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0 VOLUME 128 No. 3296 November 15, 1968 The excellent no-pass, no-fee vehicle servicing scheme for BMC vehicles announced this week goes farther than others of the same sort and is yet another sign that manufacturers see the absolute necessity of backing sales with new levels of service. But with the best will in the world it is not easy to provide consistently high standards. There are still pockets of the "tomorrow will do" mentality, which was bad enough when a vehicle was cheap to run but is in'defensible now that a big truck can stack up £50 a week in standing charges alone, and is losing earning power at the rate of perhaps £30 a day. We sometimes wonder whether the garage trade is made sufficiently aware of figures of this sort.
In these circumstances, the guarantee of passing or not paying, plus the back-up promise of covering any wasted standing time that results from failure. will be welcomed by operators. Though they are too canny to expect something for nothing: the work done in getting vehicles up to test standard is naturally paid for out of the operator's pocket, and who can quibble if, to ensure a pass, the work required may sometimes turn out to be extensive?
Bridge building
Tomorrow's transport managers will have new skills and new techniques to master but one of the fundamental subjects which aspiring managers will certainly still face is economics. The word can strike terror into some hearts; and they will not be reassured by turning to the dictionary. Ours defines the subject as "the practical science of the production and distribution of wealth", in which the word "distribution" may have a comfortingly familiar ring but the rest will be chilling. Yet transport economics is basic to most of the recognized professional examination courses.
In the Common Room feature this week our education correspondent begins a series which we hope will dispose of the mystery and apprehension surrounding the subject, not simply for students but for established operators finding a need for more sophisticated understanding of the factors affecting businesses.
There are two main hurdles: becoming totally familiar with the jargonmeaning of words that have different interpretations in common usage; and relating economic theory to practical transport finance. These are two bridges which the series aims to build.
Flash of inspiration?
Complaints of spares scarcity seem to have dwindled, and we hear fewer reports these days of major component failures on commercials. The industry has spent, and is spending, a lot of money on quality control and proving-test programmes. But some of the irritating little failures can be more than an annoyance: in these highly regulated days a minor fault can cause a test failure or bring a heavy fine.
At this week's Transport Association luncheon, for instance, there was criticism of speedometer cable failures—a problem that seems to have been with us from our earliest motoring days. Another that never seems to disappear is the light-bulb failure. Nobody expects bulbs to last for ever, but premature failure still seems a common complaint. Has anyone, we wonder, ever considered whether the lorry driver's habit of flashing side/tail and headlamps is a cause of the problem? All that day-and-night flashing must cause more peak loading of filaments than normal use. Perhaps an operator would like to run a comparative trial with pairs of vehicles, and report the result?