Re above Whitstable Harbour posts: I was chatting with a former barge skipper last night and he suggests that Westland Imports was probably Crescent Line’s shipping agent.
oiltreader:
George Dugdale and Sons of Crayford, credit to sarflondondunc for the photo.
Oily
That’s one hell of a machine to load a normal road vehicle.
Lumsden’s Maidstone! I thought they were based near Paddock Wood or did they move down there later?
Dave Lumsden was on Larkfield Trading Estate in the early 1980s. New Hythe Lane, go past the Bricklayers Arms to the roundabout just before Seymours and turn left. There was a small workshop here:
Just had to post this on the Kent page. Alan Firmin delivering what is most probably Bramley apples packed in returnable bushel boxes in Spitalfields market in the 60’s. I delivered thousands of such boxes but never to markets only processing plants.
robert1952:
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Only a kid then it was my first job on a four wheeler driving an old Albion, I remember sacks of seed potatoes loaded from Rochester railway freight yard, George sent you down to a railway wagon and you hand balled your own load on. Didnt last long as Eddie Olsen offered me a job driving a nearly new Ford D1000 6 legger. So of I went, George at Swains was not impressed, I remember the old yard well with the huge shed at the end.
Found on another thread this morning:
Alan Firmin loading perhaps at Charcon’s Paddock Wood.
Looks like Atcost In Paddock Wood to me. That one was parked in the graveyard next to the diesel pump at Wares Farm by 1971/2, along with several Mercuries and a Chinese six Atkinson.
Sergeant & Parks from Maidstone. Used to get lots of DIY material from them when I lived in Hope Street but the lorry shown in the attached photo was a bit before my time.
Anyone know what happened to them?
From the Fodens thread: supplied by Sparshatts when they were Foden dealers?
trucknetuk.com/phpBB/downlo … 348083&t=1
A debate who was biggest transport firms in kent 70s 80s
kentboy:
A debate who was biggest transport firms in kent 70s 80s
GL Baker, which morphed into BOC Transhield at Oare, Faversham was pretty big (now GIST).
Ferrymasters (Aylesham), Husk (Dover) and Hammonds (Dover & Sittingbourne) too; along with Swains (Strood).
Lenham Storage, Firmins or maybe Nicholls would be my answers
Probably BRS with the number of yards scattered around Kent. After them it will be possibly Safeway at Aylesford, or one of the tipper or own account fleets like: Reeds, Bowaters, Marley, Clubbs, Amey, Rugby, Blue Circle, Bretts or Nickolls. The general haulage bigger names which spring to mind like Hasleden, Swains, Nicholls, Hammond, Woods, Lenham Storage, Alan Firmin, Tomkinson, Woodcock, Colin Ashby, and Husk ran maybe somewhere between 20 and 35 vehicles in the early 1970s. The only name I can put actual numbers to is Henleys whose fleet size is mentioned by Classic & Vintage Commercials in the article about the company: 1971 40; 1986 55; 1995 82. But by then the likes of Alan Firmin had grown considerably and the likes of A1 and another I forget had opened yards.
sandway:
Alan Firmin loading perhaps at Charcon’s Paddock Wood.
Where Firmins unique in those days in their obtaining cherished number plates? According to what I can find out AF was a Cornwall marque so quite a way to go just to register your vehicle.