WAR VEHICLES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 267, 23 August 1946, Page 4

WAR VEHICLES

INQUIRY CONTINUED GILLIES CROSS-EXAMINED (P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. At the vehicles inquiry, Mr W, E. Leicester (counsel for four members of Parliament in their private capacity) stated that on Monday Gillies would produce a gross statement of sales of G.M.C. trucks, parts and scrap. Mr J. R. Bartholomew (the Commission) said that arrangement would be satisfactory. Private affairs must take second place where public interest was concerned through the present hearing.

Cross-examining. George Thomas Gillies, managing director of G. T. Gillies and Sons, Mr Leicester asked what prices individual trucks had brought. Witness replied up to £IOOO and more. When he- and his sons tendered for the vehicles they thought disposal would occupy at least five years. None of his sons had exchanged a truck for a ear, or for some timber. A new hydraulic hoist, as fitted to some trucks, would be worth £3SO. Witness had sold trucks fitted with hoists at £950. Witness did not know that a Wellington firm would lie prepared to take 200 to 300 wrecked trucks. He did not agree that his firm had charged exorbitant prices. Many .people had bought G.M.C.’s for £6OO to £IOOO each had expressed satisfaction and had come back for more. • Replying to Mr Cook, witness said his tender had borne a definite relation to the value he put on the vehicles. For Dodges and jeeps separately he had tendered a total of £9260. In March, when he lrad retendered after* Archibald’s release, he had named £26,010 for the two lots because, having started operations on G.M.C.’s,- he felt secured and could see there' was liable to be a better market than at the time of his first tender. That was the sole reason for the increase of £17,000. His second tender was unsuccessful. Whether lie could sell all the trucks he could recondition.—3oo, if he was lucky—depended entirely on the arrival of new trucks. Great damage had been done to the G.M.C.’s in the removal of jeeps from the trucks.' He would not have permitted prospective buyers of jeeps to clamber over the G.M.C.'s. -