Dennis Gi
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ASTRANGER to the ancient town of Warwick might find Eagle Engineering Co., Ltd., somewhat difficult to find. Not, I hasten to say, because of the company's insignificance—the works cover several acres and employ some 250 people—but because the buildings are so much in character with the surrounding architecture that one can easily pass them without 'noticing, as I did. And though everybody of whom I asked the way (not one of them being the usual "I'm a stranger here ") was able to give full directions as to Eagle's whereabouts, the directions were stultified by one-way streets and the swirl of heavy traffic
in the town centre. .
However, find it I did. And there I was ushered into the functional and unpretentious office of Dennis Guy Palmer—Dennis is known, for some reason he cannot explain, as "Jim."
Now, as one with no engineering qualifications whatsoever and to whom production lines and processes are well nigh miraculous (and as incomprehensible as miracles), my heart begins to fall when I am invited to "go round the works." It's all so noisy as well as puzzling. But I confess that Eagle Engineering, under Jim's guidance, was an agreeable exception.
Hitherto I had belieyed that only vehicles of the RollsRoyce or Bentley character were "custom built." I was wrong. Dustcarts, cesspit emptiers, tankers, tippers, fire engines, T.V. towers (is that the correct technical description?), trailers of many types—all these and many more are made to special order by Eagle Engineering.
Every Authority, it seems, has its own ideas about design, colour and other aspects. What suits Istanbul is poison in Brentford and Chiswick. Out in New Zealand they have vehement and exclusive tastes not shared by South Africa.
And Eagle's chairman and managing director knows this as well as anybody in the industry; he studies local requirements, turns a sympathetic eye on local foibles, and comes back to Warwick to give the customer what he wants. The customers come to him, too: his visitors' book in the conference room is like an international Who's Who.
Jim Palmer's father, who founded the company in 1918, was evidently a firm believer in sound education. He certainly had no intention that his son should come into a ready made job and perhaps take things easier than he himself ever did. So, after Warwick School and Leamington and Acton Technical Colleges, young Dennis entered Eagle Engineering as an apprentice with no favours asked or granted. His time having been served from 1926 to 1931 —he became a student at A.E.C., Southall, from 1932 to 1934.
He would have liked to stay on with A.E.C. and spoke up for himself. But it was not a good time. "How can we keep you on?" they asked him. "We've just sacked all the night staff! " Eagle didn't want him either. Times were just as tough with them. As the Americans say: "It was bad all over." So, being under the necessity of earning a living somewhere and somehow, back he went to the Midlands and found stop-gap 'bus jobs with Stratford-onAvon Blue and Warwick and Leamington Green, doing just about every odd job a bus company could produce.
Then Eagle Engineering made beckoning gestures. "Sales," they whispered to him. Sales, as it turned out, meant demonstrating a trailer, and he had to get on with it without benefit of training. Now for the uninitiated—and Eagle's managing director freely admits it—a trailer is not the easiest vehicle to handle. It may be all right for those nonchalant drivers one meets on all the great highways of modern Britain, but not for a young fellow with no experience at all. Everybody he called on seemed to like the trailer principle except for one aspect. "They're devils to reverse," they told him.
So he had, with some personal misgivings, to convince them otherwise. He recalls one firm that asked him to reverse in a sort of obstacle race, around sacks placed in awkward positions with the additional and menacing hazard of deep water lapping the wharf. He managed to avoid tipping the lot into the dock. Then there was the occasion, when a demonstration seemed to be going unexpectedly well, that he got himself into a cul-de-sac and had to reverse into a thick stream of traffic.
Selling is Fun Nowadays they don't let untrained youngsters loose on trailers but, after all, that particular world was young way back in the nineteen-thirties, and his experiences all built up to make him the competent salesman he soon became and still is. Selling, he thinks, is fun—even when a cesspit is involved. It was like this. Seeking earnestly an order from a Local Authority for those rather specialized vehicles which deal with cesspit emptying and night soil collection, he was invited to demonstrate with an extensive cesspit on an official's private property. "It was a magnificent cesspit," Palmer reflects, " and we did a good job on it. We pretty well emptied it. But something happened to the safety valve or pump—anyway, the vehicle played us a very dirty trick indeed. We were smothered from head to foot. I don't recall that the official recoiled from us when we returned to his house—he was probably too pleased to get rid of his cesspit. But we got the order."
Eagle Engineering is a tight fit for its present accommodation in Warwick and the company is putting continuous pressure on the local authorities for more space. It was hoped that associate companies, J. F. Buckingham, Ltd., Kenilworth, and Always Welding, Ltd., Ash, near Aldershot, of both of which Jim is chairman, would have relieved the pressure to a considerable extent. But both have become so busy in their own right that this did not happen.
He has a considerable flair for public relations. One important lesson in this sphere he learnt the hard way. When he was a student with A.E.C. a big public relations party was laid on, with London Transport buses standing by for demonstrations. The driver of the first vehicle out was booked for not stopping at a halt sign, the second bus caught fire and the third, intended for carrying guests to main line stations but in the event not being required for that purpose, was commandeered by the students for a night out in town. That came to grief somewhere around Oxford Circus.
Moral: Don't give your own people a drink until the party's over. Don't be unforthcoming with the guests, though. Call at Eagle Engineering sometime, but get your business done before sampling Jim Palmer's hospitality. He's one of the least unforthcoming managing directors it
has been my lot to meet so far. H.C.