The other day I was so pleased that Peter Blackshire
had added a photo he had of one of two Bedford KF pantechnicons we ran with bodies by Bowyer Bros (who later traded as Boalloy) from Congleton supplied by Syd Abraham the Manchester Bedford agents/ Apparently the van was caught on camera in 1976 in Leeds obviously passing through roadworks where they appear to have been putting down new white lines.
I was so pleased as I hadn’t a photo of either of these vans and couldn’t remember how we had painted them but they were recognisable by the cream on the front of the cab. For any of our ex-drivers reading this one was driven by Peter Cawood (Known as the fisherman) and it may have been him driving that day. I cannot remember who drove the second.
I know Abrahams sold well over 1000 of these vans and many people swore by them, but in no way could they ever be compared with the standard of work of either Marsden or Vanplan, Although they had a fibreglass moulded cab and front end together with roof, Boalloy never managed to produce fibreglass panelling on the sides and the general finish in particular inside the cab was very poor. The van in the photo looks a lot better from a distance than it ever did close up.
Probably a lot of the reason for this was the price that Syd Abraham screwed Boalloy down to. They had started selling ready made Marsdens from an advert in Commercial Motor and approached Marsden with an incredible offer of 500 vans. As Ken Marsden explained to my father at that time the biggest catch was the price they were prepared to pay and the number they required would mean too much of Marsden’s production capacity would have been ■■■■■■■ and they would need to sacrifice some smaller operators like ourselves who bought directly from them.
Abraham then approached Boalloy who built to the price requirement but compromised on quality. I remember in 1959 my dad had taken our Bedford petrol Marsden along to Mr Noble of Sherwood Wynn coachbuilders of Darlington who had built a number of vans for us over the years. Looking at the Marsden he was appalled at how light weight the wood structure was as he was an old fashioned builder who built as strong as tanks, but that of course meant heavier unladen weight and higher taxation weight (In those days the rate of tax was fixed by the unladen weight) Nobel was wrong. Marsden certainly were not over engineered using the minimum size wood needed but it worked. Their secret was their domed fibreglass roof coupled with an excellent steel back frame that made the bodies very stable and provided the strength needed. The other secret they used was welding the subframe into the chassis and not using ‘U bolts’ that loosened with wear. We ran a lot of Marsdens and never ever had one case of water leak or a cracked rear frame.
We had regular problems with the two Abraham supplied Boalloys. With cracks in the cab mould couple with movement and rattles and leaking roofs, culminating with one of the drivers having a windscreen fall out as he was going down a motorway, so obviously they didn’t survive half as long in our fleet as similarly aged Mardens.
The biggest problem we had with Marsden was the delivery times, We didn’t finance our vans and originally paid cash for our chassis from Adams & Gibbons the Durham Bedford agency when they delivered the chassis to Marsden. Meaning we had bought and paid for them sometimes up to nearly a year before we paid Marsden for the bodies at the time of collection of the finished vehicle. This was frustrating as we were putting out money for up to a year before the van went on the road. This however changed when Marsdens sold out to the BAIRD GROUP who owned to Lancashire-Liverpool Bedford agency Garlic Burrell & Edwards and then Marsden supplied the completed vehicle and we paid them the total on completion. However that did not improve their long delivery schedule from order to delivery about 1 year.
Boalloy did however produce some better quality work. Inc two Seddon Pennine pantechnicons and a Ford Passenger chassis (See 2nd photo) that we operated They also built 3 of their Tautliner curtain siders on 3 of our 40 ft tandem axle trailers.
