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Page 63
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R. JOHN BARBER is now a school master mariner. Apparently he still has some surplus energy left after :tioning as a director of Victory Transport, Ltd., and thampton Football Club. as chairman of Southampton Subof the Road Haulage Association, a member of the R.H.A. anal executive committee and national council, a pillar of :hampton Chamber of Commerce. rotarian and peacock ier, so he has acquired an interest in a private school. 1 sorry, when I met him at the Southampton Sub-area dinner Friday, to find he had not topped his tails with a mortard.
future, any of Mr. Barber's drivers who exceeds his 11-hour . may expect to have to write out Section 19 a hundred .s in copperplate, or take six of the best with a half-shaft.
ecialized Service
IS co-director of Victory Transport, Mr. C. G. Wise. told me that distribution from store (a side of the business for :h he is responsible) had grown so much that they had had :met another 18,000 sq. ft, warehouse on the splendid dry estate at Rownhams where the company are quartered. expansion has been accompanied by the need for new (-control systems for customers. which Mr. Wise has spent y hours in devising.
'holcsalers are now following the example of retailers in ing down their stocks and demanding more frequent deliverif smaller quantities from manufacturers. The result is that : premises are sometimes so congested with vehicles that a ory driver may have to wait half a day to collect a 5-ton
od for the Soul
D I hear Mr. R. N. Ingram, national chairman of the R.H.A„ in his speech at the Southampton Sub-area dinner, it that members had criticized the delay in launching the
Association's publicity scheme? The lack of urgency in the campaign is matched only by members' reluctance to pay up.
Additive
THE Romans had some pleasant customs. One was to make a human sacrifice when the ridge pole was fixed on the roof of a new building. The squeamish Anglo-Saxons substituted a green bough for a corpse, and later an opportunist added a noggin of ale to the festivities.
The " topping out ceremony was revived when the last skip of concrete was poured on the roof of Castrol (Glass) House in London. After the foreman of the builders had nailed up a green fir bough, he and Mr. Leonard Broadway. managing director of the Wakefield Castrol Group, solemnly quaffed noggins of ale. They should, of course, have knocked back tankards of oil.
On the Fence
"THINGS are terrible," a bodybuilder told me the other day.
He was echoing the experience of many in the motor trade, who are suffering from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's refusal to give an indication whether he will remove purchase tax from commercial-vehicle chassis in the Budget. Operators who are delaying the placing of orders may have to wait a long time for delivery when makers are suddenly swamped by post-Budget contracts.
Later the same day, hauliers complained bitterly of a further decline in rates. I was left wondering whether it was better to have business that did not pay or no business at all.
Fifth Column
" SURELY a car is better than a bus — can always deliver your car," says an advertisement in the house journal of the Ceylon Transport Board. I would have thought that the Board were hardly in a position to invite competition,