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BL bus fleet

8th November 1974
Page 98
Page 98, 8th November 1974 — BL bus fleet
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

It cannot be too often that a manufacturer gets the opportunity to run a fleet of his own buses. But this is the situation that British Leyland truck and bus division found itself in recently. Ron Ellis, the division's managing director, told me the other day that when the Jamaica Omnibus Services fleet was nationalized the country's transport minister rang Ron direct and asked if his men could run the fleet.

Apparently, rival Italian and Japanese makers were eager to step in and do the task so Ron agreed on the spot. Local field service engineers found themselves appointed chief engineer, traffic manager and so on. Jamaica has 90 Leyland Nation als — one of the biggest export fleets so far — so the Leyland men learned some valuable lessons.

Now professional busmen have taken over the running of the fleet and Leyland has gone back to making, selling and servicing buses instead of operating them too. Ron tells me that it was a somewhat chastening experience to find out what the day-to-day operational problems are really like from, an operator's viewpoint. In Jamaica as well as having to contend with the climate and some incredible road surfaces, buses tend to be loaded to two or three times their supposed maximum capacity so I have no doubt that these problems were quite numerous. ber hada point. So it's refreshing to find a vehicle which goes against the trend — the Leyland Saurer bus described in last week's CM.

As our report showed it seems to be a well thought out bus with lots going for it. But a committee design it certainly is, so I hear. Representatives of British Leyland, Self Changing Gears, Saurer and DAB (Leyland's Danish subsidiary) all met regularly to fulfil the requirements of M. P. Tappy, the exacting chief engineer of Geneva Tramways, for whom`the bus was destined.

In the past M. Tappy has, apparently, been known to count the rivets in a bus body and refuse to accept the vehicle if only one was missing. Most manufacturers recognize that he is one of Europe's most meticulous bus buyers so the consortium was proud to get the order in the first place. What has been even more rewarding, though, is that he has been generally pleased with the product of a British-Swiss-Danish committee. So much for theories.

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