Load no godsend for these hauliers
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TRANSPORT contractors are unlikely to appreciate the use by The Times of the word "hauliers" to describe the 4,200 sweating, grunting, jostling, heaving men who hauled the great god Jagannath (Juggernaut) from his twelfthcentury temple to his summer house in Puri, India.
The incarnation of Vishnu, Lord of the Universe, was carried on a 35ft-square platform with 16 painted wheels, each seven feet in diameter, and a red dome 45ft high. This distinctly abnormal indivisible load was accompanied by his brother and sister, each on a slightly smaller chariot but each pulled by 4,200 men.
The mile journey from the temple to the summer house took more than a day. A Scammell would have polishJ1 off the job in a few minutes.
At about the same time, 12 Welsh policemen were hauling an 11-ton double-deck bus 1001 yards in a record time of 23.28sec to beat 50 other teame in a Cardiff Rally event organised by the Pumpkin Group, which Cardiff Transport platform staff formed three years ago.
The use of manpower instead of simulated horsepower to propel vehicles would at a strok solve the unemployment problem, save fuel and work off the surplus energy of brick and bomb-hurling mobs.