Your views please,if they had remained independent do you think they would still be trading , or were they on there way out ? I have driven ERFs occasionly during my career , B and C series, couldn’t fault them.
Not sure about the fodsheds as paccar bought them around 82 ish ,but Erf In my opinion were getting better and better until the Ecx came out ,id buy a new Erf if they still made them .
Would that be a new ECT Dan ? or was that a backward step? I wonder with todays knowhow what sort of a truck a new ERF or Foden would have been in 2015, all those skills in the workforce lost, im from the potteries not far from Sandbach and remember seeing new trucks being roadtested .
No Chris the Ecx the last fibre glass cab to be badged Erf ,I think that if Erf had continued and refined the ecx and had used the ■■■■■■■ 600 signature together with an auto box they’d have a good lorry .
they would be as dead as the rest of the british truck and car industry…the only reason they survived for as long is due to the fact that Volvo,scania,daf,never came into Britain earlier and finish them off sooner.theres lots of folk have fond memories of britains finest,but compared to the build quality of everything else on the market then they were just poorly built to poor build quality standards,and rightly died a death as the scrap that they were. good gaffer trucks with not a lot of electronics or creature comforts but thank Christ for f86s and 89s or we would still be having to sit ion them today,I did 3 Saudi trips…1 in a guy j4 because I didn’t know any better and was not long through my test…1 in a year old transcontinental in which I had died and gone to heaven,then a year later,it got sold,and I did another trip in a brand new marathon that was worse than the guy even though it had a bed in it,i never spoke to the boss for the next 3 months,then chucked it in for a decent job with a decent motor…the best of Britain has always been scrap to me whether its trucks or cars im afraid…but each to their own??
There’s quite a lot of foden alpha mk2 about which finished production in 2006 basically a ■■■■■■■ engined Daf ,but there’s also as many Erf EC series about which finished in 2000 from this I’d say the Erf was better and more popular ,infact we are still running 2 w reg ,one of which was £6000 5 years ago has not had a spanner on it and is still worth £ 4000 which I’d guess some of these glory boys pay more in interest on the repayments for some of these foreign vanity heaps !
A lot of the Foden Alpha’s this way have Cat engines in them.The Daf CF’s are no match for them.
Cheers Dave.
Ive driven F88s owned a couple of F10s,Scania and Mercedes for me the Mercedes comes out best in costing,reliability and comfort.I still think they made good products in Sanbach and maybe they finished without a fight?
Dan Punchard:
There’s quite a lot of foden alpha mk2 about which finished production in 2006 basically a ■■■■■■■ engined Daf ,but there’s also as many Erf EC series about which finished in 2000 from this I’d say the Erf was better and more popular ,infact we are still running 2 w reg ,one of which was £6000 5 years ago has not had a spanner on it and is still worth £ 4000 which I’d guess some of these glory boys pay more in interest on the repayments for some of these foreign vanity heaps !
I am with you Dan
She still does a good day’s work and gives little trouble
Great to drive
Still can’t stop on here too long got to crack on got to keep up with the repayments!!! 
I think that Fodens as they were before the Paccar influence would struggle. Of course at that time they were making virtually everything ‘in house’ apart from the Fuller gearboxes and Rockwell axles that they introduced with the later Haulmasters, and were very stuck in their ways alas. No matter what improvements operators suggested to them they were generally ignored, I’m Foden through and through but the Paccar products were a vast improvement and served me well in four different trucks.
ERF I cannot comment on, I sat in the drivers seat of a (I think?) C series once on a site and wasn’t impressed with the driving position compared to my Foden and in fact the company I later drove for did run an ERF but sold it before I started with them. I honestly doubt that I would have considered taking the job if that had been my truck, I was given an ex Smiths Foden instead which was a lot lighter so more payload = more money. 
Pete.
looks like this has instantly turned into an oldtimers best of british debate now… classic truckshows,rolling your own ■■■■,5 gallon drums for seats,and drinking pints of scruddoks original real ale with lumps in it…ooooh the good old days…was the original q not,could they have continued?
dieseldog999:
looks like this has instantly turned into an oldtimers best of british debate now… classic truckshows,rolling your own ■■■■,5 gallon drums for seats,and drinking pints of scruddoks original real ale with lumps in it…ooooh the good old days…was the original q not,could they have continued?
Not really, not from me anyway. I said that Foden as they were originally would have struggled but later, under Paccar, I think they could have held their own. Price would have a lot to do with it though, I assume the Continental trucks were more competetive on price as they were massed produced and not built to order? ERF were just assemblers virtually from day one so I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t have continued either, if the price and specc was right. Presumably they both failed because they couldn’t make them for a competetive price?
Pete.
windrush:
dieseldog999:
looks like this has instantly turned into an oldtimers best of british debate now… classic truckshows,rolling your own ■■■■,5 gallon drums for seats,and drinking pints of scruddoks original real ale with lumps in it…ooooh the good old days…was the original q not,could they have continued?Not really, not from me anyway. I said that Foden as they were originally would have struggled but later, under Paccar, I think they could have held their own. Price would have a lot to do with it though, I assume the Continental trucks were more competetive on price as they were massed produced and not built to order? ERF were just assemblers virtually from day one so I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t have continued either, if the price and specc was right. Presumably they both failed because they couldn’t make them for a competetive price?
Pete.
There is of course another factor - state help or control.
Our car industry died. Then, with Japanese help, prospered to the point where the UK makes more than France (despite french claims that ‘the UK doesn’t make anything any more’).
Would our truck industry have survived with ‘state’ help?
Par example: Renault?
John
John West:
Presumably they both failed because they couldn’t make them for a competetive price?Pete.
There is of course another factor - state help or control.
Would our truck industry have survived with ‘state’ help?
Par example: Renault?
John
[/quote]
As Leyland Group showed state help won’t work unless there is enough of it and the customers are on side in a road transport friendly domestic market environment,to both afford and then provide a fast enough return on,development and production costs.
In our case it was the perfect storm of an economy which was never going to recover from the debts run up by our involvement in both world wars and in which the object of Capitalism is profit based on low wages,not economic growth based on the Fordist model. Resulting in a too cash starved economy to make private investment or state aid work.In addition to hostile anti road transport government policies and a disloyal,backward thinking domestic customer base.
Unlike the situation enjoyed by the Scandinavians and the Germans and to an extent the Dutch.Basically the country has historically been governed by idiots and sacrificed its financial future to save western civilisation.Ironically partly/mostly as a result of getting involved with,or at least backing the wrong side in,WW1.The fate of our truck manufacturing industry,like all the rest,being the inevitable result of all the above. 
Look at all the European truck builders they sell the same basic models all over Europe and further afield by the 80s onwards erf and foden were only selling in the uk and a few to some of the old commonwealth country’s. They was never going to sell enough to make enough money to reinvest in new designs that could compete ■■■■■■■ and cat pulling out of the loose engine market at euro 4 was the final nail in the coffin
No, they could not have continued. It’s all about economies of scale in production these days, and Foden and ERF did not have that. The trend has been to vertically integrated manufacturing which most operators prefer with all major components made or designed in-house. Good luck to those who are still running ERFs and Fodens and for keeping the flag flying, but you are a minority. Even 20 years ago when I worked for Turners it was hard work finding drivers who would drive an ERF when the alternatives in the fleet were Volvo, Scania, and DAF.
Strictly speaking they were assemblers not manufacturers. I know Foden used to make everything in house in the distant past, but in later years they bought it all in.
The final nail in the coffin was a lack of loose engine suppliers after the Euro3 emissions regs were brought in, by then they had been absorbed into MAN and Paccar and used their cabs and chassis, so using engines from the parent companies meant all that ERF and Foden provided was a badge.
That was never going to work long term.
A truck is as good as its owner and driver. 
I think, in my limited experience, that both could have been marketed a lot better using their heritage and a modern outlook combined to offer an export trade for both brands as their main trade to supplement their home market, which could have been a lot more ststreamlined towards specialist chassis’ and construction chassis’ for tippers, mixers and so on possibly looking towards really pushing tridem configurations, maybe getting in on urban distribution vehicles too.
I think ERF would have survived and still made good decent well built lorries
Just look how many ERF users are now running MANs
My last ERF was an EC12 which was a huge improvement over the Volvo FM12 I had the misfortune of having but at the end of the day I’d drive a horse an cart if the money was right
It makes me laugh how some of the “badge snobs” still slate ERF/Fodens I’d rather take home a decent pay packet than drive a so called “premium” lorry