Union Company Denies Motor Trade’s Allegations

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29075, 11 December 1959, Page 19

Union Company Denies Motor Trade’s Allegations

(fteu, Zeoiana Press Association)

WELLINGTON, December 10.

A Union Steam Ship Company employee denied at a sitting of the Motor Spirits Licensing Authority in Wellington today that, in applying for a licence to sell petrol, his company was trying to “whitewash” what it had done in the past. The company was applying for a licence to etail motor spirits from an existing pump at Evans Bay road, with sales restricted to the Wellington Patent Slip Company, Ltd., and a “limited number of employees of that company as well as the applicant company.”

The application was contested by the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Retail Motor Trade (Mr L. B. Crompton). The Authority—Mr S. C. Johnston, of Auckland (chairman) and Mr E. H. Langford, of Wellington—approved the application subject to sales being restricted to the Wellington Patent Slip Company. Mr M. G. Martin, indent officer of the Union company, told the Authority his company had been selling petrol without a retailers’ licence. He said an application for a licence was being made with a view to obtaining wholesale discounts for tyres and other accessories for the company’s vehicles. Some employees used their own vehicles on company business and it was the company’s practice to supply them with petrol. The company’s pump was "almost entirely” used for refuelling its vehicles and lorries belongisg to the Wellington Patent Slip Company. The two companies were independent organisations, but had a reciprocal arrangement in respect to vehicles. * To Mr Crompton, Mr Martin said his company had understood that a resellers’ licence embraced tyres and other accessories, but it now realised it did not* It had first become aware that a retail licence was necessary when it received the information from its garage foreman. Mr Crompton: Wasn’t it because for years he (the foreman) had been selling petrol, end I said it was illegal? Mr Martin: I do not know that.

Mr Martin, replying to another question, said he did not think the pump had been used for supplying petrol to just any person who asked for it. Drivers requiring netrol would not be serviced unless they had “reasonable standing.”

Mr Crompton: Unless they were known to the foreman? Mr Martin: That is true.

You are lodging an application to sell petrol to a limited number of employees. How are we to know what the expression “limited number” means?—lt would be our responsibility. In effect, this application has come forward to whitewash, what has been going on for years.— We want to put it on a legal basis. We are not trying to whitewash what was done in the past. Mr Crompton said many people entered the yard where the pump was installed. Some were employees of the company and others former employees. “Once you have this sort of licence the sky is the limit,” he said.