Bird's Eye View By The Hawk
Page 58
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Gourmand's Paradise
FOR me, the highlight of last Sunday's issue of The Sunday Times was a three-column panel advertisement, inserted by Associated Industrial Consultants, Ltd., inviting applications for the post of secretary of the Metropolitan and South Eastern Area of the Road Association. It said "The secretary will be called upon to attend, generally with the chairman, a number of functions of the Association throughout the area. His personality should be such that he would enjoy these events, be competent in his duties and inspire confidence in the members. Knowledge of secretarial, legal and road haulage matters
is not essential. , ."
Apparently, members are being asked to pay up to £2,000 a year to a man whose main qualification is a constitution that will withstand repeated onslaughts from food and dfink. And he will not even have to get himself home.. He will generally have the chairman to look after him.
Mr. Frederick Pope (left), who was 91 on Monday, with his wife and son, Fred, who helps his father in the haulage business of Pope and Sons. They are seen in front of one of their Bedfords.
Haulage
Jam Today
THE advertisement was, of course, for a successor to Mr. P. S. Woodhouse, who left on Wednesday to become manager of S. E. Thomas and Son, Ltd., Aylesford, Kent. The company specialize in bulk haulage and split collections and deliveries, and are old established.
Mr. Woodhouse is returning to his home ground as an operator. He has continued to live in Gillingham and, apart from having improved his position, he now has only an eightmile journey to his office, He ,begins the New Year with jam on both sides of his well-earned bread.
Selling By Numbers
THERE seems to be no limit to the publicity twists that an ingenious mind can apply to a commercial vehicle. Even registration numbers are now being used to advertise the Heinz 57 Varieties. Three Morris 5-ton oil-engined vans which W. Mumford, Ltd., Plymouth, have supplied to the Plymouth Transport Co., Ltd., for operation undercontract to Heinz have the registration marks C057, JY57 and DR57.
This should put the 600 group on their mettle.
Operating At .91
THREE years ago, when he was 88, Mr. Frederick Pope tried to retire. Three weeks of inactivity were more than enough for him, and he went back to his haulage business of Pope and
Sons, Dalston, London, N.1. Although he celebrated his 91st birthday last Monday, he is still to be found in his office from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day.
He began his haulage business with a horse and van, after driving a horsed bus, and now has 28 lorries engaged mainly on London dock work. He was created a Freeman of the City of London in 1909.
Mr. Pope and Mr. William Foden, governing director of Fodens, Ltd., who was 90 last September and still takes an active part in his company, should start a Veteran's club. How many other members could they recruit?
Seven Years' Hard
BRITISH bus operators complain, with justification, of the delay in securing authority to increase fares to match rising costs. But the Calcutta Tramways Co. have been trying for seven/years, without success, to increase their fares.
As a result, Mr. David E. Webb, chairman of the company, told the shareholders: "Either a substantial increase in fares is agreed to within the very near future or, within a very few years, the city of Calcutta will have no trams." • Mr. Webb does not have these worries with his tight little Provincial Traction companies in Gosport and Fareham.
Count 10 . . . A LESSON in restraint was provided the other morning, in the West End of London, when a foreign woman offered a bus conductor a £5 note for a 3d. fare. Apart -from an inrush of air through his open mouth, accompanied by gargling noises, which sounded like a vacuum cleaner in agony, his poise was impeccable. When a passenger had changed the note, the peak-hour scrum went on as usual.