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Shops on wheels
Page 45
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MISSING from the ranks of Earls Court exhibits at the Commercial Motor Show later this month will be a type of vehicle without which no Continental event is complete. Colourful, often elaborately equipped, mobile shops and showrooms are a source of continual amazement to the visitor from the UK where the use of such units, save for a few notable exceptions, has seldom progressed much beyond the basic layout possible within a standard van body_
One of the most successful applications of mobile shops was that begun over 40 years ago by the Migros organization in Switzerland with simple vans stocking bOt a few grocery items and now employing highly sophisticated, air-conditioned large-capacity vehicles giving the customer almost the full choice found in a fixed shop.
Although the Continental mobile ;hop and the equipment usually in
stalled cost several times that of anything ever put on the road in Britain, large grocery chains and small traders alike see this balanced by the reduction in overheads on additional premises, such as rent, rates, etc.
There are probably few commercial vehicle applications in which the same basic requirements concerning purpose and function are satisfied in so many different ways as in mobile shop design. Where the smaller trader's unit continues the early pattern of having horizontally hinged shutters, which when raised provide a canopy to protect the outside customer from the weather, front-wheel-drive chassis or running units are favoured. This mechanical lay-out gives bodybuilders the ideal basis for low floor designs.
With the continuing search for new labour-saving methods the use of mobile shops is still spreading on the Continent. Even the market trader is abandoning the traditional open stall, which requires time to set up and to dismantle, in favour of working from fully equipped sales vans with built-in display racks, lighting and heating.