HOURS FOR SALE OF PETROL

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26857, 9 October 1952, Page 7

HOURS FOR SALE OF PETROL

VIEWS OF MOTOR TRADE

RETENTION OF LICENSING URGED (New Zealand Press Association) Wellington, October a. The New Zealand Motor Trade Association considers that the regulations governing the sale of petrol should nave been continued. “The Government should accept the responsibility for seeing that reasonable hours apply to petrol reselling, just as they see that reasonable hours apply to so many other businesses,” said the president of the association (Mr C. H. Preston, of Wellington) at the annual meeting today. Mr Preston said the association strongly favoured the retention of the licensing of petrol reselling, and it expected that if the Government repealed the Industrial Efficiency Act. special legislation would be introduced to replace it. Petrol resellers, he said, were not satisfied with the margin of profit they received today, which was exactly the same as they received in 1936. In 1936 it required a grdss profit on 1625 gallons of petrol to pay wages for one month for a garage attendant working a 44-hour week, but it now required more than 3500 gallons. The higher average age of motorvehicles on the roads in New Zealand was also mentioned by Mr Preston. The average motor-vehicle was today nearly 12 years old, but before the war it was less than six years old. “We require a steady flow of new vehicles to replace those going off the road through old age and heavy usage, and to fill the gap in imports caused by the war years,” he said. “We are concerned that the number of vehicles to come forward next year will be insufficient to meet anything like our normal requirements.”