification for a 118 mg/ 100 ml drunken driving conviction, which also cost him a60 fine.
Dismissing the appeal, the High Court said: "He says that the alcohol level was not massively excessive. It was of course excessive, otherwise he would not have been .guilty of an offence. He says there was nothing greatly to be criticized about his driving, but he had in fact been stationary and somehow or other his car had come into some kind of contact with the lorry driver."
A vain effort! Judges have been weaned on stories of stationary cars being struck by lamp-posts and pedestrians bowled over by parked vehicles.