First, I would like to apologise for the dreadful photos of the Scammell but that’s all I have. In fact, these photos are part of history. Apart from my zero ability as a photographer, who can remember the Polaroid Instantaneous Camera. Well I had bought one and that is the Camera I used which makes dreadful photo even worse. The idea was you take a photo & out it comes from the camera, wait five minutes & it developed.
Back to the story. We had bought the Bedford RL which had been converted into a Breakdown complete with new Harvey Frost Crane. ■■■■ Porter had been employed as our first Full Time Mechanic.
I failed to mention within weeks of ■■■■ arriving we employed our first Apprentice, 15-year-old Raymond Russell direct from school. In those days to be an apprentice the employee (Or his parents or guardians if he was under 18) & the employers had to sign an Indemnity & apprentices had to attend college one day per week & employers had to pay for them to do so.
Raymond couldn’t cope with college saying he’d left school and didn’t wish to go back to learn English & Maths as he wanted to be a mechanic & to him college was a waste of time. However, he had proved himself to be a determined hard-working employee & with ■■■■ Porter he had the chance to learn so much, so we released him from his apprentice & kept him employed. Over the following years we had many successful young lads take their apprentice with us who qualified & gained very good employment even till today, but Raymond never had any qualifications, but we taught him to drive which continued till he got an HGV class 1, worked in the workshop with a time being our tyre fitter and often driving our subsequent breakdown vehicles. Nothing ever was impossible for him to undertake and he certainly ranked amongst the best employees we ever had. Its sad so much pressure is put on academic training instead of concentrating on manual abilities.
In the 60s we expanded quickly as Spennymoor area found a boom in manufacturing. By the time we left Marmaduke Street the Garage that had been built primary for garaging our vehicles overnight to a workshop employing about 8 Mechanics & apprentices.
The RL was coping in general OK being quite fast with its petrol engine and certainly capable of pulling anything, including our ever-increasing number of antics we were operating. However, road holding left a lot to the imagination & breaking was quite dangerous at times as it was not heavy enough or stable enough to hold the weight of the vehicle it was towing.
One problem that was increasing was our management of the maintenance, paperwork, which was picked on by a visit from Ministry of Transport Inspectors. The garage in Marmaduke Street was totally inadequate but we could prove we were building new premises on Green Lane Industrial Estate, which would be one of the best workshops in North East England, but we needed to get our act in order with proof and record keeping of regular maintenance, drivers fault reports and actions carried out.
Eddie Thornton was workshop manager of Adams & Gibbons Vauxhall/Bedford agency at their premises at Claypath Durham. We discussed our problems with him and he agreed to join us as Workshop manager, working initially in Marmaduke Street until we moved to Green Lane Industrial Estate.
When we moved we still had the RL as our breakdown, and Dad & I discussed what we should do. As a temporary measure we took off the Army style tyres and fitted 900x20 commercial vehicle tyres. I seem to think we managed to fit twin wheels of the rear hubs but looking at the photo I might be mistaken (I think we probably put back its original wheels when we part exchanged it which might explain its tyres in the photo). The tyres did help with more grip, but it simply was not heavy enough. In 1973 when we moved to Green Lane Industrial Estate we had mostly class 3 HGV drivers and we needed a heavy breakdown with 4 wheels, so we could give ant driver it to drive so a 6-wheeler was out of the question.
Dad came across the Scammell in the photo and it seemed to fit the bill. It was for sale by a Commercial Vehicle dealer in Southampton. We were told it had been built new by Pickfords as a breakdown to use for towing their Scammell’s in their Heavy Haulage Division. So, although old (About 1937) the Gardiner Engine was like new.
Dad went down to see it and was given a demonstration of it lifting a massive boulder up a steep hillside with its winch, and although it needed a little tidying up in our body shop it was in very good mechanical order A deal was done with them taking our Bedford RL in Part exchange.
One of our mechanics Ken Armstrong was given the job of taking the RL down & bringing the Scammell back. He told us the ride down in the RL was a pleasure, and it the journey went in good time. About an hour later he rang back again almost crying that the Scammell would only do 19 Miles Per Hour and at that rate the journey back would take forever. I remember him remaking that he was thinking he’d never see his family again. We must take into consideration that when the Scammell was built the speed limit for HGVs was 20 mph & so 19MPH for a breakdown truck would be quite respectable.
I agreed with Ken that if he travelled to Watford Gap I would jump into my car, meet him there and he could travel back home with my car and I would return with the Scammell. I had just got my new Triumph Stag as the photo showed so I recon Ken would be delighted in jumping into the Stag & leave me with the Scammell
To be continued.
