kkj 290e an atkinson 4 wheeler ran by the company for many years then mothballed in the lorry shed at goudhurst,i believe this was fitted with the 5 pot gardner 100 engine,i know it made it into preservation,but where it is now i dont know so please does anyone know? and no answers on a postcard please.
Met a couple of times. He kicked out of the yard.due to not asking to repair a reefer in his yard owned by M&D Transport
to quote Jack ,driver all this is mine yes , as he waves his arm around the yard at Paddock Wood.
He could have a swear up with best of them.
Jack Henley was a friend of my old guv’nor’s, Goff Radcliffe. They had a lot in common, especially with vintage cars and lorries. I met him once and seemed like a real gent. It was his input that changed my boss’s long time allegiance with Merc to MAN.
Regards,
Mark.
the first man the company operated was fyj 870v 16.280 model (a picture will follow at a later date) i am almost certain jack was persuaded by a couple of other operators those being colin ashby of boughton monchelsea nr maidstone and also jonathan jempson of john jempson & son from rye in east sussex to give man a go.jacks opinion was that man were the best of the foreign crap
lawrence2765:
kkj 290e it was brand new to the company and after service was parked up in the old lorry shed at goudhurst on the henley farm (spelmonden estate) for many years.KKJ 290 E was my lorry for a couple of years. Cold, slow and draughty, but it only ever broke down the once - and that was when the gear lever came away in my hand as I lifted it to select reverse. Best bit was it blocked the entrance to Mack and Edwards yard in Paddock Wood for about an hour and a half, until Alan came down from Spelmonden and welded it back together.
As it was so slow it also nearly caused a riot when Hooky sent me on a Scotch in it on a Wednesday. The feeling was that I didn’t stand a hope of getting back before the end of the following week.
I can remember that it took 15 minutes to get from the old A 20(M) junction (now J7) to the Kent showgound at the top of Detling hill on the A249 loaded with 10 ton of Charcon concrete purlins etc.
Also some really wicked stories about your dad Brian Lawrence as well, but I shall have to think really carefully about what can be published!
hello cav551,
hopefully you will let me know who you are!
dad is 80 years of age now and only packed up artic driving 2 years ago,theres not a lot at all that would surprise me about him as i have heard so many stories over the years,so lets hear some more and give the readers some entertainment.
i used to ride shotgun with dad in the atkinson jyx 550k when i was about 7 or 8,its strange my first ever recollection of going to work with dad was staying in the portobello district in edinburgh on route to scottish & newcastle to deliver hops.
on the subject of going to scotland one night there was a theft from spelmonden of some tyres or wheels,jack henley phoned edinburgh market to see what time dad arrived there to work out what time he left kent to see if he was guilty of the theft (on this occasion he wasnt lol)
I’ll start with this one: One Friday or Saturday night, a few years after I had left Henley’s, we were all eating a chinese at home after the pub. The telly was on and we were vaguely watching a film, when all of a sudden JYX 550K appears being driven through a quarry, with I’ll swear, Brian driving it … it then blows up and disappears in a ball of flame!
I suppose this was just another of dad’s diversions off route , but there was no codgel involved in this one.
I’m yet another Roy, but I’ll leave off my surname in public.
I remember them, I was talking to a chap at MAN one day about how clean the Heley fleet always was. He reckoned a new unit had been rejected on delivery by Mr Henley because there was ■■■ ash on the floor when he looked inside. Whether this was true I don’t know but I’ve no reason to doubt the man I was speaking to.
BB
yes basil brush it was true a driver delivered a brand new tractor unit to the company and he had been smoking in the cab.
when jack ws notified of this he told the delivering driver to take the tractor unit back to where it came from,jack was anti smoking big time and also hated drivers with beards.
The AECs in the fleet had always been supplied by Gatwards, in Hope Street, Maidstone. The sales manager was Peter Shoebridge and a real gentleman, but Jack seemed to somehow like giving him a hard time. If I remember rightly however, the lorries were always paid for in full; on delivery. The MAN incident was after my time, but Jack had refused to accept deliveries before this.
a good old fleet line up of henley transport aecs taken in the early 1970s in the field on the farm at spelmonden
Second from left HKP927D I had this one for a while too, although by then I think it had been repainted and was not one of the vehicles still carrying Percy Henley, Spelmonden Estate Co Ltd signwriting. HKP had a different front axle to the normal for a Mercury and rode about six inches higher. It was also extremely rapid, I had it up to the P of MPH on the speedo one night on the M62(?) into Liverpool across from Leeds. (I haven’t been up the M6 any further than Stoke for over 30 years). I chickened out at that point because it was just too fast and it still wanted to go some more.
That one let me down on the way to Macfish Cheadle one morning and blocked a road junction for about an hour when the clutch disintegrated.
just for those who dont know when the transport was started up in the late 50s by jack it ran under the name of percy henley,spelmonden estate co ltd.hence why some early vehicles were signwritten percy henley.
percy was of course jacks father a very well known hop & fruit grower in kent.
later on the transport side was named henley transport co ltd and was ran by jack to the end when he decided to sell out to wrm,the farming side was ran by jacks brother brian,who i beleive has now passed the running of the farms onto his son nigel
That’s a cracking photo of the AEC line up Chris,I believe they had some V8 engined Mandators in the fleet at one time-very fast motors by all accounts.In later years did they also run some Leyland Roadtrain units?
hello tim,
yes henley ran 2 leyland roadtrains with the rest cabs.
the first one being kkm 688v (allocated to the late and never forgettable reg greenfield) the second being rkl 370w (allocated to ron green).
in my time with the company it would be every 4 years or so jack would get the vehicles lined up and photographed.
it would be either all the seddon atkinsons together,the erfs or the mans.
this would mean that everyone of those particular make would have to come down to spelmonden from either rochdale or canterbury depots,never a problem for us as the photo sessions were always on a saturday afternoon,so thursday night onwards when we wanted the seddon atkinsons down we just swapped them over with erfs for a few days!
Atkinson JYX 550K
thanks very much indeed tim for posting jyx 550k,i rode many miles in that shotgun with dad when i was little.
hopefully cav551 will have some input as its always good to have a bit more input from someone else especially someone who can remember and knows more than me!
I can’t claim to know more than you Chris; just different things. Those of us based at Spelmonden just had a slightly different experience to those at Paddock Wood, we tended to see more of the ‘fat rat’ as Jack was affectionately known. The best way to get rid of him if you were on an 8am start at the lorry shed was simply to start a Gardner; which would normally result in a “Yes I’m going” as he rapidly beat a retreat. Actually he was a good boss - as you said arguments were forgotten quickly.
His most annoying trait was he is the sort of person to walk into a room that you have just spent a week decorating and his only comment will be something like: " yes, mmm, there’s a piece of paper in the corner." There was only one way to deal with him as he could certainly get on your back if you let him, and that was to bite back straight away.
As a whippersnapper, he told me to take a trailer down to the weighbridge from the lorry shed. I had to take about three shunts to reverse onto the bridge because it was an LV ERF and so no power steering. Ignoring the parked van in the way, he started leading off about why hadn’t I driven onto the weighbridge? and just started going on and on.
So I asked him: “Is it really SO important that youv’e go to make SUCH a fuss about it?”
“Hmmm yes it is.” he said in his ‘Jack’ way.
“Then I feel sorry for you Jack” I replied. And with that surprisingly, he was never much trouble again.
re Brian and Jack:
The insurance company were not very happy because in a short space of time 2 vehicles had been burnt out in mysterious fires. One was a Commer TS3 2 stroke 4 wheeler and the other was MKM350F the only 32 ton Atkinson Silver Knight unit. Both of these were extremely unpopular vehicles. What was upsetting the insurance and Jack was that the engine had just been overhauled and it was worth more on the books than it had been. MKM was at the time the only lorry with a Gardner 180 and just a six speed David Brown 'box; all the rest had two speed axles so they went a lot better. Clay Hill into Goudhurst used to virtually stop it.
It turned out that Brian had been driving MKM when it had caught fire (maybe on the M4). Jack was querying the claim Brian had made for a coat that had been lost in the blaze. The conversation as reported went like this:
Jack: " £150 FOR A COAT? £150? where did you get it from?"
Brian: " Harrods".
Jack: “HARRODS”
Brian: " We don’t ALL shop at Barsleys you know Jack."
( for those who won’t know, Barsleys is a small clothing shop in Paddock Wood although it is probably the biggest shop in the village).
aec mercury ukp 480h one of many aecs operated by the company over the years.
you can see the fleet number of no 48 on the lorry,when new vehicles were about to be registered the company would contact the relevant authorities and request particular digits on registrations so for this aec the company would have requested the digits to be either 48 or 480,so the fleet number would tie in with the registration number.
it didnt always work if you look at mow 302y the seddon atkinson 401 posted earlier that has the fleet number of 32
I had always associated Henley Transport with hauling fruit and produce from farmers etc but the Atkinson 8 wheeler is carrying concrete beams from Tylers and there is mention of Charcon -was this other work a small or large proportion of their loads?