• When a press release proclaiming that freight forwarder Davies
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Turner had "joined with Christ" reached the Hawk's intray this week, he thought it was either an obituary, thundering evangelistic testimony or an attempt to forge a business deal bigger than a General Motors-ICI merger.
It transpires, however, that the holy alliance is nothing more than a routine commercial contract and the Christ in question is a German haulier called Andreas Christ (pronounced as in Christopher).
• Poor old Peter Bottomley. As we reported last week, the luckless minister for roads and traffic has been dragged over the coals in the columns of The Spectator and London's Evening Standard for daring to suggest that wine correspondents should promote the drinking of non-alcoholic beverages. Auberon Waugh suggested he was quite mad. Now notorious dogooder Esther Rantzen has decried the minister for being too soft towards drink-drivers on her programme That's Life, and Bottomley's wife and fellow MP Virginia has bemoaned the fact in her Times column.
"A roads minister's lot is not always a happy one," she sighs. She's not joking. Hubbie was hammered by a Labour MP for turning up late at an important transport meeting at the Commons last week. The roads minister, travelling by BR from Darlington, was held up en route while a hunt crossed the line. Perhaps he should hire his own lorry next time.
• Fear of marauding Scots crossing the border is one reason why the English have never extended their motorways past Carlisle and Newcastle, a Scottish lord has claimed. The Earl of Perth says a lamentably small part — 7.4% — of Britain's motorway network is north of the border. Perhaps the English haulage lobby wants to stop hordes of tartan truckers MacCabotaging through England, or maybe it is the other way round and the English want to stop their best players joining Glasgow Rangers . .
• Some of you may have forgotten that the plan to bring Steyr trucks into the UK later this year is not the first attempt.
As long ago as 1972, Fred Davies, at the time boss of York Trailers, proposed to sell a range of Steyr tractive units in Britain. York's dozen-or-so strategically located truck equipment branches formed a ready-made dealer network.
At least one right-hand-drive example of the 32-tonne plated 990 model, as my picture shows, was acquired by York for customer assessment.
The Styer went from branch to branch throughout the country giving demos. It finished up in Watford where it became part of York's inventory, regularly collecting new trailers from Corby and Northallerton.
A former York employee assures me the Steyr was outstandingly reliable if a little primitive. Regrettably, the York plan to distribute Steyr trucks was scuppered by the 1973 oil crisis and the economic downturn which followed.