bird's eye
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viewby the Hawk
III One of ours
Michael Keogh, the author of "What makes a haulier" (CM June 23), dropped into The Hawk's Nest in Stamford Street with the most delightful story.
Having escaped from the transport scene in London, Michael is now a boatbuilder in rural Norfolk. One day when driving to the office he heard a road report on the radio warning that a vehicle had broken down on the north side of Tower Bridge, London. Thought Michael: "How wonderful to be away from the traffic jams of London and the worry of broken-down vehicles." Serenely he drove through the traffic-free woodland roads to his boatyard, thinking of his good fortune.
When he eventually arrived at his office, Michael, in cheerful mood, reminded his partner how fortunate they were to be away from the traffic jams of London. "I heard pn the radio", said Michael, "that there is an almighty traffic jam at Tower Bridge caused by a broken-down vehicle".
Came the reply: "I know old chap; it's me of ours".
11 The other half
iaulage problems are universal, but in iome places they naturally have a local lavour. I've just been reading the report af a paper presented by a big haulier as part A' the (deep breath) Northwestern University Transportation Center's Advanced Transmrtation Management Program, at Evanston, Illinois.
Robert J. Franco, president of Spector Freight System Inc, was bemoaning the :ontinued lack of standardization of weights and dimensions regulations across the USA and we think the EEC has been slow!). He instanced the fact that some States reruse to allow 65ft double-bottom outfits across State lines — a hindrance to the ndustry, said Mr Franco, because the large :ubic capacity of these trucks could in:rease load capacity by 30 per cent, and n turn boost productivity.
He was also concerned about wages and ialaries; last year 60 per cent of revenue went on this item.
111 Too many terminals
There was an echo of UK experience in Mr Franco's insistence that there were too many truck terminals (transhipment depots); ae urged terminal mergers and joint ventures xi which a local collection and delivery operation was owned jointly by the trunk operator and the independent local c. and d. men. This consolidation of terminals would "reduce land, tax and manpower costs considerably" and "those firms that start planning for mergers today will be the superfirms of the '70s."
Seems the haulier in the States is also coming to terms with the railways, as he has done to a large extent in Britain since the advent of the Freightliner. Said Mr Franco: "The atmosphere of competition that existed previously has changed, and intermodal co-operation seems to be more prevalent."
It's happening everywhere.
II Bulwark's best
Since the Bulwark United Transport group started entering all their drivers in the annual RoSPA safe driving competition there's also been an in-company contest for a cup presented by BUT managing director, Duncan H. Foulds. The cup goes to the company with the highest percentage of safe driving awards, and the latest winners are Ancliff (BLT) Ltd, 81 per cent of whose drivers were successful.
So up at Urmston recently, Ancliff general manager Peter Thornton had the happy task of receiving the trophy from the donor, Duncan Foulds.
III Ringing the bell
A book which has come my way this week reminds me of the words of a New York fire appliance driver who was asked to name the most dangerous part of his job. He said it was getting to the fire, knowing that other appliances would also have been call d out — they all made so much din that they couldn't possibly hear one another's sirens or bells, and with New York's grid layout the fear of a right-angled collision was uppermost in his mind.
The book concerned is a new one from the Olyslager Auto Library —Fire-fighting Vehicles 1840-1950, and the reminder comes from the pages devoted to those great long articulated ladder escape outfits which look as though they were designed just for the Keystone Cops.
Steam pumps, horse-drawn fire engines and a host of interesting auxiliary devices make this an entertaining book to browse through — it is a story told pictorially, but with plenty of facts and figures in the captions.
The publisher is Frederick Warne, 40 Bedford Square, London WC 1B 3HE, and the price is £1.50 net.
111 Rallying point
Oldies of another sort get an airing this weekend — it's the Chesil Run on Sunday (July 2) organized as part of the Weymouth Bus Rally by the Dorset Transport Circle. Things will start happening in the sea-front coach park soon after breakfast, and the 20-mile run to Portland starts at 10 am.
III Collector
Which reminds me. I recently came into contact with a man who must surely be regarded as a doyen of collectors of historical material on commercial vehicles — Fred C. Lane, of Haverhill, West Suffolk, He has a collection of 30,000 photographs, with associated specifications, of the world's vehicles, and has just finished a complete revision of his filing system which has taken him months.
Mr Lane is an interesting chap in his own right. He started working in 1918 with the London branch of a US company, Gaston Williams and Wig,more .Ltd, which had subsidiaries all over the world and was concessionaire for a host of American cars and commercials — among them PierceArrow, Peerless, Packard, Reo, Autocar and Fageol. He worked in the works and service department at Hanwell and, partly through the monthly GWW Bulletin designed to keep employees up to date with truck developments around the world, became interested in the cv world as a hobby.
He left the company in 1931 but years later — in 1956 to be precise — when convalescing from an illness came across some of those old GWW bulletins — plus 30 copies of CM of the period. They inspired him to start collecting in earnest.
Fred Lane is now 67, and it's almost trite to say that he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of, for instance, the truck products of 200 US manufacturers from 1899 onwards. But his collection is worldwide and probably merits that overworked word — unique.
III Supporters
The president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Lord Stokes, was apparently sufficiently concerned about the low number of British delegates to the FISITA Congress in London this week that he sent Telexes to leading companies asking them to support the conference by sending staff members.
One engineer who attended the conference was therefore a little taken aback to find that out of 660 delegates in the published list only two were registered from British Leyland truck and bus division.