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Bird's Eye
Page 133
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Unkindest cut . . .
AT LEAST one prominent road transport trade union chief, I gather, has told Mr. Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, that labour relations machinery in the industry need to be rebuilt quickly. A strong feeling that the RHA is quite unable to impose collective discipline on its members inspired the hint to the Minister that unions could not be expected to try to keep their recalcitrants in line unless the RHA proves its ability to ensure its member firms honour their side of agreements.
Mr. Gunter is said to have agreed with this view. What will the forthcoming PIB report have to say about this, I wonder?
Right-hand pay
THE SWEDISH Transport Workers' Union and employers have fallen out on the question of new mileage rates for 5,000 lorry drivers. The union says the lower speed limits introduced with the change to right-hand driving affects drivers' earnings. Speed limits imposed for road safety reasons should not be exceeded to maintain present earnings levels, the union argues.
A strike, I gather, is unlikely since the drivers are bound by a three-year agreement. A lesson for our transport industry, perhaps?
Comings . .
RTITB's director of training, Peter Haxby, last week announced that the board's top training trio was complete with the appointment of Michael Pickering as divisional manager (technical training), following on the earlier appointment of Mr. C. E. C. Eastman as divisional manager (commercial).
With about 25 years of Army service, finishing last week as Lt.-Col. (chief instructor), M. Pickering will already have an affinity with the road transport industry.
Readers with long memories know that a major landmark in the expansion of the industry as we know it today was the Slough disposal centre for military vehicles after the First World War. A lot of fuel has gone through the tanks since then, but the problem of providing adequate and universal training throughout the industry still remains to be solved.
. . and goings
ONE FROM my crystal ball: there seems to be the imminent possibility of another hat trick career-wise—but, alas, in reverse. Raymond sacked Fiennes; Castle then sacked Raymond; will Wilson now sack Castle?
No excuses now!
I LEARN THAT A. Packham and Co. Ltd. has scrapped its familiar blue, yellow and white livery and is introducing a new personalized driver symbol on van sides—in Renault racing blue on a broad white stripe. A white symbol on a blue ground appears above the cab.
The new livery is appropriately introduced with a cardboard cut-out model in the autumn issue of the brightly written Packham Post. Packham drivers are being issued with a detailed explanatory handbook of drivers' hours and records. No excuse, now, for records offences!
Gas and gaiters
IF you put police and Gas Board drivers together is there a blow-up? Apparently not. Quite the reverse, in fact, if the recent experience of Southemgas is any guide. The undertaking ran a refresher course for 10 experienced drivers—talks on insurance, tyre maintenance and safe vehicle loading, legal requirements and so on were accompanied by practical sessions in the workshop, and on the road with police drivers. Result: an almost embarrassing stream of praise for the course. It is probably still ringing in the ears of transport manager George Blundell.
Even the Most experienced drivers learned a thing or two, I'm told. Obviously an experiment to be repeated.
Siberia here we come!
WITH THE NEWS ticker-tape going near-berserk as the world's foreign exchanges report their latest deals, other titbits have tended to get lost in the deluge.
Take for example the visit of the resigned chairman of British Railways, Sir Stanley Raymond, to Russia as a member of a CBI team of top industrialists.
Seemingly he is taking a special copy of a colour film of Freightliners complete with Russian commentary. He hopes to convince his Russian hosts that this new all-British idea might well be adopted in the Soviet Union.
Somehow, if they did, I can't visualize a Russian equivalent of the Stratford Depot unofficial strike also being adopted. With or• without Freightliners the Trans-Siberian Railway would provide too handy a solution.
Gobbling and gulping
THREE CHEERS, say 1, for anyone who in these troublous times can inject a little humour into the serious business of transport. Purle Brothers Holdings Ltd. deserves them—though the humour is cleverly combined with business. This company is opening a new headquarters at Rayleigh, Essex, on December 12, and the invitation card includes the drawings I reproduce here.
These two characters are the mighty Rubbish Gobbler and the powerful Sludge Gulper—representing the Purle Group's dry waste and wet waste disposal services.
Boa appetiti
Tribute
"WITHOUT people like Mr. Tree and trade organizations like the National Conference, public life in this country would not work." So said Mr. R. W. Elliott MP, president of the National conference of Road Transport Clearing Houses, as he presented R. W. Tree, retiring after four years as national chairman, with a silver salver and condiment set on Wednesday.
The occasion was a special presentation lunch in London, and the air was full of forecasts and forebodings inspired by that White Paper.
Mr. Elliott said the North East—where his constituency lies— would suffer like other development areas from the effects of the Government's transport plans, in that they relied absolutely on the "long haul" which took their products to points of consumption and points of export.
I thought Mr. Tree struck a particular chill into the hearts of the guests when he said that if the Labour Party won the next General Election, road transport as we know it in this country would be finished.