Do you read/buy classic lorry mags?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS OLD TIME LORRIES, COMPANIES AND DRIVERS (INTERACT
121

We were lucky enough to have a feature done on our two wagons about 3 years ago by CVC. Nick Larkin came across as a vintage vehicle enthusiast rather than a lorry fan but was pleasant and very interested in our wagons (it also helped us to sell the truck after it was on the front but that’s another story!)

Back in those days CVC seemed to be better but HC is streets ahead nowadays, the new editor really seems to have transformed it and the classic truck section is fantastic for someone of my age group. As pointed out above who wants to read about 1930s lorries…how many people who operated or driven them are still around?
As mentioned above a lot of the vintage scene is based on nostalgia and memories, Our family own wagons that we drove when younger and my passion is for 70s and 80s motors that I rode in with Dad as a youngster. There can’t be many people here who were driving for a living in the 1930s…go on prove me wrong!

We have just cancelled our CVC subscription but will continue with HC, it gets better every month.

May I also recommend REVS magazine (the ERF society magazine) as a very good read, full of working pics and recollections. No bias of course!

122

I prefer the old pictures from the 50s/60s/70s to the preserved stuff and always enjoy seeing the Peter Davies from CVC pictures

123

Maybe anything built before the '50s could be featured in Old Glory?

124

Did anyone else get fed up with how CVC rattled on continually about those bloody old films a year or two back?. Hell Drivers and The Long Haul. Yawn… Nice as it is to see a Kew Dodge tipper moving on film, facts and proper working film are far more interesting!.

125

ERF:

Bewick:
…the first time I heard the mags referred to as “comics” was in the Boardroom at Bo-alloy,and Gerry and Jim were commenting on the garbage that was sometimes written…

Gerry Broadbent, now theres a name from the past Dennis!. Someone (might have been Simon Longden) told me he was quite unwell a couple of years ago.

Hello Everyone, ERF you mention Simon Longden, an old family friend, is he still at Helsby & Longden or has he retired ? Would like to make contact again
after many years.

126

gandy:
Hello Everyone, ERF you mention Simon Longden, an old family friend, is he still at Helsby & Longden or has he retired ? Would like to make contact again
after many years.

I have just sent you a PM with his contact number.

127

CVCs’ crappy patronising editorial that’s usually like “this is your magazine, tell us what you want”…well how about a mag printed on proper paper or failing that make it a £1 per issue cheaper, scrap the A to Z, leave out the "I drove (whatever) up Shap whilst rolling a Woodbine,singing like Noel Coward,and reading an original copy of war and peace while climbing out and re-roping a load (or a similarly boring readers’ letter), and more working photos rather than "Joe Bloggs in his 1968 AEC Mandator in another photo of yet another road run…

128

Muckaway:
CVCs’ crappy patronising editorial that’s usually like “this is your magazine, tell us what you want”…well how about a mag printed on proper paper or failing that make it a £1 per issue cheaper, scrap the A to Z, leave out the "I drove (whatever) up Shap whilst rolling a Woodbine,singing like Noel Coward,and reading an original copy of war and peace while climbing out and re-roping a load (or a similarly boring readers’ letter), and more working photos rather than "Joe Bloggs in his 1968 AEC Mandator in another photo of yet another road run…

You won’t get anywhere beating about the bush - say what you mean!!.

129

I too let my subscription to CVC lapse last year. I’d been a long term subscriber and contributor to the mag, but decided that as money was getting tighter and the quality of the mag and articles in general was getting poorer, I decided that it was just another expense that I could well manage without. Ted Connelly still prints the articles that I send in. I know that from having an occasional browse through the mag in WH Smiths now though!. When my subscription lapsed I received a letter asking what it would take to ■■■■■■■■■■■■ back!.
I’m thinking of taking out a subscription with Heritage Commercials soon instead.

130

Muckaway 100% well put!
the paper in cvc is total crap, heritage use better stuff!

131

hello muckaway

got plenty of older stuff from old mags what was given to me

thanks

mark

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132

CVC seemed certainly a bit sparce this month. I read the lot on POA on Wednesday night,though I’ll keep it going for the time being.

133

I used to have all three on subscription, (easy birthday presents!) when I was researching for modeling, but found they would cover a lot of the same material at different times. Then the content of CVC seemed to go off a bit, followed by the poor paper quality, so decided to edge that one. Then the chap doing one of the others passed away, and when I went to renew they seemed to be unsure of what was what, so I decided to leave it a bit and not take any, to see how it went. Now I find I can manage to get my fix on here, though I did enjoy some of the articles on past hauliers and lorry men.
I do agree with the comments on poor reporting though, but sadly it is not just confined to lorry mags. I was interviewed or reported on, for many years, in another walk of life, and found this problem so frustrating! Often reports would appear, quoting what I had said when I had never spoken to the reporters and even when I was interviewed it would rarely be the same in print. :frowning: :confused:

134

ERF:

Muckaway:
CVCs’ crappy patronising editorial that’s usually like “this is your magazine, tell us what you want”…well how about a mag printed on proper paper or failing that make it a £1 per issue cheaper, scrap the A to Z, leave out the "I drove (whatever) up Shap whilst rolling a Woodbine,singing like Noel Coward,and reading an original copy of war and peace while climbing out and re-roping a load (or a similarly boring readers’ letter), and more working photos rather than "Joe Bloggs in his 1968 AEC Mandator in another photo of yet another road run…

You won’t get anywhere beating about the bush - say what you mean!!.

That’s how I was trained :smiley:

135

BigG-Unit:
I used to have all three on subscription, (easy birthday presents!) when I was researching for modeling, but found they would cover a lot of the same material at different times. Then the content of CVC seemed to go off a bit, followed by the poor paper quality, so decided to edge that one. Then the chap doing one of the others passed away, and when I went to renew they seemed to be unsure of what was what, so I decided to leave it a bit and not take any, to see how it went. Now I find I can manage to get my fix on here, though I did enjoy some of the articles on past hauliers and lorry men.
I do agree with the comments on poor reporting though, but sadly it is not just confined to lorry mags. I was interviewed or reported on, for many years, in another walk of life, and found this problem so frustrating! Often reports would appear, quoting what I had said when I had never spoken to the reporters and even when I was interviewed it would rarely be the same in print. :frowning: :confused:

Not referring to your time on the railways are you? Steam Railway have the same problem as CVC, letters from anorak wearers who fill an entire page with uninterseting waffle about something I gave up reading about as I started to doze off. Another mag I stopped buying…

136

I’ve been buying truck mags since I was nine back in 84 and now I have over 600 of them,I love looking back through them.

I agree with a lot of muckaway’s comments here.

CVC has always been a favorite,it was a cracker of a magazine a few years ago,but the last year or so it realy has gone down the girgler. Peter Davies’ photos are one of the reasons for still buying it,but why make them so small,there should be max three to a page not six. Carrying on is another feature that should have more coverage,after all trucks are for working and to see an old banga’ still doing a bit is great.
As for all the toot that is in the clasifides,I’m not interested in horse brasses or folding ladders,if it’s not truck related it shouldn’t be in there.

Back to the carring on,I take a lot of photos of trucks and there are a lot of old Britsh makes still working here in NZ. I’ve had a selection of pics in the mag,but others have taken over a year to be published. I’ve offered to regually send in a selection of working oldies,but at the rate of one lot a year I lost interest.

It’s pretty obvious that the editor is not a ‘lorry’ man and is more interested in ‘nostalgia’ than working classics. You wouldn’t have a railway expert edit a trout fishing magazine would you?

What happened to Nick Larkin?

137

NZ JAMIE:
I’ve been buying truck mags since I was nine back in 84 and now I have over 600 of them,I love looking back through them.

I agree with a lot of muckaway’s comments here.

CVC has always been a favorite,it was a cracker of a magazine a few years ago,but the last year or so it realy has gone down the girgler. Peter Davies’ photos are one of the reasons for still buying it,but why make them so small,there should be max three to a page not six. Carrying on is another feature that should have more coverage,after all trucks are for working and to see an old banga’ still doing a bit is great.
As for all the toot that is in the clasifides,I’m not interested in horse brasses or folding ladders,if it’s not truck related it shouldn’t be in there.

Back to the carring on,I take a lot of photos of trucks and there are a lot of old Britsh makes still working here in NZ. I’ve had a selection of pics in the mag,but others have taken over a year to be published. I’ve offered to regually send in a selection of working oldies,but at the rate of one lot a year I lost interest.
It’s pretty obvious that the editor is not a ‘lorry’ man and is more interested in ‘nostalgia’ than working classics. You wouldn’t have a railway expert edit a trout fishing magazine would you?

What happened to Nick Larkin?

It took my pictures 2 years to appear in “Carrying on”… and then one was mislabelled.

CVC has declined sharply - the paper quality is woeful and, as you say - the classifieds very hit and miss.
I actually used to look at the classifieds first - to check out the unrestored stuff!

They can’t seem to decide what the want the magazine to be -

If they are going to cover restorations then I want to know the facts/figures for the vehicle in question.

If they are going to show rally or road run pictures then I’d prefer that the article wasn’t just 3 pages of closely cropped shots - the captions need to be spot on to. The pictures need to appear close to the event too and not months later.

The A to Z needs to go - I can buy an encyclopedia for that if I want it.

Personally I would like less of the nostalgia/war stories and more articles about restorations (open chequebook and backyard stuff- there are so many skills involved in restoring an ERF LV cab, for example - why can’t we all see the steps involved?

As someone said above - what about comments on actually driving the vehicles -

Nick Larkin is obviously trying to work out how to tilt a Borderer cab…

138

Best thing I’ve seen in the last 12 months or so in CVC was the budget restoration of a Bedford O type. The mag would, in my opinion, seem a bit more credible if they featured the projects in more detail, and less of their current format of "here’s the Foden in it’s unrestored state (yes, my wife could spot that)…here’s the Foden with the engine stripped down (I’m no mechanic but I can see that the engine wont run in that state)…here’s the lorry before it was signwritten (Stevie Wonder could see that) :unamused: :laughing:

139

Has anyone looked through the current cvc? Flicked through it earlier only the looking back and Reiver tipper interested me so I read those and put it back. I noticed the A to Z is still going :unamused:

140

Got both CVC and Heritage next to me and although they are both the same thickness and page count Heritage has much better articles, they might have the odd obscure vehicle that doesn’t do anything for me but I can’t stand those Wreck to Riches photo’s of scrap foreign heaps I’ve never heard of, A-Z would have been more usefull sticking to British makes and giving us some proper and true history facts concerning those long gone companies. I don’t think the Engines and Transmission systems get enough attention either, there was a run on the Gardner a while back but not much else, we seem to find out more about stuff on here than from a supposedly dedicated mag, its definately gone down hill since a change of Editors.
Franky.