crossleyq:
Does anyone remember or have any info/photo’s on a 1966 Leyland “Steer” artic unit fleet no 917 that Bulwark ran. The four front tyres were smaller than the two rear tyres and all three axles quite close together(10ft wheelbase) leaving no room for a fuel tank which was fitted across the back of the ergo cab.got a few more questions but will wait to see if anything is known about it. I have a feeling it was a pig to drive though!! three axles in ten feet
Yes, I can help with this one! 917 was in white livery and early in 1970 was based at Southampton on a Monsanto contract where it loaded with polystyrene pellets containing pentane (a gas I believe) at their Hythe plant with deliveries to Bridgewater (British Cellophane??), on the basis of 5 round trips per week. The regular driver was Doug Harman. I can remember it had a very throaty engine noise and we could hear it approaching the depot before we saw it.
Talking of Southampton (I was there from Jan - May 70 as a management trainee) wasn’t the TGWU shop steward called Ron Pragnall? I remember a strike over the poor condition of the vehicles on the Esso fuel distribution contracts, and the big boss (Jack Ralph) coming down from Chippenham with Mike Sweeting to sort it out. The guy I worked for was called Andrew Danielli who wasn’t much older than me!
Yep remember Ron Pragnall. Also Jack Gibbs the Depot Manager, retired in Augustish 1978. His replacement was a John Henry from Armstrongs? or somewhere in West Yorkshire.
The guy who really I remember was Cyril Watkins the engineer. What a laugh he was. Happy days at Bulwark in 1978. Very happy. Great fun. I was a management trainee with them in 1978, first at Chippenham then a stint at Burton (right dump), and finally Totton/Nursling (Monsanto’s, Esso ECA loads to Purfleet, et al). There were about four continental blokes at Chippenham. They got the new Sed Atki 400 sleeper cabs with 240 Gardners. Also remember Ron Sartain at Chippenham. He was in the workshops. Nice guy.
The middle trailer would be a wine/sherry trailer. Went to Harveys at Bristol loaded at Shoreham. Regular job. The ISO tank containers were used a lot at Burton depot for export out of the breweries. Went to Lawley Street FLT for rail shipment. Went out to see the job one day and got told the story of when they loaded the tank container back to front - doh at Lawley Street. Luckily it was an empty. They had to treat it like a demountable and back under it the right way round at the yard before taking it down to Bass!
The middle trailer would be a wine/sherry trailer. Went to Harveys at Bristol loaded at Shoreham. Regular job. The ISO tank containers were used a lot at Burton depot for export out of the breweries. Went to Lawley Street FLT for rail shipment. Went out to see the job one day and got told the story of when they loaded the tank container back to front - doh at Lawley Street. Luckily it was an empty. They had to treat it like a demountable and back under it the right way round at the yard before taking it down to Bass!
the top one looks like it outside opal tankers bloxwich
Hello All
On behalf of a family friend Mike Waight who is now a young 76yrs of age and worked for Bulwark Tankers out of there Southampton Depot between late 60s and early 80s.Does anyone have any photos or info from this time.Three drivers from that period were Jim Gill ,Ken Roberts and Harold Steele.This is the only pic i have.The last lorry Mike drove was a Seddon Atkinson (TMR 4S) Regards R-Jacko.
Here you go R-JACKO
First two photos are of a restored Albion which was at the cheshire run earlier this year,and the other one I dont remember where that came from (off the net somewhere) no doubt someone will complain that I have pinched there photo
Albion
Seddon Atkinson
John
Stanfield:
Here you go R-JACKO
First two photos are of a restored Albion which was at the cheshire run earlier this year,and the other one I dont remember where that came from (off the net somewhere) no doubt someone will complain that I have pinched there photo
Albion
Seddon Atkinson
John
…
Cheers Stanfield any idea what year the Albion would have been in service■■?
Hi R-JACKO ,
A later Seddon
These Seddons were also the first tractor units used on Carlsberg at Northampton when the brewery opened around 1974 & were replaced by Leyland Buffalos
It’s Atkinson’s own, Dennis, the ‘Guardsman’. It was the centrepiece of their stand at the 1964 Show, but ended up as a one-off. Apparently a second cab ended up being used as a mock-up for filming a scene in Z Cars, but never made it onto a chassis. The V8 ■■■■■■■ was bound to have limited appeal too!
Having failed to entice customers to this new, modern look, they followed it up with the Viewline in 1966. People still didn’t like it, so it was back in 1967 with the Mk.2 style traditional radiator look. In the end, though, people wanted to buy the Mk.2 instead - where the Viewline was standard, the Mk.2 was listed as an option at £150 cheaper! And hence the Mk.2 lived on until 1975.
If you look at the Guardsman, you can recognise the existing Mk.1 door styling around the windows behind the doors
Transport
See also: List of BET bus companies in 1967
From 1949 until 1967 BET continued to be one of the two major bus groups in the UK, alongside the state-owned Tilling Group (owned by the British Transport Commission and from 1963 by the Transport Holding Company).
In 1956 BET acquired a 20% interest in United Transport Company,[1] the rump of the old Red & White company, increased to 100% in 1971. United Transport continued with its freight road haulage business (Bulwark Transport Ltd), and also moved into shipping, particularly containers and tank containers.
The British Transport Commission (and later the Transport Holding Company) held minority interests in many of BET’s UK bus subsidiaries, and in late 1967 BET sold its UK bus interests to the Transport Holding Company, to become part of the National Bus Company.
United Transport had passenger transport and freight interests in southern Africa. BET owned and operated Jamaica Omnibus Services, a 600-bus operation in Kingston, Jamaica, until it was nationalised by the Jamaican Government in 1974.
In January 1987 BET briefly reentered the UK bus market, when United Transport formed the Bee Line Buzz Company to operate minibus services in the Manchester area, and started a similar operation in Preston called Zippy. However, in 1988 United sold Bee Line and Zippy to Ribble Motor Services (coincidentally once owned by BET)
The United group owned almost everything from Hoggs of Kilsyth, Ancliff, Bulwark, IFF, Seawheel and many others
Transport
See also: List of BET bus companies in 1967
From 1949 until 1967 BET continued to be one of the two major bus groups in the UK, alongside the state-owned Tilling Group (owned by the British Transport Commission and from 1963 by the Transport Holding Company).
In 1956 BET acquired a 20% interest in United Transport Company,[1] the rump of the old Red & White company, increased to 100% in 1971. United Transport continued with its freight road haulage business (Bulwark Transport Ltd), and also moved into shipping, particularly containers and tank containers.
The British Transport Commission (and later the Transport Holding Company) held minority interests in many of BET’s UK bus subsidiaries, and in late 1967 BET sold its UK bus interests to the Transport Holding Company, to become part of the National Bus Company.
United Transport had passenger transport and freight interests in southern Africa. BET owned and operated Jamaica Omnibus Services, a 600-bus operation in Kingston, Jamaica, until it was nationalised by the Jamaican Government in 1974.
In January 1987 BET briefly reentered the UK bus market, when United Transport formed the Bee Line Buzz Company to operate minibus services in the Manchester area, and started a similar operation in Preston called Zippy. However, in 1988 United sold Bee Line and Zippy to Ribble Motor Services (coincidentally once owned by BET)
The United group owned almost everything from Hoggs of Kilsyth, Ancliff, Bulwark, IFF, Seawheel and many others
…
Hello Wheel Nut great bit of info.Mike said that the original colour scheme was red and that was because of the connections with the buses before they went over to green.
Regards Jacko
Here’s a couple of pics from a December 1970 Bulk Transport issue of Commercial Motor with a short article on the tanker used to carry plastic pellets. The first split pic shows a couple of Seddon Motor Panels cabbed units, the top one pulling a 126 barrel beer tanker from Copenhagen to centres in the UK and the lower tanker a 4900 gallon outfit again used on runs to the continent. The bottom pic is slightly confusing and shows an earlier Seddon but in Monsanto colours, were Monsanto part of Bulwark (or Visa Versa), the caption to the picture mentions the two tipping tanks of the outfit that carries the pellets but doesn’t make plain whether its just the trailer that was a venture between Bulwark and Carmichael Technicians to produce the then unique tanker which was able to carry and discharge the pellets using an air system. The Monsanto vehicle isn’t mentioned at all. It also said the Gardner 150 6LX engines in the Coachbuilt cabbed Seddons were later Turbocharged to produce 190 bhp with 6LXB engines in the later models and all the tractive units were Seddon at that date although the 8 wheel rigid vehicles were 24 ton Atkinson types. Although the pics come from the Chippenham depot I would imagine they will be typical of the fleet and bring back some memories. Franky.
Frankydobo:
The bottom pic is slightly confusing and shows an earlier Seddon but in Monsanto colours, were Monsanto part of Bulwark (or Visa Versa), the caption to the picture mentions the two tipping tanks of the outfit that carries the pellets but doesn’t make plain whether its just the trailer that was a venture between Bulwark and Carmichael Technicians to produce the then unique tanker which was able to carry and discharge the pellets using an air system. The Monsanto vehicle isn’t mentioned at all.
Monsanto were just a major chemical manufacturer with fingers in many pies including Bayer, Vencel Polystyrene, Nutra Sweet and Agent Orange used in Vietnam.
If you look on the Monsanto liveried motor it has a U fleet number which probably denotes United and uses part of the registration number JAM 976E
In the 1940s and 1950s a new system was evolved, called air-fluidisation, which uses containers fitted with air pipes. The pipes have many small holes in them and the air is blasted through to break up the material into something which then behaves like a liquid. The ‘fluidised’ material can be pumped or (more commonly) the air flow can be arranged to carry it through pipes to storage silos. The silos are similarly equipped for discharging the material. Cement was an obvious candidate for this approach and the first railway wagons to employ this technique were the Pressflo hoppers introduced in 1954. Privately owned cement tankers soon followed whilst British Railways experimented with the technology in other ways.
This system is still used today although the air blowers have got smaller, the tanks much lighter and more user friendly. The alternative to pressurised tanks is the rotary seal where you only pressurise the valve and the product falls in to the rotor using gravity and a tipping ram. I have been interested in pneumatic discharge since i was 5 years old and use to watch the drivers “blowing off” a load of coal into the boiler-house at my primary school
Jacko, can you ask your neighbour / friend if he remembers Fred Beech who was the Ancliff / UTT union rep in Hull. We had a few runnings in my early days as a newbie tanker driver but gained each others respect eventually.
Bulwark and Ancliff drivers did tend to drive with their noses in the air at one time.
Hi R-Jacko.Received these today and obtained permission from NA3T (ATPH Transport Photos) to place them on this thread.Does your friend Mike remember any of these do you think.
These photos can be purchased from www.transportphotos.com/road/photo
