I realise that from a drivers point of view alone BRS may well have been excellent employers but from the Private haulier v BRS point of view the playing field was always well tilted in favour of the nationalised operation without a doubt,oh! and they still couldn’t compete with the private sector even when the rules of sound business economics had to be applied which private hauliers had to work within ! For a start BRS never paid an insurance premium,nor were the “tax discs” in the windows paid for either I would also suspect that the fuel tax was repaid to BRS by the treasury as a result of being a de-facto government department and the buying power they could wield over their other suppliers was enormous for motors, trailers and tyres etc.During my time at Brady’s as young trailer mate I quickly came to the conclusion that BRS was unfair competition and when I started on my own I only ever loaded off BRS once which was in West ■■■■■■■ in 1969 and it was a load out of Marchon (Albright & Wilson) in Whitehaven and the reason being that at the time they (BRS) had a strangle hold on traffic out of West ■■■■■■■ which I am glad to say finally came to an end in the early '70’s.Oh! and the rate they paid for my two drops to London was ■■■■■ ! I had a far better rate to London out of the Libby factory in Milnthorpe at the time but then BRS,fortunately,wern’t involved in South ■■■■■■■■■■■ Whitehaven was 70 hard miles north of Kendal !!! Sorry Lads if you don’t like what I’ve said but it is the unpalatable truth from the "sharp end " of the transport world at that time. Cheers Bewick.
Just from an employed driver’s point of view, I have to say that BRS were probably one of the best firms that I ever worked for. We were well-paid compared to the private sector in our area and had fringe benefits which other firms’ drivers could only dream of. Our depot was surprisingly flexible for a national firm, leaving us alone to do the job and providing any equipment we asked for. As an example of our management’s “relaxed” attitude, after a car had written itself off under my trailer as I was turning into my (private) drive on a “dodgy” just after midnight, our branch manager only wanted to know if I had a log sheet to cover my late arrival! Never heard another word. Years later, I ran into the same manager- not literally!- and asked why there had been no investigation. I was told that he didn’t see why he should have to sack one of his best drivers just because some drunk had decided to drive under my lorry instead of around it.
As regards rates, BRS’ were a ■■■■ sight better than we were getting from the South Wales steelworks in the late 60s/early 70s, a fact I was made only too aware of when I joined the ranks of the owner drivers.
Sorry, Dennis, but I’d go back to those days if I was forced out of retirement. Provided, of course, that I could have a 240 Gardner fitted in that Big J!
On second thoughts, I would surely have progressed to a 350 ■■■■■■■ by now.
Bewick:
I realise that from a drivers point of view alone BRS may well have been excellent employers but from the Private haulier v BRS point of view the playing field was always well tilted in favour of the nationalised operation without a doubt,oh! and they still couldn’t compete with the private sector even when the rules of sound business economics had to be applied which private hauliers had to work within ! For a start BRS never paid an insurance premium,nor were the “tax discs” in the windows paid for either I would also suspect that the fuel tax was repaid to BRS by the treasury as a result of being a de-facto government department and the buying power they could wield over their other suppliers was enormous for motors, trailers and tyres etc.During my time at Brady’s as young trailer mate I quickly came to the conclusion that BRS was unfair competition and when I started on my own I only ever loaded off BRS once which was in West ■■■■■■■ in 1969 and it was a load out of Marchon (Albright & Wilson) in Whitehaven and the reason being that at the time they (BRS) had a strangle hold on traffic out of West ■■■■■■■ which I am glad to say finally came to an end in the early '70’s.Oh! and the rate they paid for my two drops to London was [zb] ! I had a far better rate to London out of the Libby factory in Milnthorpe at the time but then BRS,fortunately,wern’t involved in South ■■■■■■■■■■■ Whitehaven was 70 hard miles north of Kendal !!! Sorry Lads if you don’t like what I’ve said but it is the unpalatable truth from the "sharp end " of the transport world at that time. Cheers Bewick.
Hiya,
Dennis, I did three spells with the BRS two in the North West area both at Blackburn
depot and once ( until closure ) in the North East Consett BRS, Siddle C Cooks old
operation and the politics of BRS versus Private sector never once entered into my
way of thinking I got out of bed in the morning and did a days work immaterial who
had my P45 in their filing cabinet, I did 99.9 % of the time do more than was really
expected of me and once or twice fell foul of the shop steward funnily enough this
was whilst working for a private haulier this was for fabricating a spreadover to get
back to the yard for an urgent trailer swap or get a trailer back being needed for
night trunk, I have done the same thing for the Red and Rust but not being able to
claim for excess overtime told to book a night out in lieu, BRS versus Privateer’s it
didn’t matter one iota to me, I enjoyed the job and enjoyed the pay packet just so
long as my current employer kept stuffing oncers in my poke I was as happy as Larry.
thanks harry, long retired.
I did qualify my comments by saying that “from a drivers point of view” BRS were quite rightly judged as,and were,first class employers which “H” and ROF have confirmed but as a straight comparison with the private sector it was always “no contest” as the deck was “stacked” against the private haulier.You cannot beat the dead hand of the state,if the powers that be so decree !! But look what happened when BRS were made to compete on an equal basis,they soon piled out of General and carried on with Contract hire and Truck Rental.If the NFC hadn’t been given away for “buttons” they would have shrivelled up and died a lot earlier if they’d been exposed to fair competition,of that there was no doubt.Cheers Dennis.
Obviously the vast majority of owners were opposed to nationalisation whent it was first happening. Then some of the more open-minded individuals realised that they could play the nationalisation rules and negotiate the worth of their business rather than accept the minimum tariffs laid down for vehicle valuation, business goodwill, premises, etc They also realised that nationalisation would not be permanent and when a Tory Government returned to power then nationalisation would be revoked. Which is indeed what happened. When partial de-nationalisation occured vehicles for re-starting businesses could be obtained at bargain prices. The canny ones got top money for their business in 1948 and re-started in 1954-55 by paying a lot less money that they had received a few years before.
When subbing from BRS in later years their rates were always better than any other hauliers’ and they were the preferred back load source from anywhere in the country. Plus you always got paid from them. To a certain extent I always thought that BRS controlled haulage rates and their eventual demise certainly did nothing for getting rates up. They were always a good source of second hand vehicles, cosmetically they weren’t the smartest but they had been well maintained. We ran several ex-BRS lorries and they were OK.
Let’s face it, BRS was a complete disaster child of Socialist dogma, as were all nationalised organisations, perhaps with the exception of the Central Electricity Generating Board. You didn’t have to be any higher up the tree, than a 19year old junior trainee such was I, to realise that this was NOT the way to do the job, so they certainly taught me something about road haulage ! Was a good life for the driver no doubt, since it was run at the behest of the unions, which ultimately kills off any operation. Any ‘‘job creation scheme’’ as was BRS, operated for the benefit of it’s employees instead of it’s customers and bankroller, can only go one way. Down the tube…!
Yes, state ownership of transport can never work. state ownership of utility services such as Electricity, Gas, and Water can be argued to be beneficial for the entire nation. The old Central Electricity Generating Board, in its heyday, provided us with the most modern and efficient generating and distribution network in the world. Since privatisation of the electricity industry it has been starved of investment until we have the lowest margin of spare generating capacity of any civilised nation in the world. If we get a hard winter in the next few months power cuts will be a feature. And as for useless wind turbines…
Hermit it is hard to say it was a total disaster as there was good things which the BRS paved the way for such things as more modern and better equipment and working conditions as well as a pension scheme as I started my career at Pickfords (BRS) and finished at EXEL with around 15 years in the private sector in between.
I only had a couple of bad employers in the private sector and I was out of those places very sharp but I also worked for some very good firms and the bosses were were fair as long as you got on and did your job to the best of your ability.
The unions did like to dictate more on the nationalised firms but each depot was run by the manager which in our case was very good,
The big outfits were limited to 12mph by law so we would do 132 miles for a 11 hour day when possible empty and what we could when loaded, I drove a 55/60 Atkinson mostly and the union agreement was 14mph loaded and 18 mph empty which equated to 154 miles for 11 hours and 198 for 11 hours ( we also did this with the highwayman before we got the new tackle ) and being a very busy depot at the time they back loaded other depots and used subbies from the private sector.
BRS Staniforth Road Sheffield worked along similar lines but they used a fair few subbies and quite a lot of owner drivers started their business through the work they were able to obtain this way.
It did go ■■■■ up in the 70s when they decided to bring graduates into management straight from university who had no practical experience but this was happening in all our industries
cheers Johnnie 
P S my pension from BRS/NFC does enable me to have a couple of extra holidays a year now as well 
The Seddon with the BL boxes on the back, Prefabs as a background and Minis as book-ends. How much more atmospheric can you get? Jim
jmc jnr:
The Seddon with the BL boxes on the back, Prefabs as a background and Minis as book-ends. How much more atmospheric can you get? Jim
Wonder if that is either Cowley or Swindon ? No doubt Jakey will tell us . regards Keith .
kingswinford kit:
jmc jnr:
The Seddon with the BL boxes on the back, Prefabs as a background and Minis as book-ends. How much more atmospheric can you get? JimWonder if that is either Cowley or Swindon ? No doubt Jakey will tell us . regards Keith .
Could be Birmingham
TIDDERSON:
kingswinford kit:
jmc jnr:
The Seddon with the BL boxes on the back, Prefabs as a background and Minis as book-ends. How much more atmospheric can you get? JimWonder if that is either Cowley or Swindon ? No doubt Jakey will tell us . regards Keith .
Could be Birmingham
Second thoughts ,maybe Coventry , Keith
kingswinford kit:
TIDDERSON:
kingswinford kit:
jmc jnr:
The Seddon with the BL boxes on the back, Prefabs as a background and Minis as book-ends. How much more atmospheric can you get? JimWonder if that is either Cowley or Swindon ? No doubt Jakey will tell us . regards Keith .
Could be Birmingham
Second thoughts ,maybe Coventry , Keith
my guess canley coventry
Before my days so I cannot say for sure , and I cannot make out the fleet number . 
JAKEY:
Before my days so I cannot say for sure , and I cannot make out the fleet number .
Straining my old eyes I think the fleet number could be EG33,which I believe makes it a Coventry vehicle!! could be wrong,but have tried hard to make it out.
Hey, thanks for all the info…
Eric,
Bewick:
I did qualify my comments by saying that “from a drivers point of view” BRS were quite rightly judged as,and were,first class employers which “H” and ROF have confirmed but as a straight comparison with the private sector it was always “no contest” as the deck was “stacked” against the private haulier.You cannot beat the dead hand of the state,if the powers that be so decree !! But look what happened when BRS were made to compete on an equal basis,they soon piled out of General and carried on with Contract hire and Truck Rental.If the NFC hadn’t been given away for “buttons” they would have shrivelled up and died a lot earlier if they’d been exposed to fair competition,of that there was no doubt.Cheers Dennis.
I can only second what ROF and Harry have written ,but remember that the hauliers before nationalisation had three years notice of what was going to happen and they must have made a packet out of the rubbish they were operating , vehicles were run into the ground repairs neglected -hardly any of them fit for work ,I was around early on just out of conscription and spent a lot of time repairing them . and only stayed because of promises of new trucks coming along .
what is more these same hauliers came over to manage these same fleets that they had been paid well for !
HI ,Folks , We were forced to by back the bigest pile ■■■■■ ever 1948 and 1950 Austin and Thorneycroft 4 wheel Petrols WE HAD to pay two to three thousand pounds just for the s licences as the lorrys were just scrap ,Cheers Barry
toshboy:
Bewick:
I did qualify my comments by saying that “from a drivers point of view” BRS were quite rightly judged as,and were,first class employers which “H” and ROF have confirmed but as a straight comparison with the private sector it was always “no contest” as the deck was “stacked” against the private haulier.You cannot beat the dead hand of the state,if the powers that be so decree !! But look what happened when BRS were made to compete on an equal basis,they soon piled out of General and carried on with Contract hire and Truck Rental.If the NFC hadn’t been given away for “buttons” they would have shrivelled up and died a lot earlier if they’d been exposed to fair competition,of that there was no doubt.Cheers Dennis.I can only second what ROF and Harry have written ,but remember that the hauliers before nationalisation had three years notice of what was going to happen and they must have made a packet out of the rubbish they were operating , vehicles were run into the ground repairs neglected -hardly any of them fit for work ,I was around early on just out of conscription and spent a lot of time repairing them . and only stayed because of promises of new trucks coming along .
what is more these same hauliers came over to manage these same fleets that they had been paid well for !
Your a bit wide of the mark there “toshboy” as 1948 was only,barely,3 years after the War had ended and there was no way that there was a plentiful supply of new motors,quite the opposite and the motors that were still running had had the ■■■■■■■■ flogged off them during the war,so read Barry Waddy’s post about when they started selling off and de-nationolised what about the crap the British Transport Commision were selling back to the hauliers that were able to re-start again after the fiasco of nationalisation was in the first place.Sorry but if you wern’t involved at the “sharp end” you will never understand what an economic shambles BRS really was ! Cheers Bewick.