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Peter Livsey
• What's it like to be made responsible for the sale of 50,000 commercial vehicles annually, after being in the car world for 17 years? "Very different", says 38-year-old Peter Livsey. Ford Motor Co.'s new director of truck sales. ''Truck selling is so tremendously product-orientated, and service is the key factor." Colleagues had told roe of his wide and rapid grasp of the truck business. He unfolded to me Ford's intriguing estimates of how the total business will grow: present UK sales of trucks over 3.5 tons g.v.w. will have risen 18 per cent by 1975 and 25 per cent by 1980. The 16 cwt to 30 cwt unladen class will rise by 16 per cent and 27 per cent respectively, he explained.
It is the sector over 25 cwt for which, with p.s.v., Mr. Livsey is responsible, and a relaxed personality which quickly puts people at their ease has obviously been an asset to'him in successfully reassuring truck-starved dealers that investment in premises, staff and equipment for Ford's "Springboard for the Seventies" programme is money well spent. He believes fervently that frankness about the supply situation is the right attitude.
Born and educated in Mill Hill. London, Peter spent a year at Loughborough discovering he was not cut out to be a civil engineer. Then in 1952, after military service, he joined Ford as a company trainee, which provided on-the-job grounding in production, service and sales.
His career has included long spells in North America, notably two hectic but enjoyable years of complete sales, service and spares responsibility for British Ford cars in the nine south-eastern states, especially Florida where "the sun was too warm for ulcers to develop". He remembers with a salesman's relish the "hysterical month" when, with the 100E Anglia, British Ford sales in Miami were second only to General Motors, beating all other domestic makes.
His obvious professionalism and enthusiasm go well with Ford's expansionist attitude he confirmed that current development programmes would "increase the company's competitiveness in the heavy end of the market", while a close eye is being kept on the potential of a possible 38/44-ton market. His more immediate problem is to get enough of the D series which are in great demand but hit by component shortages, like so many makes. When I left he was talking of "purchase task forces" from Ford visiting suppliers to advise and plan, and of "other contingency action". A man not easily frustrated in his plans. B. C.