T HE Law Officers of the Crown have now reached a
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decision upon the case placed before them by the Ministry of Transport and support the contention that a goads carrying vehicle not used solely for the oonveya,nce of goods may, if the owner so desires, be registered under paragraph 6 of schedule 2 of the Finance Act, 1920, tax being paid on the basis of 11 per horse-power. [Page 93.
THAT the London General Omnibus Co. are not standing still there is abundant evidence. This week's article on the new single-decker affords proof Of the contention, and in a later issue we shall tell of another vast enterprise. [Page 110.
OUR series of articles on the overhauling of .wellknown chassis is proving as:ipopular as we had expected, but we were too cautious in our first printing order for reprints and binding covers. We make an interesting announcement concerning these. [Page 93.
BRITISH-MADE cabs for British cab owners is a policy to be encouraged, and our article which discloses the designs and intentions of a new syndicate, will be read with interest. There is no reason why cab chassis construction should have been so neg lected in this country in recent years. [Page 116.
A STANDING grievance with exhibitors of coinmereial motor vehicles at the Royal Agricultural Society's annual show and with visitors interested in such exhibits has been the manner of dispersing them throughout the Show ground, At long last they are to be grouped in a section, and our caustic .contri-• • butor, "The InSpecte-r," for once in a while has no cause for a grumble. . . [Page 112.
IS the Durham County Council optimistic concerning•its efforts to secure a monopoly (for that is what it 'would amount to) of passenger road, transport within the county boundaries? Its success or otherwise in getting its Bill through Parliament depends on the amount of vim which is put into the opposition on behalf of private, enterprise, and we earnestly hope there will be no shortage of that commodity. ' [Page 109.
IN this country the holiday maker exists in sufficient numbers to render catering or his tastes and requirements, in some shape or form, profitable the whole year round. We have felt that, with keener competition, the motor coach proprietor will make. an effort to keep his vehicles in service for more than that obvious • period—the summer months. So the all-the-year-round type of vehicle must make a strong appeal to the practical coach proprietor, and our article shows how it is adapted and operated accord.: ing to the seasons, and the easy manner of acquiring it by instalments. [Page 103. A County Council's BusProposals.
WE ARE glad to hear that a large amount of opposition is gathering against the road monopolistic proposals of the Durham County Council, as contained in the private Bill lodged for consideration by Parliament. Powers are sought for in the Bill, not only to lay down tramways. over 33 miles of road and to equip a further 57 miles for trackless vehicles or trolley buses, but to run omnibuses on any route within the county only subject to the approval of the Minister of 'Transport, who, moreover, according to the provisions of the Bill, may over-ride the objections of the local authorities should he deem any refusal of consent on their part to be unreasonable. Not only are the • routes undefined, but there is to be no limitation upon the powers of the county council and no stipulation as to maximum fares.
Were the clauses in the Bill to become embodied in an Act of Parliament., all private transport. enterprise in the country would be killed. There is already. an extensive system of passenger and goods transport. in the area covered by the Bill and considerable services exist. It would be impossible for these to be extended, or for new services to be laid down (in volving provision of garages and rolling stock and ' the organization of the services), because they would,' if they proved at all promising, certainly be cut into by the council's bus services which, with the rates, to fall back upon, could be run at .almost any fare. ; For the convenience of the public, we say that competition is not altogether to be objected to, but we do consider that cempetition. should be fair, -should be calculated materially to encourage traffic and to develop it, and should be conducted upon sound economical lines. The proposals of the Durham, County-Council do not promise compliance with these conditions. On page 109 we deal with the details of the, council's proposals.
The New Speed Limits and .Axle Weights. THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT made a statement in the House of Commons last week' to the effect that, owing to the policy favoured in the House, of deferring legislation nob absolutely necessary at the present time, it was not intended to introduce legislation during the present Session for the revision and amendments of the Acts relating to the use and constrtiction of motor vehicles. It is just as well that this decision has been cometo, if what we hear on the best authority be correct, • namely, that impracticable axle weight limits for the ditlerent classes of vehicles are being advocated in certain quarters.
We understand that a mere increase in the limit of speed from 12 m.p.h. to 16 m.p.h. is now being urged in the case of those vehicles the axle weight of any axle of which does not exceed 4i tons, whilst., where the axle weight exceeds 4i tons but does not exceed tons, the proposal is that the speed limit shall be 10 m.p.h.
A permitted speed of 16 m.p.h. is necessary in the case of all public service vehicles, in order to enable them to be run economioally and to meet public convenience (for only during the busy hours and in the congested streets of Central London is the average speed, in practice, kept down below that figure), whilst all heavy vehicles up to, let us say, 4 tons capacity can, as a general rule, exceed the present permitted speed of 12 m.p.h. But a limit of ai• tons to the weight of any axle for a permitted speed '(according to the projected scale) of not exceeduig 10 m.p.h. would cut ont practically all the 3 ton and 4 ton lorries and all the largercapacity single-deck buses. A loaded lorry of either of the capacities mentioned cannot he brought within tan axle weight BLit, and, in the case of the single-deck bus, there is a greater proportion of the total weight over the rear axle than is the case with the double-deck bus. For these vehicles to be limited to a speed of 10 m.p.h.—in other words, for their permitted speeds, instead of being increased, which is the tendency of legislation in connection with the mechanically propelled vehicle, to be reduced—would not only be absurd, but it would be extremely injurious, for these are among the most general and the most useful of all types of vehicles. By far a more practical scale of speed limitations would be 16 miles per hour for Vehicles the axle weight of which did.not exceed 6itons, and 20 m.p.h. for those with axle weights up to ‘q-,. tons. Just a furtherword whilst we are on this subject. It strikes us as a grievous pity that-the new Motor Act cannot be prepared for consideration during the present Session of Parliament, because what is most urgently needed is a revision of the present limit of 12 m.p.h., which acts repressively upon passenger and goods transport.
Loadingand Unloading by Gravity Conveyor.
THE FREQTJENCY with which manual abour is employed in loading arid unloading vehicles is a matter which is sufficient to occasion considerable surprise amongst many who have gone desply into the question of promoting efficiency in all branches of transport. Often more time is taken in actually loading or unloading goods than in transporting them. Why is it that in this supposedly enlightened era so many people will persist in adhering to antediluvian methods of handling goods? Many complaints are heard as to the great amount of labour required in combating the force of gravity, and yet this force may well be employed, and in a few cases is, as a valuable ally by sot dealing with the goods that the work usually necessitated by it can not only be negatived, but the force actually utilized to perform much of the work in both loading and unloading; that is to .say, by the use of gravity conveyors.
The value of the gravity conveyor is by no means fully realized by the average user of commercial vehicles. In large warehouses, especially, it is invaluable. When a vehicle has to be unloaded, it can be-driven up a ramp to a. level higher than that of the door on to which the goods are to be unloaded, one section of the conveyor hung to the side of the lorry and tEe goods passed down it on to the main portion, whence they can be conveyed to almost any
B14 reasonable distance expeditiously and without risk of damage. In a similar way, when a vehicle has to be loaded it can be driven to a level lower than that of the floor from which the loading is to be performed, and the conveyor used for running the goods into the body, two or more men being stationed in the latter to receive and stack the goods, the speed of loading being limited only by their capacity to perform these functions. The type of conveyor most suited to this purpose consists of sections, each comprising two sidemembers supporting a number of rollers which revolve on ball bearings. These sections can_ be joined together to make any length required, and that which reaches to the body of the vehicle can be hinged. Where corners have to be turned, the rollers are usually tapered to one end, so tltat the cases of goods do not slide off, to allow goads to descend from con, siderable heights a "spiral staircase-" typo of conveyor can be usefully employed ; such conveyors can be made to deal with as many as 3,000 cases 01 packages of goods per hour.
Motion Study and Motor Transport.
N EFFORT is now being made to bring forcibly to the notice of in this country the advantages of motion study as it has been developed in America. No doubt a certain amount of good will be achieved, although it must not be supposed that our industrial chieftains have previously been ignorant of the developments which have taken place in this direction in the States. That this science, so far as it relates to the manual operations of manufacture, has not made the headway in this country that it might have done is probably not entirely due to lack of knowledge or apathy on the part of our industrial leaders. The undoubted objections of the British trade unionist to have his every movement analysed much in the same way as that of a microbe studied through a microscope has probably something to do with it. But in recent years, particularly in the motor industry, quite an amount of attention has been devoted to motion study, in so faras it coneerns'the elimination of wasteclittune and energy in the conveyance of material about the factory. The modern factory is planned so that work passes from. man to man and from machine to machine by the shortest route and by the quickest means. It is in the use of the finished products of the motor industry that motion•study seems to us to have been ne,glected. Most owners of freight-carrying vehicles endeavour to operate them as economically as they can—indeed, present-day conditions enforce economy —but we feel that the subject is often not studied as scientifically as it should be. True, the docttine of the "return load" is now generally accepted as one condition of efficient working, but we fear that many people are inclined to think that, having secured a return load on any trip, they have achieved the height ef efficiency. Such, of course, is not the case. The "return load" is an admission of the need for motion study, because an unladen journey represents so much " lost motion."
But there are many other aspects of operation in which " motion " can be lost, time wasted and unnecessary fatigue entailed, and it is to these that motion study might profitably be directed. To take the case of vehicle manipulation alone— the art of driving, in other words—here is a field for investigation.. Then there is the question of loading and off-loading—another field—and so on. But all the investigation and cinema research that can be made is useless unless the principles established are carried into execution. That is the function of Management, and the efficiency of transport operation depends eventually on scientific management on the road as well as in the factory.