Retired Old ■■■■:
Chris Webb:
Hi Dean.The ERF with the Marks and Spencer fridge trailer is one of Gist.Chris “240” Gardner knows about them.
Am I having delusional memories again, or did Gist used to be BOC and before that Baker’s?
Indeed I do, Mr Webb - I once wrote about a week of it, on another place we used to frequent!
And yes ROF, Gist was a re-brand of BOC Transhield, and G L Baker was also under the BOC umbrella. When I endured a few months with them in 2010, the smaller facility at Mayfield, Hemel Hempstead was actually was still branded as G L Baker.
The wider BOC DIstribution Services did have a go at ambient distribution in the 90s, when they took over Beecham Foods’ in-house distribution network, together with some of the interests of the Onward group and a little other traffic, but they made a complete pig’s breakfast of it and lost the Beecham business to Wincanton at the end of the first contract term, so that was the end of that.
Oh, and of course, they bought Spalding Haulage. That went well…