The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1946 TYRE CONTROL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 33, 4 October 1946, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1946 TYRE CONTROL

THE statement by the Minister of Supply to the effect that the control on a stipulated number of heavy duty truck tyres has been lifted, is but a drop in the ocean as far as the average motorist is concerned. Little has been done to meet the real need, which concerns practically every motorist who depends upon his vehicle for business or pleasure, and who in the process has paid heavily for the doubtful privilege of owning a car. Tyres patched, retrod, and overslung have become the fashion for literally thousands of private owners. Many individuals holding important positions, the prosecution of which practically demands the use of a car, are ‘off the road.’ In Whakatane there are at least a dozen businessmen who depend upon their cars, and who now have them laid up in their garages. Bicycles and ‘shank’s pony’ are coming into their own again. The promise of the Minister (Hon. D. G. Sullivan) that it is hoped to be able to abolish rationing altogether as soon as possible, may mean anything. The slight gesture already made with regard to the truck sizes has not reached the great body of the motoring public by any means. The position in New Zealand is hard to understand, in view of the vast surplus of raw rubber supplies overseas, the lifting of all restrictions elsewhere, and the reassuring fact that merchants and importing authorities are already holding substantial stocks in most sizes. The suggestion raised in anti-Government quarters that the market is being ‘protected’ for the New Zea-land-made article shortly to be marketed at a higher figure than the imported tyres does not appear to hold water if stocks are in the country now, for the presence of a lowerpriced article of proven and possibly superior manufacture, on the market at the same time as the Dominion-made tyre would definitely cramp the style and sales of the native. The position of motorists generally however is growing more desperate as time goes on, and as one prominent businessman of this town observed recently, the only hope of some easement occurring lies in the fact that it is election year, in which mighty accomplishments have been known to happen in the past.