Page 117 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK TWO "BOSTON 1960 TO 1970"
P. 117
Both Fred and George Milson were ‘no nonsense’ type
people. Straight to the point and no time to be wasted with
small talk!
From the very time that Fred had sold George Milson the
idea of using Firestone Tyres exclusively, a Firestone Service
engineer called every month at the exact same time to check all
the tyres on every bus in the fleet. Every vehicle had a tyre
inspection sheet with spaces for tyre dimensions, tyre
pressures and tyre tread depth remaining. All dust caps were
removed methodically one by one for these checks and most
importantly and rigidly insisted on by George Milson, every
tyre valve had to be checked for possible air leakage before the
dust cap was replaced.
Each bus had six wheels and Stan our regular engineer
who at that time lived in Belper, Derbyshire took almost half a
day to complete his check.
The resulting sheets were then handed over to Mr Milson
for him to authorise any necessary work to be done.
Milson’s were still using cross ply tyres on all their buses as
this was the original equipment supplied when the buses were
new. Radial ply tyres were fast becoming more and more
popular because of their advanced longer wear and softer ride
characteristics, but Milsons were loath to change.
In fact some of the buses were getting to such an age that
we had to stock some of the older sizes of tyre at Lincoln
117