Ray Smyth:
Dave, Your comments remind me of my 3 years with Robert Baillie & Co Ltd from early 1970 at their Wigan depot.
For 9 months of the year, the majority of our work was Guernsey Tomatoes, loaded at Portsmouth and sent up to
Baillies Wigan and Doncaster depots on night trunk, driven by Horndean based drivers. The tomatoes were packed
in wooden trays, strapped in bundles of 3, so the regular total was 3000 trays/ 1000 bundles. The delivery of them
to wholesale fruit & veg markets was all handball, with the exception of Belfast, Glasgow, and Liverpool.
The tomatoes for these 3 markets were all on steel pallets of the Guernsey Tomato Marketing Board.You had to be careful when unloading, because there were about 8 different sizes and grades of tomatoes, and up
to 8 wholesalers at the market, e.g. the old wholesale market in Swan Street, Manchester. Cheers, Ray Smyth.
Hello Ray…we did tomatoes out of Weymouth during the season, can’t imagine you’d park a car there during the summer these days let alone 20 or 30 wagons… must admit it was quite nice working there next to the beech, lots of nice scenery 