Paris truck trip for Mr Walker
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• Mr. Peter Walker became the first British senior politician to accompany a heavy commercial vehicle on a working run, when in his capacity of Shadow Minister of Transport, he took his seat in a 32-ton articulated lorry en route to Italy on Wednesday.
Mr. Walker accompanied the vehicle across the Channel as far as Fontainebleau, just south of Paris, after which his political commitments made it necessary for him to return to England.
The object of this one-day one-night exercise was to enable Mr. Walker to obtain first-hand experience of various aspects of international heavy transport, including driving conditions, the state of the major European trunk highways and the type of traffic using them, cross-Channel ferry facilities (including the quality of road access to and from the docksides), and the amount of documentation and general formality involved in crossing from one country to another with a commercial cargo.
Pennant Transports Internationaux Ltd., a member of the Bulk Storage Group of Companies, which is part of the Standard Industrial Group, provided the vehicle, a Volvo FB88 three-axle tractive unit, coupled to a Merriworth 12-metre (39ft) TIR semitrailer, the load of which consisted of 20 tons of butyl rubber being exported to Italy from Esso Chemicals Ltd.