I spent nine months at a Bedford dealership and I grew to quite like them after a while. Not as awkward to work on as I had first imagined, not bad to drive either apart from the low windscreen which meant that at 6’ 4" tall I had to stoop a little to see under it, and with their own four speed box a nice easy gearchange. They were very light on steering after the BMC’s I had been used to and we never had any problems with the brake readings on MOT. They had one thick and one thin lining on the front brakes, only the thicker one wore out and we relined them regularly but rarely touched the thinner trailing shoes. KM’s were not as easy to work on though as it was all rather tight in their engine bay! The quarry I later worked at had run Bedfords for years but they had all gone when I started apart from a couple used internally, and some long out of use and parked up awaiting disposal. When I went for my interview the then foreman was fitting some new big end shells to an internal one fitted with the 466 engine as it had run backwards into a hopper when tipping and the crank had run dry. “He will be very lucky to get away with just shells” I thought at the time. I started there just over a week later and the foreman had just retired, guess what one of my first jobs was…fitting a new crankshaft into that Bedford as ‘you know all about these’. 
The shells hadn’t cured the problem! 
Pete.