Drove the TGL for the first time yesterday ,bloody lovely 
,
Hi Steve is that the new one looking good mate nice and clean in the cab
Yes John its the latest one ,massive problems with the paint still ,I pm you .
Thats an intresting post Carl about the Seddon Pennine, thanks for posting. 
JAKEY:
Yes John its the latest one ,massive problems with the paint still ,I pm you .
Your not having alot of luck with the sprayer “JAKEY” 
A couple of Bedfords.
DEANB:
A couple of Bedfords.
Hi Dean,
Lovely couple TKs here…the Harrison Rowley TK is a lovely size van for a 7.5…it’s a regular visit for me there Corby branch do a lot of work out of there…but the old colours on the TK are long gone…all Britannia colours now…lovely post Dean.
marktaff:
DEANB:
A couple of Bedfords.2
1
Hi Dean,
Lovely couple TKs here…the Harrison Rowley TK is a lovely size van for a 7.5…it’s a regular visit for me there Corby branch do a lot of work out of there…but the old colours on the TK are long gone…all Britannia colours now…lovely post Dean.
Never liked white trucks Mark as they always look dirty.Nice pic mind you.
In the last post I mentioned Tom Liddle of T.T.Liddle Stanley Co.Durham.
My first memory of T.T.Liddle was when I was about 5 years old, while Tom was had had built & was running 3 of these beautiful ERF vans with bodywork by Jennings of Sandbach. I don’t know what Tom ran before & the only other van I remember in my youth was a Ford Thames 4D.
Tom had at some time probably just after the war got the contract of collecting from Tipton and storing in his warehouses in Stanley Vono beds & then delivering from stock throughout Northern England & Scotland.
Tom as you can see from his ERFs was a perfectionist as were his premises. He had three identical buildings about 10,000 sq ft each 2 warehousing and the third his garage for maintaining his vehicles. And it was there I went about 5 with my dad to collect some beds on behalf of a furniture retail customer we worked for.
The site was huge an ex quarry so I was told and Tom had provided all the Transport. In fact parked up was about 25 Bedford ‘O Model’ Tippers. I was told he had a contract where he had quoted by load and a bridge had collapsed & require a three mile or so diversion. Tom had requested more money to cover the detour & been refused so he parked the tippers up. He was a very straight man rare in business who stood by his word & expected same from others. The parking area was huge.
Between 1960 and 64 Tom had a local body builder Northern Assembles build 16 Luton bodies on Bedford TK chassis cabs. All identical and a very eye catching fleet of vans. Licencing being no problem as he transferred the B licences from some of his tippers.
We were introduced to Tom by a chap from Stanley who ran a couple of vans Don Clegg. Don had bought a couple of second hands off us and often visited us at Spennymoor and also served as a part time chauffer to Tom.
I remember visiting him at his very large bungalow which was built on the entrance of which had his adjoined office. Tom was a ‘large man’ about as wide as he was tall and sitting on three massive leather chairs along with his doctor and his foreman fitter in a boiler suit.
We had started delivering Fridges for Tricity Cookers (Part of Thorn Electrical industries) in late 1960 when they started production at their Spennymoor factory. In 1960 very few families owned a fridge & nearly 80% sold were Tricity built in Spennymoor and they sold like ice cream. Although we bought vans & increased the size of our fleet we always needed more. We hired from all the local Removal contactors including Haward & Robertson & Cracknells at Darlington Johnson’s Durham and back loaded several from the south.
Tom never overworked his fleet, and when drivers returned if there was no work they were given paint brushes to paint wheels and inside the bodies cream with grey floor. So when we were desperate we hired vans in from Tom. There were 2 problems Tom was expensive & his vans although maximum length were not quite high enough & always when we transhipped we had 10 or so fridges over which we had to squeeze onto our vans as part loads.
One night about 1967 he invited my father & me over & explained he was in the process of selling out to P & O (I think the transport division was trading as Storemasters). At the time he must have been well into his 60s, had married his secretary when he was mid aged and they had no children.
About 6 months later we went to see him. He was working for P&O to show them the ropes and took us round to show us a massive warehouse about the size of three football pitches they were building and had bought two new Bedford KGs with luton bodies & we asked what they were doing with the older vans they replaced & agreed a price & bought the two they were taking off the road. He was in the process of building a new bungalow on some land he owned adjacent to his site as they were converting his old bungalow into a new office.
Next time I heard from him he’d fallen out with P & O as he couldn’t stand how they worked & were employing people who hadn’t a clue. Next time we met he had completed his new bungalow complete with two huge kitchens, one a ‘working kitchen’ which he had taken out of his old bungalow and a ‘show kitchen’ that wouldn’t be out of place in ‘home & garden’. He was running around in a Bedford cf tipper collecting building materials & building two more smaller bungalows on some land he owned.
Time went by and we heard he had bought out Lewins Removals of Consett & Stanley, he had found himself bored. He had got the contract for carrying Clover cans from their factory at Washington had a couple of TKs built by Northern Assemblies & bought the three new Seddon Pennines I mentioned. He said he had decided to buy artics choosing Dodge tractor units & we bought his rigids. I don’t think it was too long after that he died.
P & O built this massive warehouse demolished Tom Liddle’s original warehouses and after a few years closed the business and everything was demolished and now is a housing estate.
Tom had bought ERFs with Gardiner Engines then Bedford TKs then the Seddons with all in our eyes were good vehicles so we thought he would have chosen well with his Dodge tractor units. WE had aquired a few Ford D series from Thorn with a number of 30ft trailers under a deal when they decided to stop using their own transport for cooker deliveries & thought we’d gradually replace these with Dodge with Perkins 6.354 like Tom was running. They were a total failure & the old D series would have been better, so I suppose even Tom could make errors on vehicle choice
“In the last post I mentioned Tom Liddle of T.T.Liddle Stanley Co.Durham.”
Cracking story Carl Williams.
Oily
DEANB:
Albion.
Hi Dean, The Albion Victor was their coach chassis. Here is one with alloy bodywork by Arlington, next to a Bedford SB with a Marsden full fibreglass.
Sadly the Albion didn’t live up to expectation, with not as good fuel consumption as Bedford, more expensive maintenance costs and much shorter engine life. The body by Arlington was no match for Marsden and the Albion joined the happy scrapyard in the sky, while the Bedford lasted a further five years with us on heavy workload, and went out to pastures new for several years after we sold it to another removal contractor
DEANB:
marktaff:
DEANB:
A couple of Bedfords.2
1
Hi Dean,
Lovely couple TKs here…the Harrison Rowley TK is a lovely size van for a 7.5…it’s a regular visit for me there Corby branch do a lot of work out of there…but the old colours on the TK are long gone…all Britannia colours now…lovely post Dean.Never liked white trucks Mark as they always look dirty.Nice pic mind you.
Totally agree Dean…white is a pig of a colour to keep clean 
Hi Carl,
I realy enjoy your past experience with imformation to detail…Tom Liddle realy was a go getter …great story again. …
Regards Mark
Carl Williams:
DEANB:
Albion.Hi Dean, The Albion Victor was their coach chassis. Here is one with alloy bodywork by Arlington, next to a Bedford SB with a Marsden full fibreglass.
Sadly the Albion didn’t live up to expectation, with not as good fuel consumption as Bedford, more expensive maintenance costs and much shorter engine life. The body by Arlington was no match for Marsden and the Albion joined the happy scrapyard in the sky, while the Bedford lasted a further five years with us on heavy workload, and went out to pastures new for several years after we sold it to another removal contractor
Thanks for the comments Carl, you cant beat a Bedford chap !
Click on page once.
Mark, the Harrison Rowley looks nice, but I hope it had a five speed box, as you say that’s a big box for her! Mind you the Pickford’s is the same size and may well of been one of the last off the line before the TL?
Great photo’s as usual.