Evening all, missed quite a lot… and do not have free time to catch up as yet!
Sadly my mom, having really settled here at the farm, and seeming to enjoy her new life in the converted “Pig Sty”, suffered a fall, (those of you with elderly moms know the “horrible” procedure…Paramedics, A&E, assesment, and all that follows)…thankfully we (argued), and insisted that she be taken to New Cross at Wolverhampton, rather than Princess Royal at Telford…or heaven protect us that operation at Stafford…where the same standards, or lack of them, persist under a “rebranded” name, (why does no one insist that commercial standards of management be applied in the Health, (■■?), service), … make accountable the (cruel), wrong doers, and ship them out!..too PC. and just too frrigtned to be truly “accountable”. But considering she is 95, I, (nor no one else), could complain about the help she is being given in Wolverhampton,…truly she is being treated as well as my daughter was as a gravely injured 25 year old…and by staff as culturally, and ethnically diverse as could ever have been imagined, a truly humbling and gratifying experience, (whatever the outcome)…
But may I offer a few words of background to Highway-Multiwheeler Trailers, whose major client was J&A Smith, of Maddiston by Falkirk, a company that I grew to know very well, and a major Guy user.
Fergie is right , the old airport at Eastleigh was the manufacturing base, but did you realise that their background lay in the original Multi Wheeler Company, who manufactured under licence the load transfer trailer designs of the French manufacturer Chenard Walcker, and designs of Rochert Schneider.
Highway were a very forward thinking company, they specialised in designs that were anything but standard! The very first, (Gerald Broadbent), designed “Tautliner” body, (with curtains by “Pac A Mac”), was built on a single axle Highway trailer for Louis Reece. Given as a gift to the Science Musuem…does she still exist I wonder?
The "Super Lightweights were as Fergie says, “bouncy”! Boy they should be, given the specification. Mainly aluminium, with pierced mainframes, and composite ply decks, spread axles slipper sprung, riding on “balloon” single wheels produced specially by Avon, designed to give a 22 ton payload at 28 tons gross behind Guy Big J AEC powered 28 ton tractor…See the thinking…save on road tax, but the same payload as a 32 ton outfit! But behind a 32 ton unit an extra 2 tons of payload!
The spread axle Highways on Fergies pictures are “early” models, the rear undr run bar does not curve upwards as became standard on later versions, (Fergies picture of the Mac MacDonald outfit refers).
But Highways real strength lay in Coil Carriers, and their top selling salesman was South Wales “Coil Carrier King”, Lew Lewis. Stronger, and lighter than the equivelent M&G, and totally outclassing anything produced by those people at Crane, most Welsh and Scottish Coil fleets liked the Highway product.
Lew based himself at Stan Ross`s, (Ross Roadways), Penarth Rd, Cardiff operation, where on inumerble occasions, Stan, and Lew would ply this young Blackcountryman with strong liquor…and send me on my way back to the midlands in charge of some worn out piece of South Wales equipment,sometimes lugging behind a fairly new, (or not so new) product of Highways factory…which never failed to sell at a handsome margin to some Blackcountry “steel man”!!..(which is more than could be said for the results achieved with the tractor units…how did they ever get me back home ■■?
Boalloy, and Highway marketed the Tautliner concept originally only on Highway trailer frames only, and produced a demonstrator trailer…a 40 ft single axle…oh what joy they were to lug around…do you remember what fun they were to manouever in an urban situation…or in a “works”…Imanaged , (with great skill, and panache), to wedge this trailer right across the loading bays at Birminghams Davenport Brewery…“Beer at Home means Davenports”, in front of the assembled Directors, (including the Gentleman with the Bowler hat who fronted their TV adverts)…call my self a lorry driver?..red face…oh yes, and very sweaty armpits!!!
But it was Norrie Mc Claine, Highways Scottish representative who sold J&A Smith on Highway, and Smiths became Highways largest single customer, and I came to know, and be enchanted by their Fleet Engineer Hulme Robertson, (a Gardner man indeed), who kept most of the Leith Fishing fleets Gardners in fine fettle…and how I came one cold, (is there any haulage yard, anywhere in the British Isles, as cold as that yard at Maddistone)? and wet day to be evaluating a potential purchase of a Highway Superlightweight tandem…which was connected by its wafer thin rubbing plate to a Big J with a 240 Gardner sticking out back of the cab…but on that day the unit was of no interest to me whatsoever…I was BBBBBBBBBBB cold.
Nice trailers Highways…and connected in a lot of cases to Guy`s…and some quite exotic ones indeed…
Cheerio for now.
I knew you’d come up trumps once you concentrated your mind on more important items on TN ! 
had you just removed a bit of “gear”,“plunder” or similar and hadn’t tidied the corner up at the time ? 
Seriously,I can claim MR.James as a friend as I got to know him by chance from meeting him at the Earls Court commercial motor show in around '72 and he used to give be a “bell” occaisionally when he was on his way north on the M6 and I would meet him at Burton Services for a brew for an hour or more.He had retired from SOM by the mid '70’s and I was just building up our operation,but he sure was an interesting chap to talk to about the years he and his brother Alex were building up SOM I couldn’t relate all the stories he told me as it was so long ago,but talk about “learning at the feet of the master” SOM were surely the greatest Scottish Transport firm of all time,well they were to me anyway !! Cheers Dennis.
