RELIEF FROM THE SECOND-HAND MARKET.
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Active briskness in the second-hand market continues. That source of supply must be regarded for some time to came as an adventitious aid to owners .and would-be owners of self-propelled vehicles which arc capable of enabling them to carry Oil a .scheme of " making do " until things approach or become normal.
Continued supplies of second-hand vehicles will remain available, for two reasons: certain commercial using interests are finding demands for their own traffic purposes to be falling away, and are not inclined to enter business as haulage contractors; numerous pleasure-ear dealers are seeking new connections by offering their stocks to business users. We welcome, and we have, in fact encouraged, the '' liveliness " of the second-hand market for motor vehicles, but we have, done so at all times with proper regard for the risks which any purchaser accepts. Those risks, so far as they concern any chassis of commercial design and approved make, can be reduced to a virtual minimum if the buyers will deal with reputable firms, and above all if they will avail themselves of expert inspection before acceptance of any such purchase.
The difficulties are increased when one has to consider the best and the worst offers of second-hand pleasure-car chassis. We :find that we are being repeatedly urged of late to endorse the claims of parties who have such chassis to offer, and even to do so in respect of loads which are certainly 100 per cenh or more too high for the frame, transmission and springs, to say nothing of the tires, on offer. One buyer, as may be gathered from an" Answer to Query " which we include this week, after correspondence with us extending over several weeks, allowed himself to be persuaded by somebody—who -n16 was evidently not impartial, but an interested party—that a, load of from 20 cwt. to 30 cwt. might quite well and commercially be carried on a certaifl pleasure-car chassis. The tenour of our reply will be observed. The exigencies of the situation must be very bad, before such a. purchase can be endorsed —so bad, in fact, as in our judgment to exclude in any event a purchase of the kind as a wise one. The times in which we now live are such that an owner .or intending owner, whos'e transport arrangements are thoroughly upset, may well be prepared to wear out a second-hand chassis in one-fourth of the mileage that he would otherwise expect to realize. A buyer can afford to do this, if he is able to obtain a chassis at a low price, but it is futile to attempt the impossible, and to seek to place upon a particular chassis a load which must break it down at the outset of its new phase of working life.
We. have lately commended the acceptance of working costs above the normal, by reason of the • abnormal conditions of delivery in the motor industry. If individual readers, and particularly new readers of this journal, will tell us their circumstances—the loads, average and maximum, which they desire to carry, and the distances, daily and weekly, which they seek to encompass, and will, after assessing the figure themselves, tell us how much per mile run ability to do the work represents to them, compared with inability to do it, the services of our Editorial staff are at their disposal, free of charge, to give them an honest answer. We accept the view that propositions which must have merited abrupt dismissal a year ago, and which would probably have been" turned down "by those who seek our advice without second thought, deserve to be reviewed most carefully at the present time. A dispassionate opinion from ourselves will probably, however, prove to be the means, in not a few instances, of protecting a reader from spending money in such a manner that he will merely be purchasing trouble and ensuring for himself e4y disappointment on the performance side. Our free " Answers to Queries " service is available to all. One hears much about failures in the past with second-hand pleasure-car chassis which were stated to have been " adapted " for business purposes. The dead or inanimate load is an unkind one ;-it does not give, and it takes a lot out of .a chassis which is cut too fine; it destroys the overloaded pleasure type of chassis. We again give a 15-cwt. load as the safe maximum commercially for even the best pleasurecar chassis that may be utilized for a trade round.