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Fair's fare
Page 34
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While the operating industry in Britain is sweating about how it is going to cope with the EEC eighthour driving day, spare a thought for those happy (?) unregulated souls who run hire car cum express parcels services. Such as an ownerdriver in Middlesex trying to earn an honest crust, encountered recently by a CM man.
The driver is buying his car on hire purchase and pays all his costs including radio-telephone: and in return he works full-time (this week's understatement) for a local ear-hire firm.
A typical day starts with the first trip to central London at 4am to deliver urgently required computer tapes. By the time he returns to base, the day has started in earnest, with normal car-hire journeys, which finish around 7pm. Of course, he keeps his tea and meal breaks to a minimum for fear of missing a fare.
This particular driver does not work weekends, but many of his colleagues working for that company do, and I hestitate to compute their weekly driving! working hours.
No justice, is there?
Redeemed?
Now there's a vicar with an eye for a good opportunity. Parishioners at St Mary's, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, are being asked to put unwanted bus change vouchers into a church collection box. Church officials feel that people are unwilling to make a special journey to the bus depot to cash in vouchers but would be happy giving them to the church, who will redeem them in bulk.
Southend Corporation has accumulated over £1,800 worth of outstanding vouchers since its one-man buses began running about three years ago.
But I can tell the church supporters they'll have to be quick. The Corporation is investigating a proposal to drop the voucher arrangement in favour of a fare-box system.
Record review
Let's start our own list of records in road transport — why not? We've just completed (?) correspondence on claims for the youngest woman bus driver. Some years ago I remember there was some in-fighting about who operated the longest double-decked route in Britain and I seem to recall that Western SMT claimed the honour with their 84-mile GlasgowStranraer route, but a year or two later East Yorkshire saw them off the park when they started running TD3s on their Hull-York-Glasgow 280mile route. A classic, that.
Here's my nomination for the longest municipally operated service. Cleveland Transit, when they took over Salthurn Motor Services, inherited a Saltburn-Blackpool service 125 miles.
Ta! Shah
Iran wants oil companies' profits to be based on no more than 50 US cents per barrel instead of the present average of $2. I have this on the authority of the Shahan shah himself
-via a whole-page advertisement in The Times newspaper, running to around 3,000 words but well worth transport operators' attention in view, of its importance. The Shah claim. that the S2 average has helped of companies' profits to increase fro 400 to 700 per cent in the past tw. years.
What Iran wants to do is to estab lish a relationship between the pric of oil and the prices of 20 or 3 commodities of importance to th world economy. If the value of thi notional "shopping basket" rises o falls then oil would follow suit. Bu oil prices would. vary according t geographical location and the qualit of oil.
Iran's ruler was asked at his pres conference in Tehran — the subje matter forms the basis for th advertisement -if he feared militar intervention by an exasperate Western world. He found it "a littl remote". He added: "The only thin that could be achieved will through meaningful negotiation. and constructive, I hope."
by the Haw