hi,does anyone remember this fleet in the fifties/early sixties,they formed united carriers with grants and k&d in 1963. this pict taken for a york trailer advert about 64 ,at w ,boro dept. all these step frame trailers broke in half behind the fifth wheel plate because of the excess weight they carried.
Frank Willis, crimson red with green wings if I remember correct. As a lad I seem to remember them picking shoes up from the factories in Kettering with artics pulled by two stroke Commers, used to make a wonderful sound pulling up London Rd in Kettering. I think K&D were all grey liveried and Grants were dark blue. In the days when there shoe or leather factories in every street almost. All gone now though.
hi classicman, ref your earlier post,
i didnt know brian orsborn as i didnt work for wilkinsons ,it was only some of the night trunkers i knew as i was on night trunk myself.
you are correct about the colours of willis,k&d and grants.you must have a good memory to remember those commers,they had three of them and they all got wrote off over a period of time.i remember standing outside willis,s garage one still night in the winter and you could hear one of those commers coming all the way from olney, which is ten miles away.they were a good lorry but needed decokes very often,this didnt take long as you just removed the exhaust manifold,and armed with a hammer and long screw driver just chopped the carbon from out of the ports . job done 
cheers diesel
diesel dan:
hi steve,
i bet i knew your dad through tony sales as we would go up chetts wymington garage quite alot in the mid to late sixtys. i remember the eppisode with the horse ,didnt a guy called oddie have something to do with it too. do you remember when they had a dead monkey up chetts,and some wag put it in a lorry cab and tied it to the door handle,when the poor driver came in the morning all bleary eyed and snatched open the door the monkey shot out the door on top of him,he just about had a heart attack.then the monkey was put in someones sidecar where it went undiscovered for two weeks, i think the smell gave it away.
i knew shady very well,a rather apt name,he and fred coles used to drive for whitworths when i worked in their garage.didnt del walters have that yanky ford unit .bowie coles was ginners brotherinlaw, he drove for eales from when he left school to when they packed up,another name for you, graham chamberlin, lived on that track from the round house to burton. its been forty years since i left finedon and with old age i remember names but not faces.i was known as plug those days, cheers diesel
hi dan, the name oddie is ringing bells, glad someone else knows the same stories as me, you are right about the monkey!! also there was an episode with a dead lion too which came in already dead but someone told the guys that it was coming in alive to be killed!! everyone from the boiler rooms etc,had to stay in the mess room after tea break while it was unloaded in case it got loose, think you know where this is going! so someone cuts off the head, takes it to the mess room door and makes scratching and roaring noises then the lions head was poked round the door and total panick!
back to old lorries, did you work with sammy at whitworths garage? yes that was del with the old ford ( KVT 292V ) if i remember right, chamberlian… he would be a relative of biff and dave i think.
do you remember winslows of finedon? used to have the garage in orchard rd and had smart looking maroon colour motors.nigel lawman used to drive for them, also you must know fritz!! he was there too and stayed on with dave abbott till the end .
i here a copy of on the move 3 came out , are there any left? and the commer two strokes you mentioned, chetts had one in the mid 60’s that the old man had for awhile, would go like the wind,. other motors he drove there were the scammells,i mentioned the one that tony sales rolled, he drove it before it was painted in hansons two tone, the km bedfords the old atki 8 leggers and just about everything else i think. remember many trips from ditchford/wymington to widness and back, long trip in a highwayman with top speed of 45mph, unless you were danny carey who had the one with the power plus engine! that one moved a bit, steve
It was stored in the garage at Royal Blue at Pytchley for many years.
hi steve,
heres a pict of dels lorry taken early eighties.
yes i remember winslows red leyland comets,and i know i was a friend of nigel lawman but i just cant remember how it came to be. 
i served my apprenticship at billson(brookside)at the garage in whitworths,there were only four of us there then,that was56 to 61 and i left in 63, perhaps sammy was there after that.
do you remember the last scammel chetts had,it was an experimental highwayman with the new at the time perkins v8 and auto trans painted gray, i think brian hooper drove it.crisps shop at rushded where the on the move books come from closed its doors for good at xmas i dont know where you would get one now.
cheers diesel
hi
blimey classic man you were quick, you beat me to it with the pict.
cheers diesel
classicman:
It was stored in the garage at Royal Blue at Pytchley for many years.
Classicman thanks for that and i got the reg right, so who restored the old girl was it Dels relation Innes? i know del put a daf front axle on to bring the brakes upto uk spec, then added the tag axle much later in the early 90’s and where was the pic taken?
and is that John Slaters old foden an the right? steve
diesel dan:
hi steve,
heres a pict of dels lorry taken early eighties.
yes i remember winslows red leyland comets,and i know i was a friend of nigel lawman but i just cant remember how it came to be.
i served my apprenticship at billson(brookside)at the garage in whitworths,there were only four of us there then,that was56 to 61 and i left in 63, perhaps sammy was there after that.
do you remember the last scammel chetts had,it was an experimental highwayman with the new at the time perkins v8 and auto trans painted gray, i think brian hooper drove it.crisps shop at rushded where the on the move books come from closed its doors for good at xmas i dont know where you would get one now.
cheers diesel
There she is at work, would guess that was taken at top of queensway when Del was living at minerva way am i right?, ( who was it who also lived nr there and drove that foden for a guy from Apethorpe? ) he used to park in nearly the same spot.
would be a brave driver to park a truck overnight there now, used to run many a happy mile with del.
sammy was there long after you, also at brookside, he was at whitworths till the closed the garage, and brian hooper theres another name from the past ( did’nt he finish up hauling caravans with a red F86 volvo? as for the scammell i think the one you mean is the one in on the move with the loaded bulker ready to leave for widnes, though it says leaving poddington i’m sure it’s wymington, though lots of them on chetts were experimental as when they came from shell mex bp most of them had some kind of alteration done to them, i heard about peter crisp closing, what a shame after all those years, my early memories were as a kid when i went with my dad, he had to go from wymington with a flat trailer with 660 VMA to bala in wales to get a load of steel pipes for making chimneys for the new boilers, he needed some extra ropes so was told to stop at crisps and get some on account. the last time i was in there was to buy a wedding present for adrian shorts son. Nigel is the kind of person you are mates for life with, worked with him for many years and still in touch with him, do you remember around 77/78 he had a transcontinental on for federated road transport sevices reg was VAY 705S was on front page of commercial motor back then,would love a picture of it. steve
hi steve.
yes your right, minerva way, that road where it is parked is a dead end now.if you parked a lorry there now it would be burnt out within minutes, i think chetts scammells should have been renamed as chetts as you say they were highly modified from shell mex spec.infact they had a batch of radiators cast with chettles logo on instead of scammell. the last i saw of brian hooper was in the early 70s he was delivering maggots for chetts, i bought his old commer van off him ,and every time it was a warm day you used to get hundreds of blowflys appearing,used to sound like a squadren of lancasters following you.
did you know derek thomson from finedon(ewenfield road) i married his sister.
cheers diesel
ref roadcommander2
hi mark.
spoke to a mate today about ferresand,he reckons they had some dodge artics with scow ended body trailers that used to cart some sort of minerals from their quarry to higham railway station and tip into railway wagons ,i dont recall this ,but do you?
another couple of local tipper companies ive just remembered,thomas roberts and bert stanley from finedon.these used carry tarmac from wellingborough steel furnaces,do you remember that place.?
cheers diesel
Old George Brown the snooker player had two wagons years ago, but he died of cancer and that is quite a few years ago.
I remember the Chettles night driver who went to Doncaster He passes me one night on the M18 and I thought I was gonna pass out 
The smell was horrendous
I asked him to please get a move on and put a couple of miles between us
Pat you must have got a very good CB, that could recieve smell as well as sound. 
hi
i followed one of chettles lorries and he had three pigs hanging over the tail board,with their front legs and head peering over the top can you imagine that happening today 
i used to run up the a420 at night and i could tell if chetts were in front as every left hand bend was covered in gallons of blood where it had spilled out of the belly tank,and of course when you ran over it your lorry used to stink for ages. 
diesel dan:
hi
i followed one of chettles lorries and he had three pigs hanging over the tail board,with their front legs and head peering over the top
erm yeah ok i was guilty of some of that! on the A420 from swindon to oxford on the way back from sutton benger!
and on all the bends from spalding to p’boro, used to pull those old four in line trailers from spalding,the seal on the blood tank never used to fit and would be like a running hose on the bends, also one set of wheels would be off the ground when cornering too fast.
and many a time at night we would’nt put a net over and some driver would say “it’s snowing now” but it was just the feathers blowing off.
your mention of brian hooper and the maggott job, that’s another one the old man used to do from the maggott farm at poddington, he also did the leather bits and the brussell sprouts, though it was under other names it was all chettles owned,
dan if you are from thrapston do you know brian gamblen ( gamblin gizzy ) or jim horn ( swinging bucket )?
hi steve.
i dont know gamblin gizzy or swinging bucket, i come from finedon,the chetts guy i used to run with was dave, who owned bournewood haulage, he offered me a job driving his scania 143, so i went on a trial trip with him to(ithink)tiverton,no tachos , so we were whoosing along about 70mph all night, i got a bit carried away at the thought of driving that beast, all went well untill we got back to ditchford, then we went into that shed to tip off the feathers, well,you know what the stink in there was like suddenly the prospect of driving that scanny didnt seem so attractive
cheers diesel
Hi Diesel / Steve,
A few memories being stirred along now.
I dont remember Ferresand having scow end artics but it is possible, I clearly remember Dodge 4 wheelers but then again I was only a lad at the time, I suppose they could have been a close coupled short artic…just cant remember!
Used to see the various Chett wagons daily on the A45 through Kimbolton and also remember them going straight through St Neots high street, befoe the days ogf the bypass and everybody on the street and in the shops complaining about the smell!. I presume that they were running through from Bernard Matthews am I right?
One either overturned or last part of its load on the bridge in Stonely, chicken bits & pieces all over the place!
I seem to remember the name plate “Dougal” in one of Tony Sale’s DAFs, do you remember him?
Couple more names came to mind the other day, FJ (or was it W) Humphrey with white and yellow Scanias and Chaimberlain Phipps, white and blue TK Bedford box vans.
Rushden was also home to a fairly big Calor fleet of ERF s if I remember right.
Cheers
Mark
hi mark,
blimey youve a good memory,yes i knew dougal,chetts were always spilling parts of their loads.one had a crash on the a5 some where and the blood tank split, and hundred of gallons of blood poured down the road it looked like there had been a masacer(spelling?)
f humphrey used to carry milk and had f88 as well.yes calor had a big fleet at rushden, used to be monkton motors before that.sadly all gone, the old yard is a super market now.
cheers diesel
diesel dan:
hi
i followed one of chettles lorries and he had three pigs hanging over the tail board,with their front legs and head peering over the top
I saw something similar on the M1 one night … but was a group off women in the back seat of one of York Bros coaches.