Was the writing on the wall, when the government of the day was not interested any more , to support the engineering industry in the uk .
The uk having been the pioneers of transport in all forms , that supplied the world from steam trains , to transport , and diesel, so what happenned to our industry .Losing apprentiships to school leavers who would then have a trade for life in many cases following there fathers .
I do remember my own local council and i suppose many others , but in the Sandbach area of Congleton borough which Fodens, and ERF engineering was , and the workers all living in that area, paying council tax and buying homes and using local buisness, the council bought Scania or MAN fire engines, Brain dead or what !!!
Or was it solely the new breed of driver , who influenced there boss over choice , and bosses being given big discounts by companies from Europe to get the foot in the door.
After all change was on the way, your thoughts on this will be welcome .
At nearly 70 years young i was very lucky to be born in that time and experience some truly fantastic engineering, and drive some good, and some not so good vehicles
Hoppy,you mention local council purchases,to bring this thread right up to date,I read that BMW were the chosen Olympic car provider,I wondered why a British car manufacturer had’nt been chosen,then I heard this morning BMW are to invest £250M in the UK,obviously a done deal to secure employment,and who can blame them,commerce has taken a different route to past decades that you are referring to.
There are probably a million related stories on this theme but here is my starter for 10. In the early 80’s, as a hopeless apprentice and general dogs body, I was sent to the Sandbach truck centre to pick up a battery for a Foden L10 which, although only a few months old had failed but was under warranty. I presented myself to the counter at about 9.00 am (they knew that I was on my way) and was told to take a seat and they’d give me a shout. I continued to present myself to the counter on a half hourly basis, generally getting on the storemans nerves and eventually getting told to either sit down or do one. I tried in a very shy 17 year old manner to explain that my boss would be going berserk at my absence as I had ■■■■■■■ the service van and had already been on the wrong end of a rollocking for something else previous. I was impolitely told that they (my bosses) were aware of my delay and to hang on regardless. At 2.30pm, one of our drivers turned up at the counter to check if I had been abducted (you’ve guessed it, nobody had been told where I was) and this driver ripped into the guy behind the counter at Fodens accusing him of kidnap and alsorts. Next thing, I was sent down to the production line where one of the assembly team removed a brand new battery from a just built motor because apparently, they weren’t a stock item and for them to issue the battery earlier in the day could have stopped the production (when I got back to the yard, did I get my backside kicked for this or what!)
5thwheel:
Hoppy,you mention local council purchases,to bring this thread right up to date,I read that BMW were the chosen Olympic car provider,I wondered why a British car manufacturer had’nt been chosen,then I heard this morning BMW are to invest £250M in the UK,obviously a done deal to secure employment,and who can blame them,commerce has taken a different route to past decades that you are referring to.
Take it easy,
David
Hi I think that with 3 manufacturing plants in the UK BMW are a “British car manufacturer” that just happen to be headquartered in Germany and to extend that thought further you could say that they are either a European or world wide car manufacturer, Nissan manufacture in the UK but headquartered in Japan, Honda manufacture in Swindon headquaters Japan, Toyota Derby - Japan, Landrover Jaguar manufacture UK, Parent group headquarters India is there a trend developing ?
5thwheel:
Hoppy,you mention local council purchases,to bring this thread right up to date,I read that BMW were the chosen Olympic car provider,I wondered why a British car manufacturer had’nt been chosen,then I heard this morning BMW are to invest £250M in the UK,obviously a done deal to secure employment,and who can blame them,commerce has taken a different route to past decades that you are referring to.
Take it easy,
David
hi,
a british car manufacturer would that be morgan cause i can’t think of any other
regards andrew.
Most of this boils down to the same old story wherever you look at the history of British industry.
Lousy management.
The British ethos for too many years was the preference for the gifted amateur over the highly trained and skilled professional.
The men who started the companies all had the right idea but their progeny had been elevated to upper middle class and became public school educated etc. etc. and didn’t want to sully their hands with real work or mix with the shopfloor. So standards slipped, arrogance with clients became the norm, orders were lost and the workforce became discontented.
The British Empire/Commonwealth has a lot to answer for also in that it gave industry a guaranteed protected export market and shielded management from the real world. Once the barriers were dropped we couldn’t compete on level playing fields.
Part of the demise has got to be due to the laws of the day, when I started driving the speed limit for lorries had only recently been raised from 30mph to 40mph, the maximum gross weights were 7 ton per axle and the then ‘A’ ‘B’ and ‘C’ operator licences ment that many lorries of the day (they wearn’t called trucks then) never strayed more than twenty miles from base with a, by todays standards, small payload at a modest speed. Because of this there was no incentive by the manufactuers to devolp trucks to the same standard as our continental neighbours who were not fettered by such rules. As an example the first lorry I drove had vacuum brakes, fine at 35mph but not so good above that!
The trouble with the British commercial vehicle Industry goes back to the fifties and sixties. After the war ended all operators that had worked through the war, keeping the country going were left with vehicle fleets that had been kept going by making do and homemade repairs. They all needed replacing.
Meanwhile our country had left itself with no money, in fact with huge loans owing to USA. Making matters worse for some stupid reason we felt we should spend what little was available on foreign aid rebuilding Germany, and their industries (the likes of Daimler Benz)
Our Government decided to concentrate on giving priority to exports to bring money into the country and starve our own vehicle operators of the opportunity to replace their aged vehicles. British Manufacturing was very busy able to sell anything they could produce, which caused two large problems.
The UK manufacturers did not need to spend too much effort on research and development as it was all hands on deck producing. Speed limits were 20 mph and no one had the vision to see what would happen with Motorway development. Despite what anyone says Gardner made wonderful products for what was needed in the fifties and sixties, but they never thought or really attempted to develop for speed. They had it all their way and were happy.
However another problem occurred which the manufacturers had never dealt with before was that Trade Unions were starting to organise their workforce, and started to make demands what could the manufacturers do? All they could see was the demand was there for what they were producing and did not want to disrupt production so without too much effort they gave in and agreed to all that was asked.
The Commercial Vehicle Industry never thought they would have any competition and when it came they were caught with their pants down. The product range was not up to date and when they found they no longer could give into the now all powerful trade unions the strikes, go slow and work to rule drained away all their money. At the time when they needed new, competitive products they had no money, and likewise in the late sixties and early seventies the country was broke and unable to provide finance to help them.
British Leyland was cobbled together to try to save things but in hindsight it was totally the wrong thing to do. If manufacturers. Workforce and government had had their heads knocked together with a look into the future showing what was going to happen and they chose to work together we might have been world leaders today. However everyone was fighting everyone else.
Today, as always we have the best designers and engineers, and as is proved by our successful car assembly plants, owned by mostly the Germans who we spent our foreign aid helping. We have a good workforce
What a shame
Hi Hoppy, an interesting thread ! One I am sure that will evoke some very interesting comments, and indeed already has.
I left school and started in the transport industry in the 60s, I became a driver in the 70s and I was there when the British lorry industry started to loose ground to the foriegners. I, just like you and many others loved the old British marques but although I liked my brand new S83 Foden it didn’t have a sleeper cab, it didn’t have a night heater, you couldn’t hear the radio because of the 250 ■■■■■■■ barking away beneath you. I was then and still am now a very big fan of the Foden 12 speed gearbox, but you either loved them or hated them and they weren’t everybodys cup of tea.
I was most indignant when I had to take an F88 for a couple of days whilst my beloved Foden was in for MOT, but an hour up the road with 20 ton on board bound for Glasgow and I was in love with the ■■■■ thing ! It was quiet, it was fast even up hill, it had a suspension seat, it had a cynchromesh box that didn’t require a lot of skill to operate, it was warm inside the cab whilst freezing outside and I could listen to the radio without having it at 10,000 decibells ! All that it needed for me was brakes as good as the Foden and it ticked all the boxes for me at least, the humble driver !
Its been said before and I,ll say it again, why oh why couldn’t the British lorry builder make a lorry that was as good as they were AND driver friendly as well ?
Of course there is a whole lot more to be said on this subject with different opinions on both side of the arguement, but I have to say that I do mourn the loss of our British lorry building industry. It is one of my favourite discussion topics when I deliver one of my slide shows to various clubs and groups up and down the country, and it certainly does evoke some very interesting conversation !!
Regards Tony H.
would that be morgan 
cause i can’t think of any other 
