Great reading, I used to love to see your red and white livery, seemed so smart on the road, and always well driven. When I saw the name Bewick…seemed so substantial,yet I never knew who was behind the name.
Strange, by 1969, I was hanging up my spurs on driving, thousands of miles through Europe, mainly in Fodens, (perhaps that was why I had enough)!, and the family seemed hell bent in joining the “race to the bottom” that was general haulage back then…so I was off in a different direction altogether.
Looking forward to hearing how you bucked the trend…boy how I would have loved to have the opportunity to drive anything as powerful as a D1000…mind you I was later to learn all about that blooming handbrake!
Keep on writing, we are all with you…
Cheerio for now.
Thank you for your kind comments John, but really my back story pales into the background when compared to your track record ! Regards Dennis.
Bewick:
But as an aside the Mill Buyer, Wilf Robinson, I spoke about turned out to be a great supporter of Bewick Transport who we dealt with for about 14 years until he retired but I continued to visit him every Christmas after he retired to give him a bottle of Gin right up when he passed away in the mid 90’s(You must never forget your friends that helped you along the way), he always gave me a bloody great salmon out of his deep freeze being like he was a dedicated fisherman, he really was a super bloke to deal with honest and straight the like of which have died out nowadays, literally. Cheers Bewick.
I couldn’t agree more with you. You have to build sound business relationships with your customers, being friendly, but keeping that bit of deference at all times. After all, they can make or break you. In the transport business I manage today we still work for a company I dealt with 35 years ago.
Punchy Dan:
Dennis could you leave a gap every so many lines thanks .
Don’t worry, Dan, I’ll sort that out when I get the contract for translation and proof reading. Should be more profitable than my Overpriced Roping, Sheeting and Strapping Courses!
Great story Dennis keep it coming,I remember Ellisons in Portsmouth red D1000 artics loading off the Camber Dock in Pompey,they lost a couple of loaded trailers when someone in an identical D1000 went in and said he was Ellisons and hooked up and away Good old days !
Sounds like something from a Sweeney episode MaggieD! Interesting stuff Dennis finding out how a company started and grew and the addition of the company and customer names and vehicles used and bought is the sort of detail that adds to the interest, I would think you have enough material to have a book written especially as you have photo’s to go with the text. Cheers Franky.
By early 1971once the opportunity presented itself for more-or-less unlimited tonnages of pulp from the Thames straight back home it was a case of getting geared up to take advantage of what we were being offered which meant stepping up to 32 ton operation and my favoured marque was without doubt Atkinson and as luck would have it Scotts of Nottingham were just opening in Penrith and they were delighted to fulfil my enquiry although there was no chance of ordering a Gardner powered chassis as I was still a non-entity haulier and the Gardner Chassis went to the likes of Alf Sutton and his ilk but a 205 ■■■■■■■ Borderer would be available for me if I cared to place an order. So I “took the Bull by the horns” and ordered a new Borderer. Since I had kicked off as an owner driver 3 years previously I had built up a good relationship with Bowmaker Commercial the finance arm of Bowrings and the Merchant Bankers Singer and Freidlander and they had an office in Kendal and the Manager was a chap called John Anthony another great bloke and he was actually well thought of at Bowmaker and had turned down a number of promotions to more senior positions in the operation as he didn’t want to up-root his family from a pleasant part of the country plus he had, unfortunately, a handicapped child which he had no wish to affect by moving elsewhere. However, this meant that he had far more authority than any other manager and he also ran one of the most successful branches in the UK, so what I’m getting at was he had the say so by word of mouth on any deal I required finance for and without referral to higher authority and for a period of about 16 years Bowmaker more-or-less supplied all the finance I was unable to provide from our own resources. This connection with Bowmaker I had rankled the Nat West Finance arm of Lombard North Central no end to the extent that they used to “button Hole” my Nat West Bank Manager to try and get me to put some finance business their way ( Which Bob Morgan the Nat West Manager at that time found very distasteful as he looked down upon the Finance arm of the Bank) however I used to have credit lines with Lombard which I never ever fully utilised as they were too hide bound with fixed 25% deposit and 3years payback and forget second hand motors they were taboo even mint 12/18 month old ones! But Bowmakers were always amenable and dare I say it very innovative at times depending upon the circumstances prevailing at the time i.e. 10% deposit and 48 months payback, they didn’t mind as the gear they were financing from time to time was the best I,e, Atkinsons, ERF’s and York and Crane Fruehauf trailers not forgetting that I never ever had any black marks against me so it was a case that if I needed the finance Bowmakers were always willing to accommodate me. I was even invited for lunch at their head office at St. Annes Gate in London as they were delighted to have been involved with me from the start and to see the Bewick operation grow and prosper. My involvement with Bowmaker came to an abrupt end in 1984 when Lloyds & Scottish Finance bought Bowmaker from the Bowring Group and they suspended John Anthony on some trumped up beef because they wanted the local L & S manager to assume control of the Bowmaker operation in Kendal so when “the chop came” John took me to lunch and told me what had transpired and he was leaving ( He bought a Hotel in West Wales and moved away eventually) but it was a sad end as he had become a great pal, I even used to store “■■■■■■ backs” for him in our depot from time to time and bought a couple of nice trailers and a near new Datsun FLT that he got back once ! Anyway this L&S Manger was a right ■■■■■■ who I’d always ■■■■■■ off on previous occasions so when the “preening ■■■■■ turned up to tell me that I would be dealing with him from now on if I wanted any finance I ■■■■■■ him off out of the Yard with a flea in his ear and I never did another deal with them. By this time I wasn’t in need of any external finance and the last two motors I financed with Bowmaker were the last two British Motors I ever bought which were two Sed/Atk 401’s.I realise this last episode is not strictly about the Haulage Business but it is ,never-the-less, an important part of the story and I had to have the ability to deal with all aspects of the operation from Drivers, Customers, Bankers, Insurers, Licencing Authorities, Vehicle Suppliers and Dealers etc. So I hope I haven’t made your teeth itch to-night and I promise to get back on track in the next episode ! Cheers Bewick.
Frankydobo:
Sounds like something from a Sweeney episode MaggieD! Interesting stuff Dennis finding out how a company started and grew and the addition of the company and customer names and vehicles used and bought is the sort of detail that adds to the interest, I would think you have enough material to have a book written especially as you have photo’s to go with the text. Cheers Franky.
Trouble is Franky I’d only sell about 6 books and they would be “knocked out” by Amazon for half price eh! Cheers Dennis.
Ah! now then where were we ? How about the property dealings I had within and around Milnthorpe ! well they were important to me at the time and quite interesting as well as causing me grief !
In early 1970 when I was running 3 motors the D1000,Mastiff artic and the Bedford KE it was OK because the trailer was dropped at the Mill and the driver took the unit home to Arnside. My Brother and I lived in Kendal and we both took our motors home, I had a 600 gal derv tank in my parents back garden which backed onto Mint St. so we just pulled up at the kerb and brought the pipe across the pavement to fill up. But at that time I started buying most of my fuel from the JET Café at Clifton upon Dunsmore on the A5, but that’s another story !. Anyway it became obvious if I wanted to expand the operation with the opportunity the Mill had offered I would really need to be acquiring a depot of some description and at that time the old firm of R O Hodgson who had been based in Milnthorpe for many years now belonged to Boddy Industries and they had opened a new depot on the old ironworks site in Carnforth and had just moved “lock stock” from Milnthorpe to Carnforth. Anyway this “Cockney Geezer” Stan Maynard a welding fabrication engineer had bought Hodgsons two properties in the village and had moved into the big Garage opposite The Coach and Horses pub on Haverflatts Lane but he wanted to sell the old Sugar warehouse and yard next to the Police station on the A6 just south of the traffic lights in the centre of the village. So I seized my chance as the Sugar warehouse would do us a treat with a bit of knocking about! I paid him about £2750 freehold and then adapted it with the installation of a pit behind two double sliding doors. There was parking for all the motors in the yard as over the next two years another half dozen motors joined the fleet including three new Atki’s. I also had parking for three artics at the Motor Factors( Harold Fawcett’s) along the A6 about 300yards from the depot and the rest of the trailer fleet which numbered about ten by this time were dropped in the Mill. However, expansion continued and by late '72 it was painfully obvious that we had outgrown our little depot but by chance my luck was in again as this “Cockney Geezer” was struggling a bit and he decided he wanted to downsize so guess what ? I swapped our premises for the big workshop and office block he occupied, I paid him £9500 plus our depot and in January 1973 we moved into the purpose built Garage with three pits and large floor area plus toilet block, a yard and a detached office block and stores, absolute heaven although not 100% ideal for artics never the less there was bags of room for all the units which the numbers steadily grew from then on and we could still get the trailers in and out of the workshop and yard for service and MOT etc although we still had the parking on the A6 and at the Mill so that solved our trailer parking. So for the next three years we operated fairly well from these larger premises and I bought out Mc Guffie Transport in mid '74 which added another 7 trailers to the 30 plus we already had by then but at this time our trailer fleet was becoming widely spread as we had customers in Barrow, Whitehaven and Liverpool as well as drivers based in Daventry and Gravesend so trailer parking in Milnthorpe was not a problem. However, by early 1976 another opportunity presented its self in the shape of the K. Fell business adjacent to the Libby factory. Enough for to-night, to be continued Cheers Bewick.
Maybe I got a bit ahead of myself at the end of the last instalment so I think I should return to 1973 and an opportunity that was presented to me one afternoon when I sat in a meeting at my accountants in Kendal ! A telephone call was put through to the office I was in with the Accountant and the chap introduced himself as Jim Lamb the despatch manager at Bowater Scott in Barrow. He had insisted to the Girl in our office that he must contact me urgently so she had reluctantly given him our Accountants Tel no. Apparently Bowaters had had a disastrous fire that week and their finished goods warehouse was completely burnt down ( A Colin Ashby driver was kipping in his cab in the warehouse and he tragically lost his life) and Bowaters were looking for all the motors they could get to load straight off the production lines and ship the stock out to their nationwide warehouses so how many motors a day could I give them ! Well when I got back to Milnthorpe I discussed the opportunity with my traffic manager then I got back on the phone to Jim Lamb and said we would be pleased to help but it would have to be to the South east so he said he could give us two per day to their West Thurrock depot if we could manage it ! Well we had a right battle to cope initially but we quickly started a couple of drivers at Daventry (one was a right ■■■■■■■■ and as we had regular tonnages of pulp for Milnthorpe out of Tilbury which was just around the corner from West Thurrock it suited our operation fine. I bought a few more Atkis PDQ and a number of 40ft flats to get the operation back to normality and the operation settled down again but 1973 was a real busy time although it is surprising the volume of traffic you could move through running 6 days and nights. We ran out of Bowaters for 13 years down to W/Thurrock with 3 or 4 loads a day once we got into top gear and we got on so well with the W/Thurrock people, particular Gil the W/house manager so much so that he wouldn’t hear of anyone but Bewicks running the stock in from Barrow Mill ! We had by this time in 1973 become the main Contractor out of the Mill at Beetham and in 1974 we became the sole contractor other than their own two artics which we bought from them in Jan 77 and assumed total responsibility for all the tonnage in and out apart from a small amount of export tonnage. Our operation to and from the South east was becoming quite intense by early 1974 as we had trunk motors available on a daily basis at Milnthorpe so a friend of mine John McGuffie was wanting to cut back to concentrate on his tippers so I bought his platform business from him which consisted of seven 40 footers and one Mk1 Atki his traffic was running loads of new 45 gal drums from Liverpool to Whitehaven and then he was reloading out of Albright and Wilson (where the drums went) as well as Workington Steel Works ( subbed off J.W. Graham of Bass Lake) and also out of Libbys at Milnthorpe where Bewick Transport also had a slug of the traffic but not to the same area as McGuffie Transport who mainly delivered to Tesco at Winsford and also to Quick Save at Prestatyn which was a particularly good rated job IIRC.So the McGuffie traffic kept our trunk motors busy during the day as well as the McGuffie day motors we had added then the Bewick trunkers ran to the Midlands and back during the night with Bowaters and returned with Pulp from Tilbury. The trunk motors were never cold from cracking up on Sunday until they were parked up on Saturday morning, Luvverly Jubberly I’ll get through 1975 in the next episode when I again got embroiled in property deals and another takeover ! Cheers Bewick.
doesn’t that Dan’l realise it uses too much paper if I have to leave a gap between each line ! 
Good old days !