• Here's a real down-in-themouth story. A dentist's chair is
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part of a truck load of medical supplies being driven to Romania this week by Taunton-based owner-operator Derek Champion. Derek drives for local haulier Langdons, which has donated a 12m trailer for the fortnight. A Mercedes tractive unit is being supplied by Taunton dealer WSM Motors.
• The "THING" mystery has been solved (CM 23-29 August). Thanks to the muchappreciated efforts of an enthusiastic CM reader I have been able to track down the owner of the Scania truck with THING written on the front of it which I recently spied pootling down the M61.
It belongs to Gus Glue (yes, it's a real name) who set up his company, Just About Anything, in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands nearly 17 years ago.
"That's the only name I could think of at the time," says Glue. "I had just done 40 jobs in three years and didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought the name would cover any eventuality."
And it did. He started off making candles, then he got involved with bankrupt stock and secondhand goods. From there he went into removals, and now he does a bit of freight as well as selling timber, household furniture and flooring. He is now expanding the business to include containered storage. To say the company's business has "gone like a bomb" is a very tenuous link into Glue's plans.
He has just bought a 8,800m2 former war building.
Glue plans to turn it into a retail outlet and storage unit.
"Everything I do is a bit ridiculous," admits the weird but wonderful Glue. But then with a name like that he probably gets stuck into — just about anything...
• Did you hear the one about the Irishman fined for smuggling Guinness into Ireland?
A Dublin taxi driver writes: I had that holidaying Hawk in the back of my cab last week and told him that Guinness exports the creamy brew in road tankers from Dublin to Northern Ireland where, perversely, it is far cheaper than in the South. As a result your man ended up in court recently for trying to smuggle a tankerload back into the Republic to re-sell at a handsome add-on price. Oil barons, eat your hearts out.
• You may recall my warblings about strange liveries in recent weeks. One of my informants has spotted another: an artic on the M61 advertising its wares as "soand-so stationery": Fine, except when you look at the other side of the semi-trailer you see the unfortunate signwriter has mis-spelt it "stationary".
Let's hope the truck doesn't stand still for too long.