Ah Happy days,
Rubbish fridge trailers,
Some of the nicest drivers i ever worked with,wether from Yarmouth,Gloucester,Bolton or Hull/Grimsby.
Hope you are all enjoying your retirement.
Owen
Here’s one that came to grief on the A12 at Chelmsford (before the by-pass) luckily the driver escaped serious injury.
Best hurry up with that spare unit- the stuff’s starting to melt!
jam man:
In the 60’s I used to help WG Suckling old swan Liverpool they ran mainly Seddon 5 L s
I think they was one of first sub contractors they bought 1 six wheeler 3 Thames traders 4 wheelers
Long insulated bodies painted up in birds eye colours with canvas " elec… ice" holders in the roof
I remember Sucklings in Old Swan later moved to Church Road opposite the Abattoir, I lived in Church Road.
gr8 pics any of u guys out there remember telfers n/pton they had some nice transcons would love to see some old pics if there is any out there
haddy:
Here’s one that came to grief on the A12 at Chelmsford (before the by-pass) luckily the driver escaped serious injury.
Coincidence that all three lorries are food carriers…
Frankie Flintstone:
jam man:
In the 60’s I used to help WG Suckling old swan Liverpool they ran mainly Seddon 5 L s
I think they was one of first sub contractors they bought 1 six wheeler 3 Thames traders 4 wheelers
Long insulated bodies painted up in birds eye colours with canvas " elec… ice" holders in the roofI remember Sucklings in Old Swan later moved to Church Road opposite the Abattoir, I lived in Church Road.
We had a fuel depot in church road ,PDC fuels it was.
Promised I would post a photo of one of the Fridged Freight Mercurys on the bank at Birds Eye. No idea whose the Leyland was. Jim.
wideboybob:
0i worked out of gloucester brs for 13 years and did do a bit on birds eye now and again .this was an agency drivers attempt at coming off the M4 to go south to brooklands on the M25…as you can see ,he did not make it! 65 mph on the tacho card!. it was dragged back to glos brs and left for a few days for all the ice cream to melt and run out.what a smell.
If I remember correctly, it was Jimmy White’s motor and he was devastated when he saw it. And you’re right, the smell was pretty awesome as well. It sat in the yard and after a bit no-one would go near it, not even Jason the fitter! Happy days.
roadcruiser:
Remember the Birdseye vehicles , always liked these and wished i had got a few more pictures of them , i know they went on to buy Dafs after the fords but i saw a scania once in there colours anyone got any info about the birdseye fleet?
I spent some time driving (I think) A233 NHD or LHD DAF 3300 out of Gloucester BRS mainly going between the Gloucester factory and Brooklands, then up to Yarmouth and across to Monkspath (Birmingham) or out of Grimsby for anywhere. The Dafs were great and good for the job. Billy Hyett (RIP) had one with a huge roof spoiler which he claimed gave him good m.p.g… My Daf blew up and they gave me a crappy Mercedes which not only had the half-cab so nights-out weren’t much fun but it also had the usual Mercedes snail-like performance. The joke was that if you covered the headlights with cardboard, the truck couldn’t see the hills and flew up them Ha ha
roadcruiser:
Full livery, waiting outside the Birds Eye factory
Note: No fridge trailers as we have today. Insulated Reefers only
Load the frozen product and you have a finite time to deliver, before the product deteriorates
With Transco units, happy to cruise at 70mph, this was not normally a problem
“Reefer Containers” more often than not, travel to and from docks and customers without active Refridgeration. I loaded frozen pork from Wrexham on Wednesday afternoon, left approx 4pm, eventually dropped it on the quay at Felixstowe at 8.30am Thursday, 16 and half hours before the Reefer was hooked up to power. That’s quite normaal 
An old thread, but I’ve only recently been given this photo to scan, one of my father Rex (in a similar promotional photo as Jellybelly’s), but with one of the two Scania 112 Ms (XFH 842X) at Gloucester, freshly painted in the combined BirdsEye Walls livery, either 1981 or 82? One of the yellow Walls 110s in the background. I remember he preferred the 112s to the Daf 3300s that followed.
If I remember correctly, the BEW fridge trailers had underslung fridge units at some point (not sue if this is or not), rather than the dry ice boxes of Walls.
Dad did about 10 years seasonal driving for Walls, never quite managing to be kept on full time - that is until BRS took over the transport in 1986 (I’ve got the BRS hotline magazine article of BRS winning the contract with Rex at the wheel of a Daf 3300 which I’ll add at some point, as well as some 110s and some Embisco 81s), which he stuck out for about a year before setting up on his own as Transrex haulage, which is another story of trusted ERFs! 
Thanks for posting the scania picture up , thats just like the one i saw passing Cambridge over 30 years ago now , remember it took me by suprise at the time as it was unusual to see a scania in Birdseye livery , so it was based at gloucester then …
I always took an interest in this company as my dad used to work for them.
Were both these 112 Ms painted in Birdseye livery?
Greetings,All.
Ref.the Drikold ad.,just in case, the car in the photo is an Austin A90 Atlantic,based mainly on the Austin A70 model.
Stay safe everyone,regards,900x20.
900X20:
Greetings,All.
Ref.the Drikold ad.,just in case, the car in the photo is an Austin A90 Atlantic,based mainly on the Austin A70 model.
Stay safe everyone,regards,900x20.
As I recall the A90 Atlantic was an attempt to sell Austins in great numbers to the USA. The attempt failed.
roadcruiser:
Were both these 112 Ms painted in Birdseye livery?
Yes both the 112s were painted in the BirdsEye Walls livery. As they were from Gloucester they were never in the BirdsEye livery. I think they may have been in the yellow Walls livery briefly before the BEW merge. Maybe someone who worked at Gloucester in 1980/81 might recall?
Interesting ,i think your probably right about them being previously painted yellow , a dvla check on UFH842X reveals it as registered as yellow ,Interestingly UFH 840X ,UFH 843X also come up as yellow scanias presumably one of these was the other walls scania ?
As previously mentioned, I’ve a few more Birdseye Walls pictures, and some older Walls and Embisco wafers (also operating out of the Gloucester Walls factory). I’ve had confirmation from my brother who took the following Scania 112 pictures that this was the first outing in the new livery in the summer of 1983. Most of the Embisco Scanias were 81s as they had no weight to pull, but there is a picture here of a 111 from 1983, possibly a repainted Walls one, retired as the DAFs replaced them?
