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bird's eye
Page 74
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view by the Hawk • Survival
Transport education is great, especially when it doesn't try to teach grandmother to suck eggs, but I sometimes wonder whether the really vital aspects ever reach the person who often needs it most — the custother.
Perhaps road haulage needs more people like Robert Wilson of Dunfermline, who not only finds time to run his own business and chair the Fife and District Tipper Operator's Association but also tries to educate operators and customers alike about the need for economic rates.
I've just been looking through some of the hundreds of letters and circulars which he has sent out in recent years. The great value of his messages is that they are not simply exhortations but are usually accompanied by very pointed examples of operating costs for tippers of various sizes on different types of work; and he has little difficulty in showing that the rates commonly charged — especially by small operators — cannot possibly cover costs. He shows, for example, 44 tons being carried in a day at 67p per ton, bringing a return which is about £3 below the operating cost for the day, even without a whole host of overheads.
His current advice to operators is to cut their fleets to compact units and stop pipedreaming about the return of the boom period.
• Royal examination
Angus Grossert who drives a heavy artic for CWS in Manchester, recently had a unique reason for his log-sheet entry showing a longer-than-usual break at the Anderton service area on the new M61. He was having a chat with the Queen.
Her Majesty, visiting the Pennine and Lancashire sections of the M62 and M61, had asked to talk to some hgv drivers, and Angus was the first.
Fortysix-year-old Angus, who has been a CWS driver for 14 years and clocks up an average of 1000 miles a week, said afterwards that the Queen made him feel at home straight away. "There is nothing put on about her; she is a very down-to-earth person, and I felt very honoured to get the chance to meet her."
I wonder if the lads believed him when he told them who had shared his tea-break.
• Foreign customs There is a risk of tea-breaks becoming more expensive if, as is expected at the time of writing, we become EEC members. At least that is the gist of a warning which Frank Woodward of Plessey gave during his extremely topical and useful talk to the 1TA London division at Ilford on Wednesday. It seems that in his experience drivers get the free-spending holiday spirit as soon as they cross the Channel and "have to have bottles of wine, cognac, cigars and all the other trimmings the Englishman associates with the Continental image-.
Not necessary, said Frank. The Continental truck driver eats the same as his English colleague, his glass of wine costs him less than our mug of tea, and drivers' meals cost much the same as in the UK. He advised operators to treat Continental journeys as routine and recommended that drivers should be asked to produce bills if they have to spend excess amounts on meals.
Don't get the wrong idea: Frank thinks the driver abroad should be well looked after. Later in his talk his recommendation for overnight stops was to book hotels in advance and "use good hotels where a driver can obtain a bath, good food and a good bed".