Pro ession,als?
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'There was another phrase in Peter's lecture that for me produced an entirely different picture of a transport manager. It always has and I can't tell why. Peter Thompson apologised for using it. The title — professional haulier — I know is meant to distinguish between a hire and reward man and an own: account operator. All it succeeds in doing is getting up the backs of the OAM.
It portrays for me a well stuffed, portly, red-faced figure, in a loud checked suit, a trilby hat, two sizes too small, perched on a shiny bald pate, with the entire frame and its contents balanced on a pair of shiny black shoes and decorated with a gold chain spread across the midriff, a stub of cigar protruding from a pair of thin purple lips.
I just don't know why "professional haulier" says that to me because of the hundreds of my acquaintances none fits that description. Why don't we drop the word professional and call them haulage operators and own-account operators. 1 get nicer pictures. I promise I'll talk to my people here about it and we may even make it a resolution to use these phrases in CM during 1978.