Our Fleet.
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(As Surveyed by the Cartage Manager.)
NO, this is not "a naval occasion." These are a • few remarks on what the "boss," in his polished correspondence, lovingly describes as "our fleet of lorries." They are certainly fleet on the way home, about fi p.m.; and they rush back, generally empty, when they might have been full, into the yard at 20 m.p.h., quite oblivious of a prominent notice that drivers must enter at a dignified pace, on pain of etcetera, etcetera, for offenders.
Those who think that the cartage manager has a soft job should try it. The number of telephone queries he has to settle in one day would make a stranger think he was in a theatre box-office on Christmas' Eve. Every time "that infernal 'phone" rings it brings trouble.
"Eh? What's happened to you, Blank? . . . Motorbus hit you? No, it never is!" (this with a ghost of a chuckle): "Off-side hub gone and no spare? . . . I'll send one up to you. Where are you—Catford?
. . Watford! Oh, h--1! "
"It's snowing, sir," says Jimmie, his personal' clerk, helpfully. "So it looks as if that cartage job will be given a miss. I don't believe they would take in a bar of chocolate, let alone a load of stuff, after 4.30.".
B18 "Confound the railways ! They seem to open and shut in spasms, like pubs."
But the railway companies are beaten hollow in Dockland, where Job would have lost his reputation for patience within 24 hours. A 6-ton lorry stands idle for most of the day, waiting to discharge its contents into a boat (what time the driver spends the tithe profitably for himself by reading The Commercial Motor —appropriated from the garage superintendent's office by way of the small boy !—from cover to cover, includ-, ing the advertisements), only to have to take the load home again, on account of some trifling Customs detail: He is then requested to repeat the little jaunt the next day. The "boss," of course, loves to hear that his lorries are chasing round London on fruitless journeys. He finds it most amusing! There is one favourite conundrum which he regularly propounds to the traffic manager. " Why on earth do you let the work creep up on you like this?" Immediately following him is a gesticulating engineer, who has a leirgthy grouse to make about the men trying to put 2 tons on a 1-ton truck.
By the weekly tale of petrol consumption the motors apparently absorb the best No. 1 spirit as a baby drinks milk, and me office boy has a dark theory involving the total capacity of the staff's petrol lighters.
As for the drivers themselves, they are good fellows as a whole, but we have given up looking for the perfect driver. He .must be occupying a pedestal in Elysium along with the perfect husband ! Meanwhile; we have to get on with drivers who are energetic but too musical, or drivers who are very careful; so much so that there Is current a prophecy that one day a hearse will run into their tailboards. A flaw always seems to crop up somewhere. New drivers and their faux pas we tolerate cheerfully, fully realizing that exer3, one should be allowed reasonable time in which to become used to fresh work ; but one man who had been with us only a few weeks created a diversion which has become historic in the annals of the firm.
He honked his way out of the yard at 8 o'clock one morning to make hay of the day's work, but returned breathlessly an hour or two afterWardsminus his lorry 1 Needless to add, it was a Ford ! No, a child had not mistaken it for a clockwork toy and taken the thing home. The driver had left his lorry for a short period—possibly it was dry and thirsty weather—and when he returned it had vanished as completely as the magic steed in the "Arabian Nights."
After much telephoning, however, a prosaic solution to the mystery was found. The police, indignant that an unattended vehicle should aggravate its offence by obstructing a very busy thoroughfare, had shifted the car into a side turning some distance away.
At the court a few days later the driver found it difficult to convince the magistrate that he had only turned his back for a moment, and for business at that. The traffic manager soon lets the men know when' someone is prevtnting the smooth running of the work ; but they also know that they are always entitled to a fair hearing in any serious complaint they may wish to make. Under these conditions any resentment generally dissolves into the " pull-together" spirit which alone will benefit all.