"B.R.S. Barred My Company"
Page 43
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ALLEGATIONS that British Road 1-1. Services had orders not to deal with Allison's Transport (Contracts), Ltd., and were not anxious to hire vehicles to the company were made by Mr. Gilbert Taylor, joint managing director of the concern, before the Scottish Deputy Licensing Authority in Dundee on Monday.
Hearing was resumed of the application by the company for an A licence for 40 vehicles and four trailers at present operating under C-hiring margins. Earlier proceedings were reported last week. The objectors were B.R.S., the railways and two Aberdeen hauliers.
Mr. Taylor said that when the 25-mile limit was imposed, B.R.S. refused permits to his company and suggested that Allison's Transport could no longer handle the contracts which they had been fulfilling. The company then started the operation of vehicles under C-hiring margins and the number of vehicles thus engaged rose from 15 to 40.
Since denationalization. Allison's Transport had bought B.R.S. units, but
insufficient in number to relinquish the C-hiring arrangement. Customers wished to revert to normal A-licence haulage.
It was proposed to include 17 eightwheelers in the fleet, and to provide storage for potatoes and barley.
Cross-examined by Mr. H. R. Grieve, for B.R.S. and the railways, Mr. Taytor admitted that his wife and the wife of his co-director were partners in the Balfield Labour Agency, which supplied the drivers for the hired vehicles. The agency and the haulage company, however, did not work as one, although there was a close connection. These drivers had always driven his company's lorries, and a driver continued with the same vehicle.
Mr. Walter Fletcher, for the other objectors, asked Mr. Taylor whether he had not been doing in a circuitous way what an A-licence operator could do. Mr. Taylor replied that the law had been observed. Should the application fail, customers could still use the C-hiring arrangement if they wanted it.
The case resumes today.