Page 95 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

Commercial tyres were even then comparatively expensive and if an end user could get
some compensation for what he thought was not his problem, or if the product had not
performed as well as he thought it should, he had some chance by sending it back to the
TMC.

Paul had a full load on his flatbed truck but one tyre at the back had not been tied on
sufficiently securely. It came off somewhere between Ely and Wisbech in the fen country.
Large lorry tyres weigh around 110 to 125 lbs or to those brought up to understand metric,
between 50 and 60 kilograms. Once they begin to roll, they can create their own powerful
momentum!

The only reason that I knew and Paul
did not, was that a tyre dealer friend
from near Ely, who I used to call on in
my days with Firestone had telephoned.

All the tyres were labelled before being
loaded onto our lorries and the tyre
retailer had received an irate telephone
call from a householder in that area.

The furious caller stating that one of ‘tyre
dealer’s’ tyres had rolled through the
gentleman’s garden, over his lawn and
demolished a fence at the back of his
property before ending up in a dyke at
the rear. The unfortunate gentleman knew categorically where the tyre had come from as it
had a label on it!
I managed to obtain the approximate whereabouts of the tyre, tried to pacify the tyre man
who fortunately had a good sense of the ridiculous and I sent Michael off in that ‘new’
second-hand blue Renault 4 van to try and recover the tyre. It was now about 3pm and we
did not see Michael until the next morning.

(Picture of similar renault 4 Van .....
ours was blue!)

Michael had found the location, the garden
with the tyre track across the lawn and
flower beds, the demolished fence and
eventually the tyre in the dyke at the back.

Michael explained that he could see no one
about and not wishing to create
unnecessary anguish, drove straight in and
up to the demolished fence.
Fortunately there was a handy tree and
Michael managed to throw a rope over the
tree, secure it to the tyre and thence to the
front bumper of the little van.

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