Mulberry bushing
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Whenever I attend a foreign transport conference my heart bleeds for those Britons whose jobs take them frequently to these gatherings. Individually the foreign delegates are usually delightful people, but put them on a platform or behind a mike in the body of the hall and they slide like a buttered carrot into that terrible habit known as listening to one's own voice. They drone on and on, never saying in one short word what can be obscured in a multiplicity of complicated verbal images.
They were at it in force at the recent ECMT meeting in Madrid, attended by Our Man. He tells me that the academic, governmental and even operating representatives from all over Europe demonstrated what incredibly pompous, verbose and dull dogs they could be. The British contributors were, by contrast, models of clarity and brevity, often using a touch of humour. Oh, the dreadful Continental fear of losing dignity by being amusing !
Sir Cohn Buchanan (of Buchanan Report fame) brought one session down to earth so cleverly, with amusing opinions about the simple realities of transport in human terms, that he drew a spontaneous round of applause. We can count him as one of " us " because, as he told the conference, he had driven to Spain with his wife in a converted truck, and regarded himself as a lorry driver for the purposes of Spanish transport statistics. I think "converted truck" is a rather crude description of his mobile living accommodation, but we know what he means.
I think Sir Colin hit the spot when, with grave courtesy, he suggested that all too many people had a vested interest in complexity and problems. It was, he suggested, possible to elaborate a problem to the point where no course of action could possibly be advocated.
Our Man in Madrid got the impression that most of the practitioners of that art had been invited to the ECMT gathering.
British or best?
No such strictures can be applied to W. J. Oldacre, chairman of Oldacre Services, who last week pulled no punches about criticising those advocating "buy British," now that we are all supposed to be good Europeans, as he put it. "I believe that in the conditions British businessmen face today, they should buy only the best," he declared.
The significance of that remark will become obvious when I tell you that Mr Oldacre was speaking at the opening cf the company's new MercedesBenz sales and service depot near the M4, at Wokingham.
Mr Oldacre and his md Bruce Cliffe don't see much future for any except the "big battalions" in the truck world. As Mr Cliffe sees it, only the three American giants, plus Leyland, Mercedes-Benz and Fiat, offering a wide range of vehicles, will survive in the UK market. The others, he thinks, "will merge, vanish, or specialise; some may even be nationalised. All will rationalise."
Fighting talk.
Barber's shop
Perhaps it's a sign of the times that haulage operators are getting into the truck sales business. Oldacres had a transport business as far back as 1881; but they've been in the motor trade for some long time, too. On the other hand, Barbers of Mitcham, Surrey, after more than half a century in haulage, have just been appointed DAF truck agents.
I suppose nobody knows better than a haulage operator with 60 years' experience what kind of service the haulier wants. Just for starters they're offering a parts, repairs and recovery service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from their premises in Goat Road. Come to think of it, I've never heard of a barber putting in such long hours.