m j parry used to run a atki borderer and a kv erf on timber from gorsley .when i used to work for mike prosser in ross we used to borrow one or the other to go down to llanwern ,or the orb works to load up trailers on nights if none of ours were in .that erf was past its best then (1973/4) with a 150 gardner ,6 speed david brown box, very short wheelbase,made for a bumpy ride,and bloody cold.! bob
How-do bob, not seen you about much lately. Too busy I expect what with crimbo just around this next bend…good to see you still pop on here now and again…Paul
just been nattering with your brother…he must be lonely!.going up to jim mathews’s place to look at a job so will be looking at his photos as well.
bazztrucker:
hi dave
john margrett used to deliver coal from the midlands into troy station yard,monmouth for us as we were then coal merchants. this would have been in the60s after the trains stopped running. also owen price would deliver, cant remember what lorry he ran ,although pretty sure it was an artic.i worked at rossiter and james at parkend in the70s, and we still had lorries in weston transport yellow colours ,running out of llanwern i knew len criddle well in the 70s when he drove for john and lionel jones ,later to become rothdean. as you also mentioned tony lewis, we bought an ex tony lewis d1618 ford tipper of his, think it was lvj 148 f we had it from ravenhills in hereford about 1973. it had av8 ■■■■■■■■ went like a rocket but didnt want to stop.!!!
Hi bazz,
I worked with Tony Lewis when he had the D1614 Fords.I drove for C W Griffiths the C M Philpotts out of the Gore and Dollyhir quarries.Also had a spell on for S W Brisbane hauling out of the Strinds quarry.
A chap named Ron Powell drove the V8 for Tony Lewisand Tony drove a newr D1614 with a Ford 360 turbo engine in it.Have met John Jones from Rothdean. Express plant hire from Hereford and Saundstans Metals from Hereford both ran Fords with the V8 engines.
Cheers Dave.
Don’t think I know him Bob, where’s he from? Our Mart will probably remind me who he is…If he’s a driver, Our Mart will know him I expect… Take it easy…
Me.Paul.101:
Don’t think I know him Bob, where’s he from? Our Mart will probably remind me who he is…If he’s a driver, Our Mart will know him I expect… Take it easy…
Was Jim Mathews a fitter for Edwards of Lydbrook who was a tall chap ?
Cheers Dave.
yep thats him.he was also down at the reeds corragated factory as a fitter.lives in english bicknor.still running trucks now .he has a lovley funeral truck (erf)in black with murals on. paul hopefully will post a picture of it for us.
Dave the Renegade:
Hi Charlie,
Both Glyn Morris and Margarets used to backload out of the quarries this way.Len Criddle & Sons from the Forest of Dean area used to come up here until fairly recently,but haven’t seen them about lately.
Cheers Dave.
That’s a blast from the past Dave, I never knew Len Criddle but I knew the boys. I wonder if their still going.
cheers
John.
altitude:
Dave the Renegade:
Hi Charlie,
Both Glyn Morris and Margarets used to backload out of the quarries this way.Len Criddle & Sons from the Forest of Dean area used to come up here until fairly recently,but haven’t seen them about lately.
Cheers Dave.That’s a blast from the past Dave, I never knew Len Criddle but I knew the boys. I wonder if their still going.
cheers
John.
As far as I know John.Wideboy Bob or some of the Forest members will know.
Cheers Dave.
Bob, I only took pictures of the airbrushed murals on the back. I thought they were exceptionally good. I will have to see if our Mart took any of the complete truck, I know…I should try harder…
Dave the Renegade:
altitude:
Dave the Renegade:
Hi Charlie,
Both Glyn Morris and Margarets used to backload out of the quarries this way.Len Criddle & Sons from the Forest of Dean area used to come up here until fairly recently,but haven’t seen them about lately.
Cheers Dave.That’s a blast from the past Dave, I never knew Len Criddle but I knew the boys. I wonder if their still going.
cheers
John.As far as I know John.Wideboy Bob or some of the Forest members will know.
Cheers Dave.
will check out the jungle telephone and report back dave. bob.
wideboybob:
Dave the Renegade:
altitude:
Dave the Renegade:
Hi Charlie,
Both Glyn Morris and Margarets used to backload out of the quarries this way.Len Criddle & Sons from the Forest of Dean area used to come up here until fairly recently,but haven’t seen them about lately.
Cheers Dave.That’s a blast from the past Dave, I never knew Len Criddle but I knew the boys. I wonder if their still going.
cheers
John.As far as I know John.Wideboy Bob or some of the Forest members will know.
Cheers Dave.will check out the jungle telephone and report back dave. bob.
Thanks for that Bob.
Cheers Dave.
Rex Organ was John Margretts brother in law they had two haulage companies in Hope Mansall Ross on wye.
Rex had A new man start one morning when the man arrived he started loading is night out gear into the lorry. Rex asked him thats a big sandwitch box you have. The driver replied thats my night out gear Rexs.
Rexs says great britain isnt big enough to have a night out in. O happy days
The real Basher:
Rex Organ was John Margretts brother in law they had two haulage companies in Hope Mansall Ross on wye.
Rex had A new man start one morning when the man arrived he started loading is night out gear into the lorry. Rex asked him thats a big sandwitch box you have. The driver replied thats my night out gear Rexs.
Rexs says great britain isnt big enough to have a night out in. O happy days
There was a bloke called Derek Harley that drove for John Evans who was called the day tripper,because he always got home for the night.
Cheers Dave.
Only today while at work I got into a discussion with a co worker and learned of the death of glyn morris
Glyn worked with me running cardboard out of Bowater supplying me with 2 -3 trucks daily during the 70’s & 80’s
He let me use his garage to change the engine in my minibus, around 8PM he turned up with sandwiches & a flask of coffee for me.
He was a fantastic man who i had a lot of time & respect for,
RIP Glyn you will be sadly missed.
I took this at Coleford last year, did he have to sons and run carboard out of Monmouth
It’s my very first visit to the Trucknet site & I find that I can fill you guys in with a bit more info on the eastern Forest of Dean haulage scene-
Re; Len Criddle & Sons- I first met Len when he & his brother Dennis worked for the newly-purchased BRS Mitcheldean depot (formerly George Read Transport). I believe this was before he went to Rothdean (John & Lionel Jones’ company) & certainly before he started haulage on his own account. Len & I spent many a night at the Reliable transport cafe on Jamaica Road, Bermondsey, where the “plus” side was Patsy’s big breakfast but the “minus” was , on a busy night, having to sleep on a camp bed in the washroom!
In those days we ran mostly ex-George Read vehicles, mostly AEC Mandator Mk5s and Mercuries on general haulage, with 8-wheeled AEC Mammoths on bulk tipping work. There were also a few Leyland Octopusses (Octopii?) on the fleet which tended to be given to the newer drivers. On my first day at the depot I was given an Octopus which had been converted into an artic & told to deliver it’s load of concrete pipes to Bristol, then report to BRS Days Road for a return load. (If memory serves, it’s reg was 1100AD)
By the time I had made it from Mitcheldean to Gloucester I had discovered that the maximum speed of the Leyland was 38 mph. Not the sort of “get-up-and-go” that I had been used to, having just left a job driving a BMC FFK four-wheeler which was good for about 65!
Days Road sent me out to Nailsea to collect a load of Trill budgie seed for Glasgow- handball loaded then two layers of sheets and plenty of rope. Arriving back at Mitcheldean I was given my first bollocking by John Jones (traffic clerk for BRS as well as running his own company!) who informed me that I had worked an eleven hour day and “we don’t work that hard at BRS”! Anyway, he told me that, since I was bound for Glasgow, I had better be promoted to a more decent wagon, my beloved AEC Mercury. I never minded the fact that the previous driver had just passed away, I was just glad to get a decent truck to drive. At just 22 I was King of the Road, a PROPER truck driver, tramping all around the UK and seeing places I had only read about or heard of on the radio (sorry-I meant WIRELESS).
Quite a few years later, I worked for John Margrett at Hope Mansell. By the time I got to drive for John he had reduced his fleet somewhat, only running four ERF artic bulk tippers, mostly on animal feeds,coal, grain and, in season, sugar beet. We also hauled stone from the mid-Wales borders mostly to the South East, usually returning with soya meal from Erith, Kent, where the night security patrol consisted of hundreds of rats running around the lorry park.
John Margrett’s brother-in-law, Rex Organ, ran one artic with a bulk tipping trailer and a scrap yard on part of the family estate, while John’s brother ran the farm itself. Rex’s Dodge had a tendency to tip over at the junction of the M5 & M50!
Friday night was Pay Night at Margrett’s, when we used to present ourselves in John’s mother’s kitchen and collect our wages and our weekly treat: John’s mother would put the tea pot on the kitchen table with three tea bags in it ready for us drivers. John would take the kettle off the Aga, remove two of the tea bags and fill the tea pot saying “No wonder we ain’t got any money- our mother keeps wasting tea bags!”.
I was in the habit about this time, of calling at the Kilcot Inn for a pint on my way home from work, where I would regularly meet up with Glyn Morris & other local lorry men, including Dave Read, one of George Read’s brothers, who had started his own business with a new ERF and bulk trailer, purchased from another of the Read brothers, Richard, who ran a very successful transport company and commercial garage in nearby Longhope. The landlady of the pub at that time was Mary Smith, a widow whose husband, Kenneth (known as Jack) I had worked with in my BMC-driving days. I treated the place like a second home, having known Jack & Mary since birth.
I also had two stints working for George Merry Read (George Read’s son) who had set up on his own in a quarry owned by his mother after he & BRS (for whom he worked as manager after the takeover) had a parting of the ways.The first time I worked for “Young George” was when he “head-hunted” me from BRS by filling me with beer at The Lamb pub in Mitcheldean and offering me “Ten quid a week more than you’re getting now”. Well, I jumped at the opportunity- an extra ten pounds a week was a fortune in those days. My “Dream Machine” at George’s was a 1967 Atkinson 8-wheeler, ex-Hanson’s, with an aluminium bulk tipping body, 150 Gardner, 6-speed David Brown gearbox and flat-out at 42mph. For some unknown reason I loved that truck, hauling coal to the South-East, returning with scrap metal for the South Wales steelworks. Nights out were not part of the job- start early enough and you can get back in a day!
Young George was a super bloke to socialise with, regularly out with the chaps on our drunken weekends, but in the workplace he was as tight as the proverbial duck’s! I remember seeing him grab his brolly, walk across the yard in a torrential downpour, pick up an old steel washer he had spotted and place it in the scrap metal bin!
My second stint with him involved developing his fledgling skip hire & scrap metal business. I was left pretty much to get on with things on my own with an early Ergomatic-cabbed AEC Mercury, another vehicle that I loved, mainly because it was so smooth to drive. A typical journey would be to drop off skips (loaded one inside another, about four high) around the Forest of Dean, then collect abandoned and wrecked cars to bring back to the yard for “processing”- which meant squashing them flat with an excavator! With a bit of planning, removing front & rear screens of the cars and pushing the roofs down with the connecting bar of the skip-lifting arms, I found that I could get three cars on at once. (Me, Jack the Lad, George, rubbing his hands!). This went fine until, having loaded three considerable saloon cars in Lydney, I managed to bring down a power cable, blacking out most of the town! The police and electricity board were going to nhave a field day in court with yours truly, until I decided to check the height of the power cables where they crossed the road. My luck held- they were 10 inches below the required height! Saved again.
Thanks for allowing me to nbore the pants off you. My thanks to all those I have worked with over the last 50 years who have provided me with so many memories, especially Mike Morgan, whom I worked with at John Margrett’s & who has stayed a most loyal friend ever since.
Hi Old ■■■■,
Good to hear your stories of the Forest hauliers that you drove and worked for.Used to see Len Criddle’s artics coming up to the Gore quarry near here.Also Glyn Morris and John Margrett’s motors.Look forward to hearing some more from you.
Cheers Dave.
As well as working with him, I used to socialise with Len. He and his wife were Country Music fans and would regularly turn up at whatever event I was organising.This was in the days before his boys even got their driving licences! Len started out with a pretty ancient and well-used ERF 8-wheeler if I remember correctly.
Hi Old ■■■■ - thanks for sharing that with us. you mention Glyn Morris - would you also have known a couple of his drivers ■■ namely Colin Davies or Francis Bamford - Colin has sadly passed away, but i worked with them both at the Somerfield depot in Ross for many years - Colin and i worked together on the shunting team until illness stopped his career. You also speak of Len Criddle - his son David and i were at school together, so will put us at the 50 mark this year - you may know that he has now returned from a stint driving trucks in canada, and is presently working at Richard Read’s on bulk tippers - i believe either Simon or Ian is on for Ross Roadways at the moment.
Kind Regards
Adie