Morning Dean,
Sent Paul’s picture to Martin Sykes, chairman of Sykes Seafoods, who are still very much in business today here is the reply i recieved…
That brings back memories, Paul.
We started running our own vehicles on a daily basis to Aberdeen in the late sixties, but the Fords we used could not stand the continuous non stop use.
In 1969 I bought my first ERF from Peter Foden, who later became a good golfing friend.
He equipped them with Gardner Diesel engines derived from the marine engines manufactured by another good friend, Paul Gardner, and which could run for ever at a most economical rate (8 miles per gallon).
My father went ballistic when he heard the price of £5,000 for the first one as the Fords only cost £2,000, but at least I wasn’t woken by reverse charge calls each night from drivers broken down on Shap with 10 tons of fresh fish.
The vehicle in your photograph would be early seventies, by which time we were shipping them over to Denmark via Harwich, mainly artics, and collecting fish from all round Jutland.
At our peak we ran 15 artics and 5 rigids, covering south west and north east Scotland, Cornwall, Devon, Denmark and Holland as well servicing the whole of England and Wales.
Now all our transport is sub contracted, but some of our vehicles are still used in Grimsby, but no longer ERF’s.
Regards
Martin Sykes
Chairman -Sykes Seafoods.