PEOPLE
Page 47
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IAN NORMAN has become the first joint managing director of Kurtrans Developments, a new company designing and producing curtain-sided bodies for semi-trailers and rigids.
The firm is based at Telford in Shropshire and plans to take the design of curtain-siders to a higher standard than has been available in the UK. Mr Norman joins Kurtrans from Crane Fruehauf of Oldham where he was engineering manager. He is a member of the Institute of Road Transport Engineers.
National Bus Company subsidiary Potteries Motor Traction has named Trevor Smallwood as its next traffic manager. He will succeed Wilf Inskip, who is to retire on January 31. Mr Smallwood is currently assistant traffic manager at Yorkshire Traction, the company he joined in 1966 as a trainee. He moved to Yorkshire Woollen in 1973 as area traffic superintendent, and then to Bristol Omnibus in a similar position in 1975 before returning to Yorkshire Traction as assistant traffic manager in 1978.
Jim Batty, director of operations at Greater Manchester Transport, is retiring this month after entering the bus industry 49 years ago. In 1930 Mr Batty started with Bolton Transport as a clerk, becoming traffic assistant after the war. After a spell at Walsall Corporation as traffic administrative officer he returned to Bolton in 1958, eventually becoming general manager. Mr Batty was appointed chief operations executive at Greater Manchester Transport in 1975 and at the same time was awarded the MBE for his services to transport. He is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Transport.
Harold Mote has been appointed chairman of the Greater London Council's London Transport Committee. He succeeds Dr Gordon Tay loi, who resigned the chairmanship for business and personal reasons. Mr Mote has been a member of the G LC ever since it was formed in 1965 and was a past LT committee chairman from May 1977 to May 1978. He also becomes deputy leader of the planning and communications policy committee. A retired electronics engineer, Mr Mote is the GLC's member for Harrow East.
The new chairman of the Merseyside Chamber of Commerce and industry surface transport committee is Cecil Off ley, the managing director of OB Transport of Ellesmere Port. He succeeds John Armour who is the distribution manager of John West Foods. New deputy chairman of the committee is Christopher Coward, traffic manager of UML of Bebington.
Roy Riley has become a director of National Tyre Service, for whom he is regional director for London and the Home Counties. Mr Riley had joined Briggs and Company, which was absorbed into National Tyre Service, as a sales representative, becoming branch manager at Mansfield in 1961. He is a past chairman of the South-east region of the National Tyre Distributors Association.
Obituaries We record with regret the deaths of Ronald Holland and Arthur Skill.
Mr Holland had been general manager of Cleveland Transit since its creation in 1974. After previous experience in municipal passenger transport in Derby, Chesterfield, and Morecambe, he was appointed deputy general manager of Stockton Corporation Transport in 1966 and had stayed in the area ever since.
Mr Skill was founder and chairman of Skill's Motor Coaches of Nottingham. Born in 1903, he started business with a converted war ambulance, taking miners to work. The company now has 40 coaches plus a chain of toys shops and a travel bureau.