OPINIONS and QUERIES
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The Editor invites correspondence On all subjects crinnected with the use of commercial motors Letters should be written on only OnE side of tile paper. The right of abbreviation is reserved and no responsibility for views expressed is accepted.
RATE CUTTING BY RAILWAYOWNED VEHICLES.
FOR a long time I have read with interest the various articles by " S.T.R.," and throughout them it appears to have been his aim to get haulage contractors to bring their rates up to a reasonable level.
This company, at the moment, is experiencing intensive competition by a group of hauliers owned by the railway companies, and in many instances our rates have not only been cut but slaughtered. In fact the representatives of the concerns in question appear to have made a dead set against this company, chiefly owing to our operating a special type of vehicle.
The writer of this letter has been in the road-haulage business since just after the finish of the Great War, and for many years has carried on in this specialized kind of haulage.
It seems to us that the road section of the railway companies is determined to have the traffic irrespective of the price, and it is only through our long association with the different firms with whom we deal, incidentally all of whom are in the front rank in their own line of business, that we have managed to retain the bulk of our business. SQuARE DEAL. Leeds.
BUSES GOING STRONG AFTER 13 YEARS' SERVICE.
SEE in "Passing Comments" in your issue dated March 17, that you refer to a 10-year-old Daimler in the service of Lancashire Corporation as having its licence renewed for a further three years and you say that this must have created a record. Well, it has not by any means.
Maidstone and District Motor Services, Ltd., of which I am an employee, is operating a number of TillingStevens B9 and El0 buses dating from 1926 to 1929, so that some are 13 years' old. The buses operated by this company cover an average of about 50,000 miles per year, thus the oldest must have covered 650,000 miles, or 26 times around the earth, giving daily service except for periodical overhauls.
The breakdown lorry operated by this company is a
converted Leyland Titan, about 12 years old. It is equipped with a crane, winch, bogies, covered-in bench with two vices, and, in fact, everything required for a breakdown. The weight of the original bus was about 6 tons, whilst the present weight is between 8 and 9 tons. Despite this it makes no fuss at towing buses up to 7 tons unladen.
.There are also three service lorries, all 1929 Leyland Titans. The first was converted three years ago and the other two have only just been done, and are likely to give years more of active service, as are the 1929 Leyland Titan buses.
Wishing The Commercial Motor every success.
Chatham. F. J. LUCKETT. PR
WHAT TYPE OF ROAD SURFACE IS THE BEST?
THE writer of the article in your issue of January 6, I which I have just seen, makes some sweeping generalisations about what type of surface is the safest. Tarmacadam can have very high resistance to skidding or not. The same applies to concrete. It depends, for one thing, on the quality and the size of the stone aggregate which, after all, forms the bulk of the surfacing material—in the case of tarmacadarn over 95 per cent. of it. The more granular the stone, the less easily does it become polished and slippery under the constant friction of the tyre. I would also like to suggest that there is another cause of wear or damage to tyres which has not the compensatory advantage of making roads any safer. I refer to the flints which are sometimes used, particularly in the south dl England, for surface dressing. A good hard stone chipping does not so easily become dislodged from the matrix and, in any case, is not sharp-edged. Its rough texture may cause wear to the tyres, but it is fair wear and tear and not a stiletto
attack. ANDREW REID, HEAVY PUNISHMENT FOR A MINOR ACCIDENT.
vOR the past 12 years I have been employed as a
commercial vehicle driver. On January 10 I was involved in a slight accident with a private car at the corner of a busy thoroughfare in Leeds. I will not here go into details of the accident, it being sufficient to say that I claimed the car driver was at fault, and he, naturally, blamed me. The car was chauffeur-driven with a man passenger.
The passenger got out and threatened that he would report me and have my licence suspended. He said that he was on the Bradford Watch Committee, through which he would use his influence to get my licence taken from me. I was eventually summoned to appear at the Town Hall, Leeds, to answer a charge of driving without due care.
The concern with which I was employed would not allow employees to be members of a union, although we were paid above the union rate of pay. I had been in its employ for four years, but not being a member of a union, I had no one to help to fight my case, and I received a letter from my employer to the effect that, as it did not keep men with convictions, if I was found guilty I would be dismissed.
This threat did not worry me at all, because I felt that I was quite innocent of the charge. I then appeared to answer the summons. The prosecuting solicitor made the charge appear far more serious than it actually was. He ended by saying that this was how people came to be killed on the roads—yet the entire damage in this accident was a damaged front bumper bar of the car, which the owner admitted cost only 7s. to repair.
I was allowed to say very little in my defence. had handed the magistrate the letter from my employer stating that I would be dismissed if found guilty, but I was found guilty and fined R.1 and costs, whilst my licence was suspended for three months. I was too dumbfounded to appeal against this decision. This was my first offence and I am now out of work; whilst having been" employed only as a driver for 12 years it is difficult to obtain any other kind of job.
The clerk to the justices said that the only thing I could do was to appeal through a solicitor, who, in turn, would engage a barrister. Where can I find cash to pay a barrister? My employers' manager, upon hearing the result of the case, came to see me. I had been such a capable driver while at this work that he said he never thought I would be found guilty, and he informed me that when I get my licence back, I can return to him for my job.
Leeds. ALLAN HILLER.
[Short of appealing against the decision of the magistrates, we are afraid that little can be done, You might write to the Clerk to the Court to point out that your livelihood has been removed, but that your employer is willing to take you back immediately the period of suspension of your licence is over, and that in view of your good record could not the magistrates see fit now to remove the suspension.—ED.]
TWO-STROKE OR FOURSTROKE?
WAS very interested to read in your issue of March 1 24 an article upholding the two-stroke engine and a letter from Mr. Ascough.
I would like, in the first place, to correct the impression which apparently Mr. Dale and Mr. Ascough have gained from my article in your issue of March 10, namely, that this article was a boost for the four-stroke at the expense of the two-stroke. This was not the case. It was an attempt, in connection with engines for road vehicles, to analyse the factors which apparently prevent the two-stroke from showing in practice the advantages which, theoretically, one might, at first glance, expect.
The whole of my article, as indicated in the first sentence, was based on engines for road-vehicle propulsion where severe limitations of size and weight must he complied with. This being the case, many of Mr. Dale's remarks, some of which deal with big slow-speed engines, are entirely irrelevant and appear to be essentially in support of one particular make of engine, Also, Mr. Dale appears completely to have missed the point in connection with speed and rating.
As I pointed out in my article, the four-stroke engine can develop b.m.e.p.'s well in excess of 120 lb. per sq. in., but cannot safely use them commercially on account of heat limitations, so that if a certain American engine can develop a maximum b.m.e.p. of 94 lb. per sq. in., the four-stroke must correspondingly be allowed the maximum b.m.e.p. of at least 120 lb. per sq. in. still maintaining the same ratio.
On the question of speed, one of the main arguments for the four-stroke was that it is not limited on speed, whilst the two-stroke is. I would say that 2,600 r.p.m. is a very conservative speed in these days, and for petrol engines of the type in question would be considered a low speed. The whole point of the four-stroke is that it can run at a higher speed and so reduce its power.. weightand power-size ratios.
Mr. Ascough is apparently not aware that at least one two-stroke oil engine for road-vehicle purposes was introduced in this country and abandoned.
He also appears to convey the impression that in America the two-stroke engine preponderates, but surely the two-stroke has only recently been introduced there for this class of work, and, as far as the operator is concerned, is still in the experimental stage, whilst the four-stroke in America has been running successfully for years?
With regard to the alleged variation of supplies of oil fuel in America, a country in which standardization has been carried to greater lengths than any other, I am at a loss to understand precisely what Mr. Ascough means. The four-stroke engine.operates successfully on locally produced fuel all over the world.
At present the answer still seems to be as given in the last paragraph of my article of your issue of March 10, that the four-stroke is smaller, lighter, and more economical than any two-stroke as yet offered to the C. W. CHAPMAN. Peterborough.