Pigging It
Page 47
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AHAULIER who was asked to collect 30 pigs from a farm gladly accepted the job, but the driver was not so enthusiastic when, on arrival, he found that they were in a loft. The farmer had placed them there when they were small, but they had grown. The driver had to improvise a sling and carry each pig down a ladder. An hour-and-a-half delay in loading made rather a hole in the profit.
This is the kind of contingency that must be borne in mind in agreeing rates with the Fatstock Marketing Corporation, and I am pleased to learn that, in at least one area, hauliers arc making sure that the charges negotiated are fair.
Toll of Trouble
DURING past winters, passenger and goods vehicles have been involved in crashes or long delays on the steep, winding and treacherous main-road hill at Upper Hulme, near Leek. An exposed spot, its surface has always had the knack of making heavy vehicles unexpectedly uncontrollable. Passing that way just before Whitsuntide I noticed that a short by-pass was almost complete. So. soon, drivers will be avoiding a spot that has provided a toll of trouble for the road transport industry when weather has been severe.
Contemporary Thought
CROM a property advertisement of Messrs. E. H. Brooks I. and Son: "Hatton House Reputed 20 en ins. from Oxford Circus, but this was probably by horse."
Down in the Woods
LONG-DISTANCE drivers have their own little ways of giving theit cabs that home-from-home touch. From Newton Chambers and Co., Ltd., at Thorncliffe, near Sheffield. I hear of •a vehicle belongin& to the Tyneside
Safety Glass Co., Ltd., which one day in March arrived with a pet cat as part of its establishment.
While a load was being delivered at the excavator plant the feline literally took to the woods and disappeared. About a month later the same cat marched wearily into its Gateshead home, perhaps 100 miles away. Like the famous cat which founded the fortunes of flits cartoons, he must just have kept on walking.
Cage Me a Puss-eat
IN these days, the Felix coaches of Messrs. Frosts, of I Stanley, near Ilkeston, raise fewer smiles than once they did. Formerly the name caused many a laugh along the road. Mr. Frost told me that its origins lay in a slight mishap that befell one of his vehicles in the early 'twenties. The passengers walked homeward intermittently singing the Felix theme song. And so the fleet name became Felix coaches, although latterly the famous feline has disappeared from the front.
No Regimentation
SENIIOR officials responsible for public cleansing are, I usually find, men of some breadth of outlook. Perhaps this is because their individual spheres of activity often form good examples of the flexibility often found in British local government.
Title and scope of the cleansing chief vary from place to place. The 1953-54 president of the Institute of Public Cleansing, Mr. N. G. Wilson, of Edinburgh, doubles up his cleansing work with that of city lighting engineer. His successor, Mr. C. R. Moss, from Brighouse, takes in the job as part of his duties as chief sanitary inspector. President-elect • for. 1956-57, Mr. R. G. Totty, is both cleansing superintendent and transport manager for the city and county borough of Stoke-on-Trent,