The Otter was Guys 4 -5 tonner & when plating came in they were plated at about 9 ton GVW. One of the biggest reduction in fuel capacity was speed Faster you go the more fuel you use & our Guys with 4 cylinder Gardner were certainly not fast. I remember coming ac
cross one of them, in my car, on the the newly built M18 that led onto the M1 just past Doncaster, just before we took them off the road. It was a pitiful sight crawling up the incline onto the M1 on its way down to Leicester at 20 MPH in the crawler lane.
The strange thing is the drivers got through the same amount of work as Bedford drivers who were cruising past at 50-55 I suppose it was like the tortoise & the hare, but like I said driving one was like a punishment & new drivers were allocated them to prove themselves & of course they were making bigger profits using much less fuel. Its the same today I suppose as some operators govern their vehicles to lower speeds (I believe Elddis Transport & George Allison both from up here in NE are 2) to achieve optimum fuel consumption. As it can make the difference of success or failure in present times. But in our case you have to draw the line somewhere. My father who had never driven one of the Guys, in fact had never driven any for years, went for a drive out with one and came back furious that we were running such outdated vehicles and within 2 months they were gone.
Here is a photo of one of our Big Js with Gardner 180s which although 32 ton GTW usually would gross about 20 ton GVW and getting about 12 mpg compared to something like a Leyland Lynx doing same work 8mpg. And in this case the drivers preferred the Big J to then new Lynx.
