The Harris group claims the lion's share of this market - Harris's Hino trucks have become almost universal among driver-contractors working for BOC and the construction-and-road- materials giant Cement Roadstone. Pino Harris is the group's biggest asset."Harris's ten-dealer Irish network, employing 140, is as energetic as any in pursuing fleet sales in a country where large agricultural and dairy co-operatives are the biggest buyers in the HGV market. If Paddy Malone from Donegal with one truck rings looking for Pino and he's at a meeting out of the country, he will return that call He is very much hands-on. "He's his own man, and very successful because of it," says one veteran. "He'd play his cards very close to his chest, and very few people would meet him, unless you're buying a truck. Then he'll go to the ends of the earth to meet you."Liam O'Neill, Harris's fellow director and sales manager at J Harris Assemblers, says of the group approach: "We take the view that the customer is always right.
Irish reports describe how he engaged truck owners in casual conversation about their vehicles, highlighting perceived weaknesses and offering a look at the Hino. Arriving at his sales depot, the driver was liable to find his name already inscribed on the side of the truck.Motor-trade insiders acknowledge that this individual attention has been the secret. Hino, then virtually unknown in Europe, is now the world's second largest selling HGV marque.Harris made the sale of each truck into a personal crusade and within a few years had done serious damage to UK-built HGV sales. It was a move Leyland would pay for later.After seeing a Hino truck exhibited at a motor show, Harris began an intense courtship of Japan to win the assembly and sales franchise for Ireland. Son of a Limerick horse dealer turned scrap dealer, Pino (so-called because of a childhood liking for pinhead oatmeal porridge) joined the family trade in Dublin, where they had moved, before diversifying into truck assembly. But when Britain's Guy trucks, with whom he was trading, was taken over by Leyland, Harris found himself dumped on his backside.One story goes that the British company wanted to impose a uniform marketing style that was at odds with the individual Harris approach. The scandal was one of several that helped undermine Mr Haughey, who was ousted from power four months later.Harris's rise began with a fall.
Politically, he is close to the north Dublin Fianna Fail establishment. Though reportedly not a party member, he helped the organisation during Charles Haughey's leadership in the 1980s by lending cars from his Isuzu garages to canvassers at elections times.The connection raised eyebrows five years ago during a controversy over Harris's brief but lucrative interest in a site which Opposition parties claimed the Haughey Government had pressed University College Dublin to buy, though it was happy to opt for a smaller site nearer the centre. Long after he had become a millionaire he continued to live in the family's plain terraced house in Phibsboro in north inner-city Dublin, where the Mercedes parked outside was an incongruous sight.His reserve is partly the result of a failed kidnapping attempt some years ago, when paramilitaries chose ransom demands as a means of fund- raising (Harris rammed his car past the would-be abductors). Last year his three truck franchises (Hino, Isuzu and Iveco) mopped up a combined 25 per cent of the Irish Republic's market for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), underlining the determination of a highly unorthodox deal-maker. Among Ireland's legion of self-made businessmen there are few more enigmatic figures.
Now in his mid-fifties, he prefers the company of loyal long-term friends to glitzy receptions.Wealth has not made him forget his roots. The Irish media portray him as a latterday Howard Hughes because of his dislike of personal publicity. In the week that ERF, Britain's last independent truck maker, sold out to overseas control, there can be few more vivid testimonies to the decline of the British industry than the surrender of a market on its doorstep to foreign competition. Since 1968 when Robert "Pino" Harris began importing and assembling a then unknown Japanese truck, the Hino, in Ireland, he has cut a swathe through UK rivals and largely driven them out of the Irish market. This is a record in minor league cricket that you have to go back to 1855 to beat. That was when Hereford was bowled out for four runs.It must have been quite a sight.
Raskelf B, the opponents, bowled five batsmen out for ducks in the first six deliveries. One of the Raskelf bowlers took a remarkable eight wickets for three runs, and its batsmen took less than five minutes to score the six runs they needed to win.Will Mr Sykes give up on Studley Royal? I doubt if he is such a quitter - he is standing as a Tory in Barnsley Central, after all.He sure can pick 'em: Tory candidate Paul Sykes (left) and the Studley Royal scorePhotograph: GUZELIAN. Does Mr Sykes really want to be a member of this side, which is based near picturesque Fountains Abbey and competes in the sixth division of the Nidderdale League?Or rather it doesn't compete. It has lost all four games it has played so far and last week was all out for five runs. Hold on to your zimmer frames till next Sunday to learn the result.Money for nothingFollowing up on last week's Bunhill, here are some more things to spend all your excess money on, courtesy of Benetton's Colors magazine: dinner for your dog, including a cracker shaped like a human ($5.95 - pounds 3.97 - per mutt, in Florida); toilet paper that lets you know whether your urine is too acid or too alkaline ($4.30 a roll, in Japan); a diamond-studded collar for your dog ($11,510 from Harrods); and locusts (pounds 800 a kilogram, in Scottish hotels apparently).A story that won't run and runA few weeks ago I reported that Paul Sykes, millionaire businessman and prospective Tory candidate for Barnsley Central, had given Studley Royal cricket team pounds 20,000 in the hope that it would give him a place in its third team.The question has now been turned on its head.