Over the years we ran four Guys. All with Gardiner Engines
Three were Guy Otters with 1700 cu ft luton bodies with 4 cylinder Gardiner Engines. two 1964 reg painted in Courtaulds livery & one in our Cream and Brown livery. Sadly I have no photos. The two in Courtaulds livery were used exclusively in carrying boxes of spun synthetic wool from their Worcester Spinning mill which employed 2900 in Spennymoor mostly to Leicester Notts area to manufactures that wove it into material a large portion of which went on to clothing manufacturers that made finished clothing for Marks and Spencer. That was in the days when M & S made their reputation for quality selling only UK made clothing.
The other 1965 was used mostly on similar work for Courtaaulds with a bit of our general work, inc household removals .This van was painted in our cream & Brown livery.
They were strongly built vehicles getting 26 mpg as compared with our Leyland Lairds & Boxers 12 mpg and our Bedfords 13 mpg, However they had two problems. Whilst the vehicle and engines been built like battleships and excellent parts availability from which we bought directly from Guy at Wolverhampton, who we opened an account with & dealt directly with them. However the cabs were a slightly smaller cut down version of The Guy Invincible cab, which search as I might I’ve never located a photo, and sadly suffered very badly from Cab rot. Not the cab itself which was mostly made out of Fibre Glass & very durable, but worst thing possible it was the frame that rotted, making the cab basically fall onto the chassis.
■■■■ Porter had worked for us a number of years and we had promoted him to workshop foreman, a job which sadly he was not capable of, and he didn’t take kindly to being demoted, so we moved him with an apprentice down to our old garage at Marmaduke Street Spennymoor where he worked with an apprentice to deal with ‘Special Projects’ and so was given the almost impossible task of stripping these Guy cabs back to frame, replacing, repairing and welding the frames & replacing the moulded cabs and components. At the same time we reconditioned the Gardiner Engines. However the real problem had been that when there vehicles were designed the speed limit had been 30 mph & there were very few Motorways. They would do 45mph flat out and no more.
I can remember once or twice passing them on the hill on the M18 struggling onto the M1 obviously down to 30 mph, and it was pitiful. However they were vans in very good condition and did the job making us a good profit thanks mainly to the fuel consumption. We used to give new drivers them to drive and cut their teeth on, or others we wanted to punish.
Things came to a head one night, as my father & me were just about to go home, and a driver rang in to say he’d run out of diesel on ‘Park Head Bank’ (On the main Bishop Auckland Spennymoor road about 2 miles from home) Dad who by then had never drove one of our vans for years asked if I’d like to join him for a ride out & to get a rope. One of the Guys was parked up so he said ‘I’ll take this’ In fairness neither of us realised it was fully loaded & so off we went. Coupling the rope on between the vans, we got back in the Guy Cab and it just would not move, so back to Green Lane & found an old Bedford SB which dad loved and felt at home in. The SB was pulled in front and off we went back no problem.
That was the Guy Otters’ death sentence. On the way back I got ‘I never guessed they were as bad as that’ and within 3 months they were replaced by 3 Bedford TKs
Here is two photos the fourth Guy, a Big J with a Gardiner 6 cylinder engine.
