Nationalization Hits Overhaul Specialists
Page 52
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I WOULD like to bring to your notice a part of the road transport industry—as integral a one as the vehicles themselves—which, avoided by nationalization and ignored in the matter of compensation, now heads for as speedy a decline as the various Government transport programmes permit.
I allude to the precision-engineering industry mostly under separate ownership, which has served road transport faithfully and well through peace and war since the invention of the motor vehicle.
Those haulage companies which carry their own maintenance sections embodied within their general transport businesses (a small part of the industry as a whole) had these accepted, and were compensated for them under the nationalization scheme when they were acquired. Their workshops now expand at the expense of business taken over from private companies. This may be commendable from the point of view of State ownership, but it is not honourable.
The employees concerned in this free enterprise business (crankshaft grinders, metal sprayers, bearing bedders, etc.) are so absorbed in this section of the industry, and their tools so specialized, that the nationalized woi kshops cannot expand to cater for transport taken over without enticing this skilled labour from the already welt-organized private industry. This transition of workpeople will be gradual, but it will eventually, by apprentice progression through Government workshops, disrupt the lives of men who have given their all to this particular craft.
With the present effects of fuel rationing, this move towards a statutory monopoly will be the last crippling straw. The direction of work to particularly favoured national shops has already commenced. In fairness to the workpeople, the tasks should be spread so that the private workshops can compete on equal terms with those under State control.
It may be claimed that the number of vehicles to be nationalized on the haulage side represents only about 5 per cent. of the total, but the important point is that these vehicles are, in the main, heavy types with a large majority of oilers, whilst the bulk of those remaining in the hands of private enterprise consists mainly of lighter types.
The figure for reconditioning a big oil engine may be £200 or so against, say, £20-£35 for a light petrol engine. This, it must be remembered, is in only one field. There are the railways, waterways and other large Government shops serving the Ministries of Works and Supply, all of which will drain away business under the shelter of a monopoly.
Thus the maintenance side of our industry will be hit far more than any other. Vehicle accessory and component manufacturers will still have a competitive field in which to exercise their talents and sell their products.
Thornton-le-Clay. W. Pwww.
TWENTY YEARS BEFORE ITS TIME
1RECENTLY spent a most interesting week-end,
thoroughly investigating the technical points set out in "The Commercial Motor" regarding the Latil fourwheel-drive tractor in your issue of June 3, and Land c14 Rover in that of July 1. I also compared these with details already in my possession of the Jeep, as used by the Allied Armies during the war and produced principally by the Ford and Willys concerns of America.
I then looked back into the past, at an interesting article published by you on October 16, 1923, which fully described a vehicle which seems to have possessed all the technical and practical advantages available in the three machines to which I have referred.
This unusual machine was produced, in its entirety, in the repair works of this organization, in conjunction with a Dutchman, who had very advanced ideas but practically no engineering knowledge. It happened that I had complete control of the manufacture of this vehicle and personally demonstrated it in Surrey in December, 1923, which tests were described in your issue of December 25 of that year.
In making these comparisons, it -became quite obvious that the ideas embodied in our vehicle were many years before their time. In those days, although we contacted what we thought would be the main sources of interest throughout the world, we failed entirely to get anyone practically interested, apart from certain patents concerning it, which we disposed of to what was in those days the Vulcan Engineering Co., Ltd., of Southport, and the Breda Engineering Co., of Italy. it took many years and a major war before the advantages of this most advanced machine were appreciated and put into practical use for the purposes for which they were most suited.
W. F. FRENCH.
(For United Service Transport Co., Ltd.) London, S.W.9.
[The vehicle to which Mr. French refers was known as the " Holle," and the interests of the inventor at that time were in the hands of Mr. B. Hadyn White. The drive was taken from a four-cylindered Anzani engine through a cone clutch and Wrigley four-speed gearbox to a further unit termed the distribution box. This was comprised of an aluminium housing enclosing a central differential gear of the bevel-pinion type with a small crown wheel on each differential shaft, each crown wheel meshing with two bevel pinions driving two propeller shafts leading to a front and a rear wheel, respectively. Thus there were four propeller shafts in all for the four wheels. Each wheel was independently suspended by a cantilever spring in conjunction with two radius arms and oil dashpots. Both hand and foot brakes, with large, hollow, watercooled shoes, acted through the transmission on all wheels_ and the steering could be through all wheels or the front only, whilst an ingenious device permitted " crab " steering by turning all wheels in the same direction simultaneously. The frame was also unusual, the side members being built as trussed girders. Another novelty was the automatic provision of short stiff springs for high speed and low flexible springs for low speeds. This was effected by altering the position of the fulcrum slippers through the medium of small hydraulic rams deriving their pressure from plunger pumps driven from the differential shafts. The tests, which took place before the late Colonel Wilfred Ashley (then at the War Office), were made on Box Hill, near Dorking, when the chassis, with a temporary body, was driven up and down and across slippery, turfed gradients exceeding 1 in 4. The vehicle also ran crabwise at speed, with the wheels at roughly 45 degrees to the centre line of the frame. Later, complete turns were made at speeds of nearly 20 m.p.h. between kerbs about 35 ft. a pa rt.—ED.)