• It is 100 years since John Boyd Dunlop developed
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the world's first pneumatic tyre after his son pleaded for a device to make his solid-tyred tricycle run more smoothly on the granite streets of Belfast. Two years later he set up the Dunlop Rubber Company, which as SP Tyres today makes tyres for commercial and a host of other vehicles. Picture shows Johnnie Dunlop on that first pneumatic-tyred trike.
• Merseyside MEP Les Huckfield has been the star speaker at meetings of the TGWU-supported AntiCabotage Campaign. Among his verbal fireworks was the definition of cabotage as "A fancy French word for pinching British lorry drivers' jobs".
My man flying to Brussels to cover the meeting between the European Parliament's Transport Committee and Germany's transport minister (currently chairman of EEC transport ministers' meetings) spotted Huckfield on the same plane.
As Huckfield is a member of the Committee my man expected some pointed questions. He was disappointed. Huckfield's chair appeared to remain empty throughout the session.
An appearance by Huckfield of precisely three minutes and 23 seconds was recorded but he remained by the door and did not don the headphones conveying the English translation of the German being spoken at the time.
• If you think London is full of congested streets, badtempered drivers and merciliess traffic police, try Amsterdam. There, car owners have even less regard for the nice ties of parking laws and citizens often take things into their own hands.
Trailer rental firm TIP's technical director in Holland, Gerard Hoogendoom, was returning in a taxi with a colleague from the Amsterdam stock exchange, where the company had just been floated.
Driving along a shortcut, through narrow side streets, past Madame Fl Fi's massage parlour, the taxi driver was confronted with a car parked slap-bang in the middle of the road, with its owner nowhere to be seen.
Without hesitation, Hoogendoom and the cabbie got out and began bumping the car on to the pavement. Only then did its enraged owner appear, obviously perturbed and distracted.
"That's the only way to deal with those guys," says Hoogendoom. No messing. Eat your heart out Rambo.
• We have a quenchless thirst for knowledge on Commercial Motor, especially when it comes to tracking the odd or the unusual. We reckon we have surpassed ourselves this time, however.
The Hawk is proud to announce the development of a brand-new van for the world market, the result of close collaboration between Freight Rover and Ford. Its design shape is still a closely guarded secret, but we have tracked down the prototype. It is undergoing secret tests in Sheffield.
According to a classified advert in our issue of 18-24 February, Charles Clark of Sheffield has a "1986 C Reg NEW Sherpa Ford Transit" on its books. This remarkable vehicle is described as a 15seat diesel minibus with overdrive gearbox.
Before you hot-foot it to the streets of Steel City to take a "scoop" picture, I think it is only fair to warn you that inside information reveals that the van is heavily disguised as a Portaloo in the city's greyhound track. were more expensive than they were six months earlier? To be exact, 59% of us did.
But the 41% minority were right — prices actually dropped during the first half of 1986. The Danes were better informed: 69% of them thought that prices had gone up — and they were right.
In the EEC as a whole, 60% think that petroleum prices will go up during the next few years, although 7% think prices will go down.
All this must be true — the European Commission says so, in a 164-page volume entitled Public Opinion in the European Community on Energy in 1986. In the real world there is a close relationship between energy and transport. But this seems to have escaped the Commission, since that is the only reference to the subject.
Don't blame the Transport Directorate, however. It is the Energy Directorate which has apparently paid for such a survey every other year since 1982. Another was carried out last year, and the results should be published soon. I bet, like, me you can hardly wait to see the report. • Six drivers from Cave Wood Transport in Leeds have been awarded the prestigious Diploma for International Driving by the international drivers' Union Internationale des Transports Routiers. The award is given to lorry drivers with 20 years' driving experience, 10 years in international traffic and a mimimun of 10 years with the same company.
They must have covered at least 750,000 km of international driving and have a clean record. The Cave Wood men are: George Longvvorth, Kenny Potts (pictured receiving the diploma from the company's general manager), Eddie Charlton, Brian Robson, Ron Taylor, and Keith Tindle, who are all based at Cave Wood's Crossgates depot.