As many of you know from reading these posts Promotor didn’t get involved in much general haulage work apart from the ‘Anglo Yugo Express’ business. Once that was given the push, because the dinar exchange rate went downhill and most of our work out of Yugo was paid in dinars, it was replaced by ‘Roadshows’ and other specialised jobs.
Managing Director Peter Calderwood and Director Dave Stagg pulled in a fair amount of business and many of the drivers liked the diversity offered by this type of work. No more chasing up and down to Yugoslavia and often put up in hotels and fed and watered. A bonus for the company was the lorries never had to work hard or clock up high milages and of course with the remunerations being so much higher it made economical sense.
However, much of the roadshow work died off in the early 90’s and it wasn’t until we picked up the Ford contract and it was up and running that Peter’s mind turned once again to this profitable line of work.
It must have been around 93 that the Mondeo was launched and Ford’s were throwing vast amounts of money at promoting this car. Many saw the Mondeo as the last chance of saving the company as the blue badge had been in decline for a number of years. One of the guys we were dealing with at Ford’s had asked for ideas and Peter seeing an opening suggested a mobile advertising campaign. The idea being that a trailer would be converted to carry, I think up to five cars, taken to an event or location where people could view the cars and then used as a hospitality suite. Peter was hoping for a contract for three trailers but in the end, although the idea was accepted and put into practise, only one found its way on to the road. There was another company putting on roadshows but that was only held in a tent and I believe they concentrated on the safety aspect offered by the Mondeo.
Peter of course now had to turn the idea into practise. I’m not sure how he sold the concept to Fords but one thing they weren’t going to get was a ‘all singing all dancing’ latest state of the art ‘Roadshow’ trailer and definitely not the latest lorry with a shiny new blue bag adorning its front. He selected one of our old, but still in good condition, trailers. Drew some basic plans on a few bits of A4 paper and gave them to our long serving workshop manager, Tom Miles, to interpret and construct. I must admit we all felt Tom was out of his depth and Tom agreed but Peter, being Peter, insisted he could do it. We mustn’t forget Tom was the only person working in the workshop at that time and this job had to be fitted in with all the other work he had to do. The actual design was quite simple though. Construct an upper deck, build in a front perspex pod and devise ramps to the upper deck which could then be raised to allow cars to enter the lower deck. This last idea had been used 20 years before when our trailers FM1 and FM2 were built. Nottsnortherner and Efes will both remember them but this latest reincarnation at least had electric motors, not a hand pully system, to raise and lower the ramps. One thing Fords were not going to get was a swish hospitality suite but room was made to provide some seating inside but most of the work was to be done ‘al fresco’. Thats outdoors.
Fords dictated their requirements such as the model of cars and literature to be shown and some of the locations. I was involved in putting together a rolling programme of events built around the ones chosen by them. This was great for me as it allowed me to travel round the country inspecting and choosing the most suitable locations. One thing Ford insisted upon was they would design and do the graphics on the trailer. They wanted a ‘high impact’ design and thats what they got. We purchased an old Ford Cargo unit had it painted blue and reregistered it so as not to reveal its age. Tony Blackman, our most experienced operative was tasked with running the trailer. He had two hostesses to help him and off they went. From large events such as County Fairs and Air Shows to public areas like Weymouth seafront and an hotel car park near Loch Ness certainly kept them busy for a large part of the year.
The job turned out to be a huge success which was great for our contact at Ford’s who earned loads of Brownie points for setting it up. We of course were quite happy just to see a smile on our bank managers face.
Please click on a photo to enlarge.
