the book is available from me. it’s 100 pages long and full colour. £25 + postage
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Atkidave you have a pm
Cheers
Tonyb
Dennis Stokes drove the first lorry for Gordon Roberts when he started his own business in 1959 an atki 8 wheeler bulker.
on the front page of the book (as shown above) i have photo’s of the first and last lorry gordon roberts bought. the top photo is Dennis Stokes in the atki 8 wheel bulker 985 EAU.
Just where did all those DaFs go?
You still see a few D & E Volvos and Scanias, there are lots of old ERF and Fodens still about, those DKSE and DKTD just seem to have disappeared
Dennis Stokes son Robert drives a Daf 8 wheeler for A E Gough of Llandrindod Wells
Gordon Roberts increased his fleet by buying S W Brisbanes long distance lorries in the early sixties, mainly four wheelers, two were on license to Passey Nott & co from Kington, and were driven by Jack Phillips and Ted Moss
they wre a Leyland comet and a S type Bedford, and were on Dock work from Cardiff Avonmouth and Barry back To Kington carrying animal feeds.
Stumbled across this site. Those pics brought back some memories, my boys couldn’t believe there had been such a large firm in Knighton. I was wages clerk there between 1979 and 1984. Happy days 
Give your boys a good read about Roberts, atki Daves book is well worth having, got the history and plenty of photo,s.
some information not really to do with trucks but of general interest about knighton ,
my father tells me that Brisbanes operated a garage on the station road selling petrol and cars they also sold a lot of push bikes of which he bought 2 from them , after the war they bought a lot of ex WD vehicles which were bought to knighton by rail these were taken to be stored at MILL GREEN land which would later be used to build the MOTORWAY REMOULDS factory , ,
my father recalls that a 4 wheel drive vehicle like a tug which would have been used to pull feild guns about was used to tow the ex WD vehicles such as half tracks , full tracks ,6 wheeles , bren gun carriers etc down to LEA CORNER and back inorder to get them running , if the vehicle started then it was parked in one area at mill green if it did not start it was parked in a different area to be worked on at a later time , my father remembers being allowed to ride in the towed vehicles due to his freinds father BOB BROGAN being one of the drivers.
most of these vehicles would have been sold to farmers , land owners and contractors due to there being a shortage of tractors and commercial vehicles, i think that some of the trucks were used to start up Brisbanes Transport B usiness.
Gordon Roberts came out of the army and started timber logging supplying firewood to the midlands ,
Dennis Stokes the driver in the photo above was a international trials rider last i knew he was a publican in the Horsehay area of Wellington ,
BOB REYNOLDS was another Knighton based driver but he drove a FODEN bulk carrier for the RADCO on the AVONMOUTH run carring animal feeds,
the first ever JENSON INTERCEPTOR that i saw belonged to the John Brisbane and i myself remember seeing it around Knighton on my visits there ,
I drove for Roberts Transport in the 70’s. I started on a Transit delivering minerals and eventually moved up to a TK. Later I got my HGV and started on the general haulage side. Ken Lewis was transport manager and I had EFO31H, a four-wheeler ERF with a 5 cylinder Gardner 100. I then had Jack Phillips’ lorry - GFO146K which was another four-wheeler but with a 24’ deck and a 6 cylinder Gardner 120. After passing my class 1 I took over PWN267G, a mk 1 Atkinson with a 180 in it and then had TWN618H whch was a Borderer. We were carrying mostly tinplate from South Wales or roofing slabs from Woodcemair at Shobdon.
It was hard work but great days! God, those Atki’s were cold in the winter! Many a time I’ve set off from the yard in the early hours heading for Scotland in an overcoat, gloves, wooly hat and a blanket round my knees!!! I knew some good people and had some great friends back then. I have a pic of one of the Atki’s I drove but I can’t work out how to up-load it, anyone got any ideas?
All the best,
Toni
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I drove for S W Brisbane in 1969/70, they had about 25 lorries then, all tippers mostly four wheelers with about 5 six wheelers, they also had two traxcavators and a D6 catterpiller on hire to the council and economic forestry.
Roberts had a lot of D series Fords on his fleet then with the first ERF four wheeler, along with the Atki artics.
atkidave:
swn 143g
This must have been re-cabbed at some stage? A G-reg motor would be a Mk.2 ‘Silver Knight’, pre-dating the Borderer, and the
cab is the updated Mk.2 from 1972 onwards, with the bigger headboard.
Ee, it’s warm in this anorak…
Looks well though, doesn’t it?
marky:
Looks well though, doesn’t it?
It certainly does! The livery suits it well
Think these are the same as yours Dave.
A couple more Dave, similar to the pics in your book.