jeffreyk:
The picture above would have been back in the day when long distance removals would have been loaded onto a goods train, and taken to the destination and then unloaded by a local firm.the container on the above wagon could have been lifted straight onto a goods wagon.this was in the days of a b and c licences, although I think you could get a special b licence for long distance removals
Our A licence A9629 was obviously one of the first issued and allowed us to carry anything anywhere. I think in the time of the photo it would be completely unrestricted as the licence system would not have yet come into being. In any event in 1920s we did quite a few removals from County Durham to London & South East. In the 1960s we had several vehicles running each week to Northern Ireland and we needed to have a Northern Ireland licence for this, so in those days if you got a booking for a removal to Northern Ireland you could not do it unless you had a Northern Ireland licence.
Although when we got the licence we had about 100 vans on our English licence, because of the cost of the Northern Ireland licence we only got one for four vans & there came a problem as we often hadn’t one of these available when needed, so we just stuck the discs on the wndscreen & never ever were the registation numbers checked so we never got caught out.
Southern Ireland was a much more difficult problem. You had to apply for a permit. Household removals were not usually a problem but we had to use a Southern Ireland port of arrival & departure. Where we were based in N E England the cheapest way would have been to use the Stranraer Larne crossing, were we were well known & often got pushed on infront of non regular users, & then run down & enter via the border, Liverpool Dublin ferry was too expensive so we had to travel down to South Wales. However we had a customer who manufactured furniture for schools and hospitals & they sold some to Southern Ireland, and they wouldn’t grant us a permit. After numerous telephone calls to Dublin’s equivalent of the Ministry of Transport I asked why there was such a problem. ‘We don’t want goods made in England in our Country and so we make as difficult as possible to get them here’ came the reply. In the event we had to send one our vans on Liverpool-Dublin Ferry to be met at the port by a Dublin based Removal Contractor & tranship so technically our van never entered Southern Ireland