happy new year to all on the old gits forum! well, it’s my fave forum so i thought what the ■■■■! may all the posters here that give such interesting info and stories and create this forum, and our austere moderator dave, have a great 2006! 
Happy New Year Mal and everyone else.
I hope you manage to get the licence sorted and get back to doing what you obviously miss, even an old TK 
happy newyear one and all
yes, fingers x’ed malc!
Happy new year one and all. This is my favorite forum as well Mal , dont get any of the childish bickering /animosity that comes over on the main forum 
Happy New Year to one and all and yes this is one of my favourite forums being an old git,Mal you must be desperate wanting to go back to a TK,I started on one,not something I’d want to go back to.
I always remembered the first time it snowed and I learnt after sitting in a snowdrift no forward motion = no heat! ,Brrr.
regards derek
Not sure if I’ve been complimented or not, but I’m certain if someone as young as Mal calls himself an old git, then I must be positively ancient 
However, thanks to one and all for making the Mod task so easy, I’ve only had one occasion to exercise the enormous power I now have, and that was in someone else’s forum when they were out
Bonne Année Tout le Monde *
Salut, David.
*Happy New Year Everyone!
i think i better explain myself!
old gits is what i can imagine some might label us as, in fact i think i remember being named by robk in a post as a old git, along with a few others of the bretheren! its a badge i wear with pride by the way!
i dont mind tk’s, of course 25 years ago we took the ■■■■ out of them, and wanted the big stuff! but ive come to appreciate waht a really decent little motor they was for the time!
and anyway besides that, that was the only pic i could find with a plain van on for the message!
allways a compliment dave never fear, as we are all gents in here! 
Mal:
i
allways a compliment dave never fear, as we are all gents in here!
Never doubted it mate .
The first TK I saw was in 1960, their first year I think (cue Marky ), and was in Trimite’s colours delivering paint to the factory where I was a sales clerk.
Always fascinated by lorries from an early age, I realised that this was something different and gazed in awe at what I thought was my first British sleeper cab .
When I finally got to drive one, after starting on Commers and progressing through AECs, Albions, Leylands, and Dodges, I thought they were a comfortable little motor but not quite, well, cool 
. When I first sat in an Atki, one of Freeman Volkers & Stewarts kept at Shaw’s yard by the Nottingham shunter ‘Titch’, I was in trucker’s heaven. It still, at more than a year old, had all the polythene coverings still in place and I just had to have one.
BTW, those transmission handbrakes were the worst idea ever weren’t they? Fodens also had them and the one I drove with a powder tanker for K&M at Bulwell (later Hucknall) snapped a half shaft one day and I had no means of anchoring it 'till the fitters came. On a slight slope, I had to sit there with my foot on the brake 'till someone came to enquire why I was blocking the road and agreed to search for some scotches for the wheels 
.
Salut, David.
Being an Old Git, I can remember a 1962 Bedford TK rigid that belonged to the bloke I worked for in the Seventies. There wasn’t really much of it that was Bedford, it had a Leyland 401 engine, a 6-speed Turner gearbox and an Eaton 2-speed axle, the combination worked very well, but let down by the poor vacuum brakes.
The body was a 20ft. flat that I put on it after dismantling the 1959 Leyland Comet that it came from. The body was only 7’- 6" wide, a relic of the maximum width allowed in the old days, but it was an excellent motor to send into London - because of it’s size.
The thing I really disliked about the early TK cabs, was the driver’s seat, a fixed position, padded thing, that was crippling after a few hours.
I’d forgotten those transmission handbrakes, reminds me of the old Landrovers.
I did a couple of days on a D Series delivering hanging beef around Manchester and then a few months later, in the winter of 78 I started driving full time for a firm I had worked for before as a drivers mate and yard shunter, on a TK, reg STF 49G. So it was 10 year old when I got it and I remembered it originally as a double dropside and tailift but was now a boxvan. It never missed a beat in that bad weather and I cant remember wether the heater worked or not, Some of the lads had been trunkers and trampers on 8 leggers in the 50’s & 60’s so If it was cold you got cold, what was the problem? And I didnt know any different anyway. Money was a straight £95 for 55 hours which you never went over and I dont think was too bad at that time for a10 tonner on local work.
yeah i remember them dave, those brakes were mad, they were a drum on the propshaft at the frontish end wernt they? im sure i had a tipper with one on. crazy, i wonder if you yanked it on going along if it would break the propshaft? i seem to remember when it was put on, the lorry would sort of lurch forward and backwasrds a bit!
ahh, so it was a leyland 401 then sheeter? i drove a d-reg flatbed (67?) one that was fitted with a leyland engine, all i was ever told by the fitter was that it awas a great engine he called it a redline?? so it would be likely to be a 401 then. by the way, that lorry was working every day up till about 1985 i know it was working till 83, but im sure it went on longer!
that money dont sound bad to me boden! my first hgv wage was not so good as that, and it was a year later in 80. working for dunlop on the remould and scrap tyre side we got about 72 quid a week, but there was the odd bit of overtime available, and the job was pretty good, great workmates, but hard work physically.
i mean, we could book a night out for bristol nobody would question it and nights out were a tenner! seeing as my d series had the pull out brake, it was a reasonable kip across the seats, made easier by spending at least fiver of mty n/o shillings on the beer!
i actually made more money in 78 driving a petrol powered 7.5 tk for alpine pop, but that was mainly fiddle running at about a tenner a day + wages!