Bird's Eye View
Page 47
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_IOW the Welsh love an occasion for celebration. The I Wynn family (Wynn the heavy haulage, that is) on riday rounded off the centenary 'celebrations of Robert rpm and Sons Ltd. with a dinner in Newport, Mon., their adquarters town.
The place seemed to be full of Wynns. There were R.T., .G., H.P. and G.P.; they are the four brothers who run IS huge business. Then there were N.R. (son of R.T.), .0.J. (son of 0.G.) and R.A. Finally there was A.R. (he's farmer who didn't join his brothers in running the isiness Devonian Thomas Wynn founded). There are, cidcntally, younger Wynns as well, so it seems likely to main a family firm.
The Wynn connection doesn't end there, either, for Lord -econ (Minister ofState for Welsh Affairs), main speaker the dinner, said that his driver is R.T.'s daughter.
Small wonder the Wynns are so highly regarded. Chairan R.T. modestly summed up: "One of our secrets of ccess has been our fortunate ability to work together as team." The best token of that high regard came from .HA. South Wales area chairman, Tom Ross, who prented R.T. with an inscribed silver casket—and who also ranged for all the Mesdames Wynn to receive a bouquet.
rwo Copies for the Minister 'WO copies of last week's The Commercial Motor have been sent to Mr. Marples, at the Minister's requestie for him to read, and one to be sent on to Mr. Harold ilson, the leader of the Opposition.
Why During his speech to the Export Council for trope last week, Mr. Marples said that he had read in a wspa per under the headline Marples Blamed an tide describing how Mr. Wilson had been held up on the i behind a vehicle carrying a cylinder "so large that it ght have been part of a gasworks installation ", and car on the biggest lorry the leader of the Opposition had er seen. As a result of this, the article continued Mr. ilson was 20 minutes late for a meeting.
verloading Congested Roads
)UOTING aloud what Mr. Wilson had told the news„ paper ("This is what comes of overloading congested ads and starving the railways of traffic "), Mr. Marples zlared that, having accepted the rebuke, he made investidons about the load and discovered that it was a piece equipment being taken from Thornaby to Pyestock. e load was carried by Sunter Brothers Ltd., and a report this movement appeared in this journal last week. Ile Minister stated that to have moved this load the 250 les by rail would have cost no less than £20,000,000—the cost of raising every bridge over the railway, widening every tunnel and repositioning every signal on the route. "And all this to save some 20 minutes of Mr. Wilson's time”, he added, "about a million pounds a minute!" When colleague Norman Tilsey later told Mr. Marples that he had accompanied the load, the Minister asked for the two copies of the issue.
Marples' Collection
NAR. MARPLES also told Norman about his collection "I of car-sticker slogans. My first was the "Marples Must Go" one, he said, which he brought home and displayed in the living room. "But my wife suggested that the best place for it was in the toilet—so there it is, along with the others 1 have since collected."
Quite a Change
LOT can go on in a surprisingly short time. I found this out when visiting, for the second time, the B.M.C. Bathgate works where all B.M.C. vehicles from the li-ton FC; upwards are now produced. The first visit was two years ago, when the initial trickle of vehicles was hardly noticeable and the shop floors were bare and unfinished. This time the activity was rather more pronounced! In fact, director of publicity Brian Turner was telling me that the total production two years ago was 160 a month. It is now up to 2,349 vehicles a month. So far, some 47,000 chassis and C.K.D. vehicles have been shipped from Bathgate.
No wonder the Scots are proud of their new-found industry.
50,000 Off nUITE by chance, I happened to be visiting II. T. C.
Daubney (the plant manager at Ford's commercial vehicle assembly factory at Langley, Bucks) on the very day when the 50,000th heavy vehicle to be built there came off the line. For the record, it was a 5-ton forward-control chassis destined for the Dominican Republic.
But, more to the point, I was struck by the general similarity with the position at Bathgate. Both are new manufacturing places for commercials. But Langley is not a newly built factory; it is the former Hawker Aircraft factory, where some 4,000 Hurricanes were built during the 1939-45 War. Ford havespent some £31m. on modernization. Both started production around the same time; Langley in December, 1960, and Bathgate in October, 1961