Who'd be a haulier?
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• DEDICATED to the nation's professional hauliers by a retired Brother, Michael Keogh, This Haulage Life costing f2.10p post free from CS Enterprises, 26 Eden Road, Bexley, Kent, can be recommended to any road haulier with sufficient sense of humour to laugh wryly at his effrontery in engaging in a calling offering many more kick's than "hapence". Drawings by Honeysett are an added attraction.'
Hauling for a living, says 'the author, is a form of lunacy, and a pernicious form at that. There are those who claim that road hauliers gravitate to their trade because there is simply no other vocation that will provide them with a crust. Once in road haulage. assuming you survive the ordeal, the "lottery" grows on you and no other career can hold a candle to it.
We must be grateful that Michael Keogh stuck to his road haulage last long enough to gather the material for this very amusing book. The customers of road hauliers and the manufacturers who produce their vehicles would profit from its reading; discounting the satire which is trowelled on a bit heavily in places, there are some shrewd barbs which deserve to be pondered over.
Apropos the recent moves by road hauliers to persuade their customers that rate increases of 20 per cent or more are an urgent necessity to avert bankruptcy for another year, Michael Keogh — in a chapter on "Recruiting Staff" — poses a good question for aspirant general transport managers. How to proceed in a confrontation with a major customer about such a rate increase when your secretary enters with a bright smile announcing that your new Ferrari (f9,887) has just been delivered?
And in less than six minutes flat, explain what you'd do if four of your 40ft trailers loaded with frozen hares have been rejected by the Dutch veterinary authorities at Rotterdam as tainted. They are shipped home, but the British veterinary authorities will not allow them ashore for the same reason. The ferry company wants no part of them. Last week you gave an interview to the national Press emphasizing your company's fierce opposition to pollution. Proceed from here. J.D.