• SELL THEM GOOD ACCESSORIES.
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The Importance of Selling Only High-grade and Substantially Made Accessories to • Owners of Commercial Vehicles.
By "Vim."
COMING home by road the other night, I almost .. ran into the back of a covered motor lorry which was drawn up by the hedge. If the driver, who was stooping over the rear lamp, had not at that moment struck a match to light the lamp, I have DM doubt that I should have ' biffed " his lorry, and him into the bargain! Not unnaturally, I pulled up so as to be able to make a few pointed comments suitable for such occasions ; but my words were stifled at birth by a torrent of the most perfectly chosen curses, which burst from the driver and. quite eclipsed anything of the kind that I had heard before. His remarks were not addressed to me in fact, I do not think that he was more than dibily aware of my presence. He was calling down, or calling up (I ant inclined to think the latter, as he referred several times-to the nether regions), all sorts of horrible penalties on the united heads of the people who made the lamp, those who sold it to his firm, and his firm for sending him out with it. It was an invocation which would have turned a pagan priest of ancient times piebald with envy.
When he had come to the end of his speech, lighting the lamp, and his breath, if seemed: time for me to say something, so I asked him why, he was upset. At first he appeared disposed to go all over his remarks again but on being assured that I had heard every one of them, he removed his tail lamp and brought it within the rang-e of my headlights, to show me what manner of thing it was. Then he dismounted both side lamps and did likewise. All three were large-size paraffin lamps of a type suitable for touring cars, but utterly incapable of standing up to the jolts imparted by solid tyres. They had been patched and mended many a time and oft, and at that stage of their existence were decorated with numerous lumps of solder, applied by an unskille.d hand, and were evidently kept together principally by the pieces of copper wire with which they were liberally festooned. The lorry was then an hour late
owing to the bad roads having shaken out each light again and again, with prospects of more to follow, and the driver had already had an encounter with one policeman who was strongly inclined to report him for having no rear light when passing through a village. After he had shown me his lamp.s, he proceeded to point out his horn and driving mirror, which, being within the rays, of my lamps, were visible without having to dismantle them, or I verily believe he would have gone to the trouble of taking them off to show them to me in his desire to relieve his mind of its burden of emotion. The horn would have disgraced a taxi even if it had been in good working order—which it was not, being patched about the bulb and tied to the vehicle with string, having parted company with its bracket. r; The mirror was a flimsy toy, which might have been serviceable in the powdering of a lady's nose, but which had long since retired from the arduous work of reflecting a backward view to the driver of the: lorry; when I saw it, it was flapPing in the breeze at the end of a length of wire. And for motor agents, the moral of this anecdote is plain. Ordinary accessories made and intended for touring care may last for .years in such service; but for commercial vehieleS, especially for those fitted with solid tyres, they are wrong. Gilt chairs with spindle legs are not more out of place in the bar of a public-house than are touring-car accessories on a lorry. Lamps, horns, and so on, have to be specially manufactured if they are to give satisfa.etion for any length of time on ears used for industrial purposes. The reliability of a motor vehicle is as the reliability of its least dependable necessary component; that is to say, the finest chassis ever built is little better than junk for the time being if its lamps shed their oil reservoirs an a dark night— unless the driver happens to be a man who does not
mind running the risk of being summoned. On the whole, I think, that poor accessories do more harm. to the reputation of a make of chassis than does a, weakness in any part of the chassis itself, becausethe irritation caused by a breakdown is in proportion to its avoidableness. It is maddening for a driver to be held up on the road, not once but repeatedly, simply because a few extra sovereigns wer'e net spent on equipping his vehicle with proper accessories. When a driving shaft breaks, he resigns himself to the inevitable ; but when he is continually obstructed in traffic because the horn given him will only make a . noise like a child's doll saying " " " Pap-pa " he gradually acquires homicidal tendencies towards the makers of his ear, the
agents, who sold it and its appurtenances, and his employers for not having had the sense'to buy something better. Agents must refuse to sell any but the very best accessories to their commercial-vehicle customers, even if these customers are keen buyers on price, out of respectfor their own reputation as. agents. As a matter of fact, since people who purchase vans and lorries are business men,. there it ,seldoin much trouble in persuading them that only the best equipment is good enough. There is no saving at. all in cutting down the quality of lamps, horn, speedometer, mirror, number-plates, and the like.; and, so far as the lighting is concerned, this statement applies with equal truth to electrical installations.