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apper — misplaced ticism?
.RE can be no doubt that )h Cropper's letter on the lsing regulations ("Dear , July 2) raises matters of reme importance. His iments on the proposed new 3 are apposite but his cisms of the Road Haulage ociation are misplaced.
3w can he say that the ociation has done "precious to alert its members to thern isport Act's provisions? The ()dation campaigned long hard in association with 3r organisations to achieve or changes when the Bill was eeding through Parliament, many important mdments were made before Royal Assent was given; ;e included the insertion of a !clause which provided that ence application by an iblished haulier would not be ised on environmental unds if there had been or .11d be no material change in )perations.
then the draft regulations e published it would have n easy, but I think sponsible, for the RHA to ce rash statements about the ct the new proposals would e in practice. Rather than , the Association circulated ies of the proposals to its trict Managers so that they, the help of local members, Id examine the implications vhat is proposed in depth and re importantly, "in the field" ch is where, after all, the blems will arise. We have il July 22 to send our
eiments to the Department of nsport, comments which will 3 distillation of the collective ughts from the Districts.
alph Cropper is not only a Jed and long standing mber of the RHA, he is also a mber of one of its standing imittees — the Commercial nmittee. it would therefore m sensible for Mr Cropper to have put his points to his Association first — any trade or employers' association is only as cohesive as the loyalty of its members will allow it to be. It could be, however, that Mr Cropper is choosing to express these unwarranted criticisms of his own association as a way of making his views known to a wider audience. Perhaps at some stage he will be good enough to tell us?
What is a recovery vehicle?
THE ARTICLE "From the Drawing Board" in Commercial 'Motor, w/e June 25, 1983, reported that it has been stated that "an articulated car transporter with a winch fitted behind the cab and carrying a load of old cars comes within the definition of a recovery vehicle ... and can escape all the provisions of . . plating and testing as well as the annual inspection".
In the case of Gibson v. Nutter, reported in The Times, April 14, 1983, a goods vehicle carrying several cars to be sold as scrap was held not to be a recovery vehicle and was therefore not within the exemption.
D. C. PETTERSON Brentwood
Not only but also
I READ with interest your feature on the appointment of the new Transport Secretary and his possible interests in privatisation. It did concern me, however, that our company was described as a surplus bus sales company. In fact, this is a small part of our activity which we carry out over and above our main stream engineering business, the latter in itself being very similar to that of Midland Red or Kent Engineering.
I would not wish your readers to think that we are primarily involved in vehicle disposals. R. J. HAWKINS General Manager Amalgamated Passenger Transport Lincoln