Barr Fleet Nearly 300 per cent. UP R EM A RK
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ABLE progress by Barr and Wallace Arnold Trust, Ltd., and its 10 associated companies was recorded in the chairman's annual report, issued this week. • He said that before the war, the group had some 80 coaches and lorries, but the fleet had now grown to about 220 vehicles. In 1947. 46 new coaches, costing £111,378, were purchased. A hundred new coaches and seven goods vehicles, costing £234,000, had been placed in service by the group since the end of the war,
To help to offset rising costs in other directions, management expenses had been reduced and large economies in fuel consumption has been achieved by converting vehicles from petrol to oil. Management expenses now represented 4.37 per cent, of turnover, compared witht6.01 per cent. in 1939. Sixty per cent, of the group's fleet was now running on oil fuel.
Since the war, said the chairman, the group had bought four businesses in Scarborough and two in Leeds. It had also taken o4:er hotels at Babbaconabc and Torquay, and had acit LI led 1 COae hing concern in Paignton and the goodwill of Homeland Tours, of London. This year there would he 350 departures of tours to Scotland, the West Country. South Coast, Eastern Counties and Wales, In cddition to extended tours, the company ran a daily workmen's service from Leeds to Bradford. Castleford and Royston, and daily excursions.
Continental tours through France nid Belgium to Switierkind had been resumed this year, and it was hoped that nest year trips would be run to Holland, Norway and, possibly, Ireland. Aeencies had been established throughout the United States and Canada.
Wilks and Meade. Ltd., one of the subsidiaries, built the bodies of many of the new vehicles and reconditioned all the old ones. That company's turnover in 1947 was double that of 1946. Single-deckers and double-deckers were being built for the home market and contacts had been established in South Africa.