CONSERVING OF FUEL

Southland Times, Issue 24163, 27 June 1940, Page 6

CONSERVING OF FUEL

CONSOLIDATING CITY DELIVERIES INVERCARGILL TRADESMEN DOING THEIR PART An earnest attempt to comply with the request by the Minister of Supply (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) to consolidate the delivery of general commodities and thus conserve petrol supplies is being made by Invercargill tradesmen. Bakers, milkmen, butchers, grocers and coal merchants have been conducting their deliveries on a war-time economy b’asis for some time and many have adopted methods of collective deliveries which have greatly minimized their usual services. One bakery firm in the city has reduced its runs to such an extent that it is saving 150 gallons of petrol a month.

The master bakers of Invercargill have not yet met to discuss a scheme to eliminate overlapping, but they say that there is so little overlapping that the saving would be infinitesimal. Invercargill is almost unique in its bread delivery services; there is very little private delivery of bread carried out, and compared with any other town or city in the South Island it stands out for the smallness of that service. The reason given is that the bread trade is firmly established in Invercargill by fewer companies than in other places. There are only eight bakeries in Invercargill; in the smaller town of Oamaru there are 13 bakeries. In addition, one of the two largest bakeries in Invercargill has no private deliveries at all; it supplies its own shops and a few stores.

“We feel that we are doing our part in trying to conserve petrol supplies,” said the principal of one bakery. “We have cut our town runs down from five to three a week and our country runs down from three to two. In that way we are saving 150 gallons of petrol a month.” MILK DELIVERIES Representatives of the milk retailing business said that they had been working on a scheme of consolidation for several months. Milkmen, both in Invercargill and in other parts of New Zealand, were r.t the front of the petrol saving schemes in deliveries, and those in Invercargill were waiting for advice from the Government about ways and means of completely eliminating overlapping. “We are keen to co-operate,” said one representative. Coal deliveries had been cut down almost by half and if more co-opera-tion was forthcoming from consumers they could be cut down still more, declared the manager of a Southland coal company. “We made a start on the Conservation of petrol some months ago,” he said. “By asking our customers to give us their orders two and three days ahead we were able to organize district deliveries to such an extent that three and four orders were carried in one load. If the general public continues to help we will be able to minimize our deliveries still further. All we ask is that they let us have their orders days or even a week ahead.” Similar responses to the Minister’s request have been made by grocers and butchers. Almost all of them have cut down on their deliveries. What overlapping there was once is now almost eliminated and where there were two and three deliveries a week there is only one now.