The best truck on the fleet! Why? Amongst a fleet of Bedford TK’s/KM’s this was the one to work on…it had a tilt cab! It was the only one in our fleet. I fitted a Ford cortina GXL badge to the front much to my Workshop Foremans (nickname Schultz!) disgust (“defacing company property”) but he never made me take it off. We didn’t always see eye to eye…“Nippers…cuh!” He didn’t like Radio One either and that was when it was on 1053 and 1089 A.M. playing across the workshop.
Back to the truck…6 cyl. non turbo Dorset Diesel. 5 speed Ford box, no 2 speed axle but a ride to die for, soft and smooth like a coach. It had just undergone a complete repaint in this foto, taken about 1976.
Carl Williams:
Ford D800 RUP799K with 40ft single axle van trailer when new
What a joy to reverse (!)
Hi GCRERF
Within our trailer fleet we had several singe axle mosty 28 ft but together with this 40ft van we had a 40ft platform and a 33ft drop frame van trailer all bought new, like this one were expensive with custom made bodies. All our other 40 footers were tandem axle and like you say the single axle trailers were dreadful to negotiate into tight spaces. All class one drivers complained when they were given one to take away.
The first truck I ever drove was a Ford D Series 4 wheeler, that would have been about 1976. I think it may have been D suffix reg’, but I’m not sure about that at all
It was the farm truck, where I’d been a part time labourer and tractor driver since I was 12. The farm just up the road had borrowed it. I was sent up to get it on my push bike, because I could toss my bike on the back
It was a flat bed / drop side and we had a cattle float body which came off onto legs, that was ‘fun’.
There were two big pipes that went through reinforced holes in the body, then the legs slipped over the protruding ends of the pipes. You then reversed the truck so that the headboard pushed the body up onto the legs which pivoted on the pipes. There were two legs in a triangle to each leg. To put the body back on the truck, we reversed under it, roped the body to the truck and drove forwards, the body came down with a hell of a clatter.
That was the first truck I drove.
The oldest truck I’ve driven was the army 4wd version of the Bedford S series, with petrol engines
The EC on the reg of the one on the right means it was registered in the Eastern Cape so that is East London, Port Elizabeth area.
Yes, that’s correct, I took them in Montagu, South Africa.
Thanks gents, SA makes much more sense. I had no idea they were used there - were they shipped out or was it local assembly?
To be honest I have no idea but there was a very large Ford presence in the Eastern Cape (along with lots of other makes) where cars and trucks were shipped in adn assebled there and distributed around the Southern part of Africa.
BTW - did you know that at one time BMW cars in right hand drive were assembled here and exported to UK. We all drive on the correct side of the raod here !!!
Someone on here mentioned their D series would do 43mph, they were lucky! At Felixstowe in the late 60’s early 70’s I drove a D300 dropside on groupage all over the country at a max speed of 32 mph. No bloody joke. The best motor we had was a C reg TK but I wrote that off on the A5 so was given the Ford as punishment. And if you really misbehaved you got one of two M reg Leyland rotten Terriers.
I took this shot just last week in Cyprus, no batteries on it but the terminals were taped up to keep them clean and the owner said it was still used at harvest time. Regards Kevmac47.
The chrome bumper and front grille strip first appeared on the D1000, along with the West Coast style mirrors but these didn’t last long and were replaced. This bit of American styling also included flat mud flaps similar to trailer flaps instead of full wings, not popular in this country though as this wing style isn’t suited to our British weather, quickly covering the cab with dirty spray. franky.
