Big Business
Page 57
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ALARGE order for Bedford buses mayN 1 hear, be placedby a Scottish municipality. The annual analysis of municipal bus fleets Compiled by The Commercial Motor, which was published On December 6 last year, showed a total of 62 Bedfords mit a an aggregate fleet of 18,$80. rim by British municipalities. Edinburgh Corporation were among the operators., with 15 Bedfords.
Co-operation
nPERATORS. report that, with notable excePtions. vehicle manufacturers are becoming more amenable to Suggestions for the impfoVement of desigtrandService. No doubt the pinch of competition has accounted-for this NYelcome attitude. • An outstanding example Of what ein be done when men who know what they want and men who. know how to do it get together, is the Dennis Paravan, described on pages 48-50. Credit is due to Dennis Bros., Ltd., for so quickly taking up the suggestions put forward by Mr. R. B. Brittain and his colleagues in the express carriers' group of the Road Haulage Association. They should reap a rich harvest.
Veteran Enthusiast
AT the Dennis works, at Guildford, last week, my old friend_ Clifford Scott, introduced me to Mr. G. N. Grenside, an engaging individualist who has a consuming passion for antique fire-engines. He is the guiding spirit in the Dennis Apprentices Association, whose members, with Mr. Grenside's encouragement, financial and otherwise. buy old fire-engines and recondition them in their spare time. He showed me with pride a 1914 model on which he was working, It was originally delivered to Coventry Fire Brigade and was later bought by G.E.C. Mr. Grenside unearthed it this year and had an adventurous 11-hour journey back to Guildford with it. The Association also have a 1929 model. A 1928 model has been sold to Lord Montagu for his museum. Apprentices in borrowed helmets take their veterans to car race meetings and other public functions. " It is great fun and it does the firm a bit of good," said Mr, Grenside. Unfortunately he has shortly to do his national service with the R.A.F. and Dennis will lose a great enthusiast.
Peace-Maker Retires
AT last Sir Wilfred Neden. Chief Industrial Commissioner at the Ministry of Labour, who has unhappily become so well known to bus operators, is to retire. On August 24 he will be succeeded by Mr_ P. FL Si. John Wilson, who has been Under-Secretary of the industrial relations department at the Ministry since January last year. He is 50 and is the eldest son of Bishop H. A. Wilson, one-time Bishop of Chelmsford. He joined the Ministry. 1930 . after Leaving Cambridge. and has had wide experience in einployinent and training work. It is to be hoped that rOad. transPOrt operators will not need his services.
Under the Skin
QTANDARD1ZED tyre prices may suggest to the casual observer stagnation and collusion in the industry, In fact, it masks extremely keen competition among manufacturers for business on the basis of service. They are outbidding one' another by providing complete tyre-record systems and inspections free of charge, each trying to produce a more elaborate system than the other.
A big operator told me the other day that he had abandoned tyre recording and was in future going to, rely on , the good offices of the manufacturers, thereby reducing his clerical costs.
Internal Strife
r'OMPETIT1ON is fierce not only between makers hut
\--••• between subsidiary cOmpanies of the same organization. To settle a dispute about some arrangements he was making for tyre service for his nation-wide fleet, the operator called a meeting of five disgruntled representatives, each from a different subsidiary of a big group. At first they eyed each other with mild distaste, but when it was explained to them that individually their companies eriuld not provide the service required, but collectively they could do good business, their attitude changed.'
Heresy
I NCIDENTALLY, the operator concerned is beginning to entertain heretical doubts about the need for any kind of record of individual costs. His argument is that, as a result of improvements in vehicle design, cost figures for particular
u nits soon become out of date for comparative purposes. He inclines to the view that only total fleet costs, with periodical simples of individual types, are necessary. Wars have been started by less radical thinking than that.
The First 100,000 N two years eight months, the B.M.C. Drivers' Club has • enrolled 100,000 members. Membership is still growing at the rate of about 500 a month and there are now more than 100 branch centres in the British Isles.
One of the aims of the club is to promote safety and courtesy on the road, and at the end of the year the first awards for inununity from blameworthy accidents for three-, fiveand 10-year periods will be made. There is no doubt that drivers' clubs are an inspired idea.