The Acquirement of Motor Ambulances by Public Subscription.
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The acquirement of motor ambulances, other than by direct purchase out of the rates, is occupying an increasing amount of public attention. Seine towns have had the problem happily solved for them by the intervention of a philanthropic resident who has made a present of the necessary equipment for the service of the district. Other particular areas have had recourse to the inauguration of a public subscription list, frequently with the co-operation of the local police or fire-brigade officials, and in some eaees with the assistance of the local Chamber of Commerce.
The latest case of successful public subscription is that for which our contemporary "The East Anglian Daily Times" has made _ itself responsible. That journal has accepted the task, in conjunction with the Ipswich centre of the St. John Ambulance Asseciai.ion, of raising .a elm of a little more than £460, in order to put a modem vehicle at the disposal of Ipswich an& parts of East Suffolk. The necessary money has been •received, after a few weeks of strenuous work, and we take this opportunity to congratulate the above-mentioned county journal upon the success which has attended its efforts, and at the same time to commend its example to other similar journals.
The Easter Fillip.
Commercial motoring is not a seasonal traffic, except in respect of particular branches of passengercarrying activity. Eastertide, he the weather good or had. witnesses the opening phases of the many new developments which have been receiving attention and care during the preceding winter months. There has been no exception this year in respect of such advance preparations, and the pressure upon some coachbuildnig works and garages has been nothing short of abnormal. The response to this demand has been generally satiefactory, so far as our own observation goes, and according to interesting reports which have reached us from friends in different parts of the country. The weather in London and the South was above expectations we fear it will provide but meagre conselat:on for those who have suffered in some areas if we suggest that it might have been worse.
Turning from provincial excursions and outings to the special arrangements of the London motorbus companies, it is worthy of note that never before have so many extensions of route been contemporaneously adopted. The maximum trip range of eight years ago was in the vicinity of five miles each side of Charing Cross or other turning point, but now it is common to see regular trips farther afield than 20 miles from that centre. Through journeys, across the inner zone of London, have become increasingly the vogue, since they were initiated by the old Road Car Co., following our suggestions of September, 1905. We refer to the inauguration, of the Putney-Bow service, through the West End and the City, in 1906. That service was the fore-runner of all later exten sions, and of the through-city journey. . The amount of patronage that has been accorded to long-distance holiday routes is most encouraging from all points of view: it has once again demonstrated the fact that the railbound tramcar, which cannot on such occasions serve the populace other than in its weekday and business areas, has become hopelessly out of date and irretrievably handicapped.
Drivers for Fire-engines.
Some whileiage we penned a leading article concerning the difficulties which on occasion arise with regard to the choice of the best type of man as a driver of any motor fire-apparatus. We discussed the relative advisability of training firemen to become
drivers and alternatively of taking good drivers from other service and initiating them into their subsidi
ary duties as fire fighters. Several circumstances have, during the past week, again drawn our attention to this same problem.
As we write, we have been handed a photograph illustrating a mishap which occurred to Blackpool's fine new motor pump, which, on its second journey out, much to the surprise of the inhabitants of a private house, crashed through the railings and came to rest in the front garden, with the fire escape pointing through the breakfast-room window. Even were it desirable for us so to do, we could not, with no better information than this photograph, place the blame for this mishap, but the incident itself has served with others to attract our attention once again to the advisability of picking a man of exceptional suitability as the driver of the somewhat unwieldy automobile plant which nowadays represents the modern motor fire-engine.
Again, East Ham is shortly to own two new motor fire-engines, and the Works Committee of the Town Council has been seriously considering whether it should, have two of its old fire-engine coachmen or two of its firemen-mechanics trained to drive these new machines. One councillor backed the claims of the coachmen, as he considered that they had greater nerve to take traffic risks than the engineers. As we wrote on a previous occasion, this choice, as between steersman and mechanician, needs nice discrimination. To the layman it often appears that the man who controls the movement of such a. mass of mechanism must perforce be a mechanic. There is little doubt, however, in our minds that what is wanted in the driver of a. high-speed motor fire appliance is primarily skill at the wheel, readiness of resource, and accurate judgment as to distances. speeds and widths. 'His knowledge of mechanics need be of secondary importance. The fireman-mechanic can still be best employed keeping the machine in such a condition that it shall respond to every call on the part of the skilled driver, and shall uncomplainingly and readily work at full power when on long pumping duty.
We are, therefore, once again prompted to advise the many fire-brigade committees and firemasters who are contemplating the acquisition of modern motor fire plant—if indeed they are not already in
possession of it—to ensure that the men to whom is to fall the duty of steering these heavy equipments at considerable speed, under all conditions of traffic, should primarily be clear-headed and equipped with driving sense that is not inborn in as all.
As one of the principal officials or a big, brigade once put it to : ' It is better to make a driver into a. fireman than to attempt to choose your drivers from the firemen." Undoubtedly the men who drove the old horsed plants were drivers of infinite skill and daring; their plucky resource and self-sacrifice in certain memorable instances have been worthy of all praise. That class of man is, we consider, more likely to prove to be a fine motor-fire-engine driver than is the average mechanic-fireman, however great may be his skill in getting the best out of his engine and iii keeping the whole of the mechanism always tuned to a nicety. The driving; of a motor fire-engine is not child's play, and is fraught, at the hest, with great risk ; it calls for qualities that are necessary--only in noseh less degree—in the motorbus and lorry driver, but it needs little of the knowledge of the mechanic. East Ham will do well to train its excoachmen.
Delays at Warehouses.
Some of our supporters in Lancashire have written to us, apropos our references in recent issues to " Delays at Docks " and " Signs of Wavering Amongst Liverpool Cartowners," to point out that the difficulties which motor transport still has to overcome remain considerable at warehouses, both in Liverpool and Manchester.
The quicksdespateli arrangements which charae
terize the new warehouse of Messrs. Ralli Bros., in the cotton city, which modern innovations haa e
already been approved in our pages, have not yet, so far as outward evidence can testify, been appreciated at their full significance by either property-owners or packing-warehousemen. We have reasons none the less to believe that the greater facilities for rapid berthing, and loading or unloading, which are there disclosed, will be copied before long.
One subscriber tells us that the rule still holds good in Liverpool to give a motor lorry and its trailer only 20 bales of cotton if other lorries of any class are waiting, but he also intimates that the stringency of application of this rule has of late been relaxed, Owners of motor wagons who employ them solely to carry their own goods, as well as carriers-at-large who stiffer most by reason of terminal delays, will find, we fear, that some years more are required, before there is anything like a. general awakening to the economic importance of a preference for longdistance traffic over loud tra-ffic. Those days are, howaver, surely coming, although with irritating tardiness. We discern the signs.
We take the view, after some 18 years of close association with Lancashire haulage interests, that the slumbering yet innate intelligence and keenness o; those who have the say in such matters will not allow them to perpetuate handicaps which are rapidly be coming anachronistic. While horse interests were enormously predominant, it was impossible to obtain even consideration for suggestions that such long distance, high-speed traffic should be given either separate means of access to loading berths, a choice of berths, preferential turn, or any other special treatment. Nowadays, with scores of owners of horse plant also interested financially in motor rolling stock, the clouds which have kept motor carriers from the full enjoyment of their rightful heritage are lifting. A corresponding reversal of attitude was seen in the London motorbus world, between the years 1906 and 1908. Matters hung in the balance, as between horse influences and motor influences, during that period. May it not prove that parallel happenings will occur in Liverpool, Manchester, and other great ports, between, let us say, the years 1914 and 1917? We prophesy that such will be the case. B2
Other People' s Views About Costs.
Men who are responsible for the running of fleets of comniercial motors are frequently criticised by superior officers or employers who are in point of fact incompetent to deal with motor costs. There are some chairmen and managing directors of big undertakings who believe that they know everything, or at least adopt that pose. This attitude of severity frequently involves undoubted hardship for the manager of the transport department, or for the engineer in eharge of the fleet. We desire to help gentlemen who occupy those positions to combat supercilious and unintelligent views in respect of the costs per mile which tht,y are in such eases asked to show. The use to that end of our standard costs sheets, copies of which are being forwarded by us to dozens of applicants daily, cannot fail to have a steadying influence on the perfervid imaginations of those who seek to apply the !naming knife where there is nothing to be cut off with safety and where they should instead express approval of the disclosed results.
We have had several interesting communications, ail of which have very, naturally been marked "Private and confidential," from different centres in the Provinces, appealing to us to supply data to help pressed individuals to confirm the satisfactory character of the results which they have obtained. In two of these cases, despite the fact that the responsible parties were undergoing a course of censure at the hands of other parties above them, who were, to quote the words of one correspondent, " putting on the screw in a nasty manner," the costs which were thus bringing about expressions of disapproval were distinctly better in pence per vehicle-mile than the parallels from our own averages.
We are glad to realize that our free costs sheets can, at leastin some cases, be utilized to help qualified men . justify their assertions we are equally cognizant' of the converse—that they may also be effectively turned to account by considerate employers, to bring inefficient Managers into line. The more comparisons that are made, the better shall we be pleased.