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IT HAPPENED TO HUMPTY
Page 87
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[nip! Pause ...CMIRRACE Ie's done it again. Coming back ram the dairy young Johnnie had legged for permission to carry the ggs. He always does.
row—a sudden distraction, a monentary lapse of concentration .nd . well, there they are. A heap ,1 shattered shell and spreading -olk, an orange-dark puddle against he bright zebra stripes.
4' course there are tears. Grief tricken, he begs us to do somehing—certain that in some mir,culous Humpty Dumpty way we an order the eggs back together gain. Then, whoosh! A mighty lue and white diesel truck wins over the crosSing, its huge ack tyres scrambling the mess of ulped eggs so that even little Johnnie can't imagine them reassembled in edible, breakfast form. Together we gaze after the truck as it thunders down the street. 'Express Dairy' says the signwriting on its handsome flanks. 'Express Dairy Egg Collection Service'. .
120,000 breakfasts!
We trudge back to the shop. While Johnnie weeps, our thoughts turn to bigger things. How can Express Dairy transport so many eggs so far so often and so reliably that you never even have to open the. carton to check for breakages? How can Express Dairy work a near-miracle like that, day in, day out, when in something like six seconds little Johnnie can bring all their ingenuity—literally—to dust?
While Johnnie tearfully scans the truck's retreating tyre-marks for traces of his lost reputation, our thoughts turn to simple economics. Express Dairy's AEC Mercury box van carries just under 10,000 dozen eggs at a time. That's a staggering 120,000 individually lion-stamped fourpennY-worths — daily breakfast for three strong men for more than 100 years. It means a lot in money, too. Anything up to 22,000 in every fragile cargo, every trip from packing station to retail distribution centre.
Express Dairy's big fleet of AEC Mercury trucks make the trip from the West Country egglands dozens of times a week. In summer it's a long, weary haul fraught with hidden hazards for a load more delicate than glass. Crash stops every few miles as overloaded holiday traffic ties itself in knots on those crowded, winding Devon and Dorset roads. Big hills. Bustling towns, many of them without bypasses. A Word in your shell-like: those true s take a power of punishment. Alid they never crack.
Egging !hem on
Express D iry Transport chiefs considered carefully before they decided on AEC for long-haul operations—the medium-weight Mercury for egg transport and farm-tofarm milk collection, the heavy eight-wheel Mammoth Major for bulk inter-city milk tanker work. The big reasons, obviously, were toughness and reliability over a spectacular annual mileage: qualities every AEC customer expects as a matter of course from Britain's best-respected builder of heavy road transport.
But for egg-haulage there was something more. Express Dairy really does maintain its top market notch by moving goods in from country districts fast. That's how founder George Barham made the grade in 1864, and speed matters just as much today when it's perishables you're dealing with-even if they are among the world's most fragile loads.
Express needed a medium-weight truck with enough reserve power to guarantee the highest possible average speeds over shockingly congested roads. At the same time the company's transport men wanted equally spectacular transmission flexibility to help protect those precious eggs from sudden jerks and jolts. Above all they wanted a balanced suspension to insulate the load, and of course supreme reliability to eliminate the breakdowns and cargo transfers which can add up to make long-distance perishable haulage a disaster instead of a solid commercial success.
ABC's Mercury offers all these things, and more. A 237 sq. in. velvet-touch clutch for shock free starts, a six-speed overdrive gearbox for smooth performance. Power brakes—and power to spare. And of course supreme reliability: everything an Express egghead's heart could ever desire.
All of which goes to prove that, Humpty Dumpty or no Humpty Dumpty, AEC is a lot better at keeping things together than poor little Johnnie.
That'll be another half dozen, please . . .