In these sad times more sad news. Ex class 1 driver Alf Ridley died 2 days ago. He drove the last of the new ERF tractor units with sleeper cabs & Gardiner Engines we bought . His drove the only turbo charged one. Previously I believe he drove one of the Leyland Lynx.
Sadly as is normal because of present day restrictions we are not able to attend his funeral, but I’m sure like me all of us who worked with him will be thinking of him as his funeral takes place.
I feel so sorry for Removal Contractors, in particular during these present times, and I can only suggest they ‘think outside the box’ as there are still possibly goods needed for essential supplies they can assist with. For instance we hear of all these beds being needed for the temporary hospitals. They all need to be carried on vans. They are particularly hard hit whereas most Hauliers on General haulage can often switch to the likes of carrying food for the Supermarkets. Over the years we helped Post Office by collecting mail at Leeds 2 vans per night & taking to Newcastle & Darlington during rail disputes. Delivering local parcels for Spennymoor, Bishop Auckland & Durham sorting offices during Christmas periods. Even collecting hospital waste including limbs for hospitals & taking to incinerators.
Ingenuity and adaption of services is going to be the key to many to enable them to survive over the next 3 months minimum. Its no use thinking its a matter of weeks look at Italy for a guide.
In our time we never had to encounter anything like this however we had over the years many minor problems.
In my early days the biggest was what seemed continual strikes at the Thorn Factory (Smart & Brown Engineering Ltd) Spennymoor where they employed 7500 making items like Tricity Cookers & Fridges & Atlas & Echo lighting. They always were by far our largest customers who varied 30% to 50% of our work. When a strike occurred we had vans parked up and we did our best to occupy them & maintain an income. The problem was we never knew how long these strikes went on for so if the opportunity came we couldn’t tie the up too long as often at short notice (An hour or so) we knew they were back at work & were needed immediately, and then like there will be after this lock down, a lot of catching up to due. The feast following the famine.
In the seventies Thorn situation improved as they built up stocks in their distribution warehouse so when production stoppage occurred they were not relying on us loading directly from the production lines so our work became a more steady process.
In the seventies Courtaulds had opened at Spennymoor employing 2,500 people spinning Courtelle yarn. It was ideal work for our vans boxed & fairly light bulky loads. We were lucky & got 100% of their production to deliver, which required around 40 1800 cu ft vans to deliver.
The first problem we encountered was a strike by 170 blue collar workers, who obstructed the gates and stopped our vans entering. However the 2300 aprox production workers were still working 24 hours 7 days per week inside. The Transport & General Union agreed provided we could continue working supporting the manufacturing workers inside & I had to go to meet the strikers to persuade them to let our vans cross the picket line. My attitude was if they didn’t work they would be missed and production would be affected so why stop us who after all were just taking products out. When I think back now surprisingly they agreed.
However they were relatively successful in stopping goods getting into the plant which mostly were delivered by Longs of Bradford. It was noticed that the strikers got in a habit of leaving the picket line at about 10.00PM to go to the pub for a drink and return about midnight. Between us we arranged for loaded trailers be parked in the layby near the Thinford Inn on the then A1 very near the factory and we supplied a none liveried tractor unit & driver to take them in & bring empty trailers out.
One of our artics ( a Leyland Mastiff) driven by our driver Arthur Crooks was one day redirected to pick up an urgent load of substance that was required to keep the production going. The plant General Manager asked spoke to me personally and asked me to guarantee we would get the trailer into the factory that night without fail. I told him one way or another I would or I’d bring it in the next day myself. I think Arthur Crooks was a strike supporter and made the excuse he was delayed for one reason or another & claimed to run out of hours & parked at Wetherby & came strolling into our office at 10.00AM saying the pickets had turned him away at Courtaulds.
in those days our new depot was in the process of being built at Green Lane Ind Estate , adjacent to the Courtauld plant. I told him to take the wagon there & park up & I’d follow in my car & he could take my car back. I got into the mastiff cab putting my headlamps on full beam & drove down towards Courtauld’s gatehouse hand on the horn. Everyone scattered except one man who stood firm so I had to stop. I had never thought of locking the cab doors & several climbed onto the cab & opening the driver’s door tried to pull me out. In fright I by mistake put the Mastiff into reverse, it jerked back & they fell off & putting the tractor into bottom I pulled away as the Gatehouse man opened his gates & gave my a clap of applause. After all Courtaulds would have closed the factory & sacked everyone, so I had helped saved over two & half thousand jobs & possibly our business. I had to be smuggled out in the boot of a Mini & had my life threatened.
The strike had its effects & we had about 10 vans & drivers spare. Fortunately at the time we were hiring in vans from Hayward & Robertson Darlington, & Cracknell Darlington & T T Liddle Stanley & several others as we had more work than we could accommodate until we increased our fleet size. Thorn agreed we could use Courtaulds vans provided they were not identifiable incase it caused their workers to strike in support of the strikers. The vans painted in Courtauld green had our name etc on cab doors with just Courtaulds in large writing front back & rear We put masking tape over their name & painted it in their dark green & they were acceptable. In fact it suited Thorn as at the time they were supplying Comet who sold at discounted prices & other retailers were complaining so they wanted vans to deliver not in our livery so they weren’t so easily identified to connect & show Comet wre getting deliveries straight from them.
The strike went on for 17 months until they gave up & found other jobs. Courtaulds never replaced them.
In the seventies we had ‘The driver’s strike’ Wanting £65 for 40 hours we had made agreement with TGWU £60 basic rate plus £5 attendance bonus. At the time we had a very bad attendance problem with some not turning in on a Monday morning. They had to work 5 days a week to get the attendance allowance which encouraged them to make sure they didn’t take odd days off, but also overtime (Time & half & double time ) made up about 50% of wage bill & overtime would be based on £60 instead of £65 We could manage that & thought we would avoid strike, but once the strike was made official our drivers came out in support. However only part of our staff were drivers. Warehouse staff, loaders, porters, Maintenance staff & admin staff were not laid off & all our overheads continued. The financial cost of the Lorry Drivers strike was something we never got over.
In the eighties one by one manufacturers closed as the EU took their bites out of us . First for us was Advance Textile Mills owned by the American co Monsanto $ years earlier we had bought their fleet of nine vehicles & employed their nine drivers. We managed to have no redundancies. Then 2 years later Courtaulds themselves Once again dad would not have any redundancies. We found other work including opening our Newcastle Office & later Sunderland office to dramatically increasing our Removals volume. Then eventually Thorn pulled out of Fridge production.
In late 1950s we started mail order deliveries for Freemans covering County Durham, Teesside , Tyne & Wear & Northumberland (The larger items inc furniture electical items etc) Originally we collected from Lavender Hill London ( Freemans were known as 'The Lavender Hill Mob in the trade) & later Peterborough when they opened their new massive warehouse ) GUS approached us to deliver furniture delivered to us in their old AEC Mercury vans for the same area about 5 years later.
After Courtaulds closed we were approached by GUS & Kays or Worcester to deliver all mail order beds from UBU Team valley & three piece suites from UBU Chirton North Shields. Aprox 3000 items of beds & matresses 1000 3 piece suites per week It came just as Courtaulds closed & so commenced our Mail Order deliveries to all UK. We were quickly approached by Homeworthy Furniture & all the other mail order companies for flat pack furniture & built up furniture. We opened our depots at Wellingborough Sheffield & London. & were planning Edinburgh & Bristol but then the loss of aproximatly £8million (In present day terms from Thorn proved too much & we were forced to close.
Although by present day terms our mail order was raising over £10 million in turnover it had cost us a lot to set up. Administration was huge with us having to employ about 20 extra office staff alone. Had we had more time we would have computerised using BAR codes on every delivery but we got no grants of financial assistance as we were a service industry not manufacturing. Had we not lost so much by the drivers strike we probably would have had plenty of working capital to pull through from the loss of Thorn & it would be impossible to assess where we would be today as we would have been in prime position with all the home deliveries that had appeared in these internet shopping days.
Turnover lost by present day hauliers & removal contractors will never be replaced. Good luck to all & I hope in the medium turn all survive
A photo kindly donated by Arthur Bellwood one of our Ford Transit Luton vans with Glass fibre body by Marsden’s of Warrington. This one DPT574G the second one they built for us. We also had them build a similar size body on a Bedford CF which I myself went down by train, collected for Dunstable as a chassis cab & took it over to Warrington & collected when built. In fairness the Ford Transit was much better vehicle than the Bedford CF. I wonder if anyone can recognise the location
I don’t think that anybody ever really benefits from strikes Carl, no matter how bad folk think things are before a strike they usually find out that after it is over nothing has changed that much for the better to compensate for what they have lost during it. 
The ill feeling rarely goes away though, and many carry that with them for the rest of their lives. 
Pete.
windrush:
I don’t think that anybody ever really benefits from strikes Carl, no matter how bad folk think things are before a strike they usually find out that after it is over nothing has changed that much for the better to compensate for what they have lost during it.Pete.
Hi Windrush I couldn’t agree more, but it was a strike that should never have happened. I certainly am not an enthusiast of Trade Unions but their negotiators were trained & prepared, whereas the Road Hauliers Association who were ‘Negotiating’ on behalf of the employers were made up of committee of members who in most cases certainly were not professional. Some members of the committees were in fact owner drivers or hauliers just employing one or two drivers. Many of them had not even ever negotiated with their customers for their rate of charges, just charging what they were given. I wrote to RHA and suggested employing a professional to represent the hauliers and deal with all employment issues on behalf of members. In fact I suggested they should try to recruit a Trade Union official, as the best game keepers were always former poachers. They could easily afford to pay a good salary to get the best, out of the membership fees.
The result was they ended up agreeing to the Unions demands almost in total. Had they negotiated earlier in a professional manner a compromise deal could have been reached, but instead they allowed the strike to commence and then opinions hardened. In our case & I suspect many others after the strike our relationship with the unionised members of our staff never recovered. 90% of our staff were loyal and knew we were good employers, but an element were hostile trouble makers, and sadly they had the loudest voices. In my experience this element were never amongst our best workers and I would describe them as idle. One in particular got himself voted in as their union secretary. I refused to speak with him. We couldn’t sack him or there would have been a strike. The chap from TGWU Newcastle rang me and said I should speak to him and I pointed out Freedom of speech also included Freedom not to speak and they should vote for another secretary.I could go on.
Today at our reunions I have never spoken to anyone who does not say ‘Ours was by far the best job they ever had’ and never got anything like it again. I am sure the majority knew that while they worked for us, but sadly they sat quietly at Union meetings and as a result we were never able to work together for the best for all of us.
For all of us f my generation or younger this is the nearest experience we ever have similar to a World War so I thought I would recount some of the tales I heard over the years of experiences in our business between 1939-1945.
At the start of the war my grandfather’s fleet of vans were all Bedfords as illustrated by these two photos which represent the type of Bedfords even though they were not part of the wartime fleet.
By 1940 80% of our work was for the ministry of food to help feed people living within 15 mile radius of Spennymoor. My dad who was 17 at the start of war told a story that on more than one occasion was out between villages on open roads that they had to stop and pull up upon hearing German bombers going overhead. He said they used to get out of the cab to watch because there was no-where to go & nothing else to do but hope they didn’t get killed.
I know why but we had to take regular loads of dead cattle from a slaughter house at Bristol (Presumably as we had a bigger supply up here in North East). Going down the A1 they often, approaching Dishforth came across gates closing the A1 as heavily laden bombers were taking off from the adjacent airport across the main road. Also they often saw heavily shot British aircraft with huge parts of the planes missing as our brave airmen limped home.
Although we were registered as an essential service eventually more & more of our drivers were called up (Including my father) and so the drivers were oldish men, assisted with van lads aged between 14-17 years old. The working day for a driver started at 6.00AM in the morning, filling the radiators with water in winter months and often not finishing on an evening until 11PM on the evening when they had to drain the radiators (There was no antifreeze in those days) However as religion was still strong the government didn’t allow Sunday working so after working Monday to Saturday 6AM to11PM they had Sundays off, with no annual holidays.
We never were able to buy any new vehicles during the war as all production was military vehicles only and even then many of the car or commercial vehicle factories had been switched to other production. The Rover car factory for instance had been switched to production & development of Jet engines. Our vans were wearing as they were getting hard use but no spare parts were available so we had to repair parts or make new ones ourselves.
In Spennymoor area removals were very few. However we still got a few from London where families welcomed their London relatives back to the relative safety of North East to save them from the Blitz. Many of today’s Spennymoor drivers would dread driving round London even with sat-navs but can you imagine the experience our drivers got when finding all direction signs had been taken down (The theory was that if Hitler’s troupes had reached London by removing the signs they never would find their way). All traffic lights were switched off at busy road junctions.
One of the removals we did was for a member of Billy Cottons band. For those amongst us of a certain age will recall ‘The Billy Cotton Band Show’ on the Light program each Sunday Lunchtime or Saturday nights on BBC TV. At the beginning of the war the Government closed all London Theatres & dance halls and one of the musicians (Said to be the best paid in England) decided to move to West Cornforth where his wife’s family lived. Our van had just pulled up on return from London when this chap got a telegram from Billy Cotton saying the Government had seen the error of their way & denying people entertainment wasn’t a good idea & had reopened the Theatres & Dance halls & restored live entertainment on the radio so get himself back as they were back in business.
The British people had it hard and in fact for many living particularly in London had hell but they got through it as will our generation today, but like the Generation in the late thirties we will have to adapt in ways we never have experienced.
Hello Carl,
I dont know if this has been posted before, but if not should bring back alot of memories. 
January 1975.
Click on pages twice to read.
DEANB:
Hello Carl,I dont know if this has been posted before, but if not should bring back alot of memories.
January 1975.
Click on pages twice to read.
2
1
0
DEANB:
Hello Carl,I dont know if this has been posted before, but if not should bring back alot of memories.
Thanks so much Dean for adding that article from the Bedford Magazine. You are correct it has been added before but never so skilfully. When I added it piece by piece it was impossible to read, and for the first time in so many years I read it.
How I wish I could go back to 1975 knowing what I know today, but as in all things in life hindsight is something is an ability in life that none of us have but all could use. There are things I would have done differently, but had it ended in this virus mess today it would be something I never could envy anyone trying to run a business.
Hope you are keeping well & staying safe. Best wishes CarlJanuary 1975.
Click on pages twice to read.
2
1
0
There are quite a lot of vans, Tractor units or trailers, of different makes & liveries I still have got no photos of, one of those was a van we had in Barratt’s the housebuilders livery. Fortunately my half cousin Mark Kempsey gave me a copy of a photo he had taken, with as it was parked up with other vans at our Green Lane depot.
It was way back in the late 1981 that I was asked to visit Barratts who although national builders were based in Gosforth Newcastle Upon Tyne. To help sell their homes they were offering free legal fees and decided to offer free removals, and also offer buyers the opportunity to buy from them new furniture similar to what was exhibited in their show house. we were in the fortunate position that we had vans returning empty from every area of the UK almost each day so I was able to offer a fixed price for each removal into their building sites in Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, County Durham and Teesside, as the cost to us was the same & infact local removals often cost us more than a removal 300 miles away.
We agreed we would paint a van in their livery and also store in our warehouse a range of new furniture so if, whilst buying the house they could add onto the mortgage costs and we could deliver at the same time as doing their removal.
To promote this service Barratts wanted a TV advert featuring their helicopter landing next to our van, and so we only had about two weeks to get a van painted to feature on the advert. We repainted a Bedford KF Vanplan integral about two years old & Peter Butler, our sign writer managed to actually re-create their famous ‘Oak Tree’ image on the front, back & both sides.
About a couple of years later the van had an accident which did severe damage to the front end (cab & Luton) & as we were extremely busy at the time we decided to cut off the integral cab & fit a standard TK cab & re-panel the front of the body & making what had been an integral Vanplan into a boxvan.
The damaged van came into our bodyshop on the Thursday afternoon & remarkably our bodybuilder assisted by his apprentice managed to cut away the front of the body/cab, box in the luton, it was then fitted with a TK cab we fortunately had in stock then into the paintshop & the cab & fron of the then boxvan body brush painted (three coats) with the aid of dryers added to the paint & then signwritten with Peter Butler recreating the Oak tree & of course our name & details on cab doors & illuminated hatcher cab top, which we always had several in stock & the van was back out on the Monday morning on a Barratt removal.
We had over 70 integrals built by both Marsden & Vanplan mostly on KF or KG Bedford Chassis scuttles and I personally was unhappy to have one less & replaced with a boxvan, but the compromise achieved to save up to a month repair, taking into Vanplan for repair was a good answer on that day. So the van in Barratt’s livery started life identical to the Bedford Vanplan in our livery to its left.
On the right is a Seddon Marsden built on their Pennine coach chassis. It has had its Perkins 6.354 engine removed. As I have said many times these Seddons which we had 7 in total did not achieve the engine life we got with either the 330 466 or 500 Bedford engines and considering we could buy 3 Bedford Marsdens to 2 Seddon Pennine Marsdens we reverted to buying Bedfords. I can only imagine the engine had been removed & it was waiting for the original engine to be stripped down & the head & other bits & pieces to be fitted onto new Perkins short Motor to be then put back into the worshop for fitting.
We enjoyed a good relationship with Barretts meeting up several times at the Airo Club, Newcastle airport where their helicopter was based. One occasion I remember well was when Sir Laurie Barratt invited me & my then heavily pregnant wife to their annual dinner dance at Gosforth Park Hotel Newcastle and on the way home on the A1M it started to heavily snow. My Mercedes S class was struggling as the snow built up on the road ahead and I hadn’t a clue what I could do as she would not have been able to walk if we stuck & was in panic at the thought of being stuck in snow in the car. Fortunately we made it home. At the time I was living in Denehurst in Ferryhill and I am certain I was the last car through Frrryhill as the next morning we were cut off.
^^^^^
Thanks to DeanB for the article and Carl for the reply. Fascinating stuff! Always enjoy this thread.
John.
John West:
^^^^^Thanks to DeanB for the article and Carl for the reply. Fascinating stuff! Always enjoy this thread.
John.
Thanks for your kind comments John, Wasn’t Dean wonderful in setting it out and making it so it can be clicked to make it readable. Its he that deserves the applause as it is an ability that I never could have achieved.
Hope you are keeping well & safe, and like me tucked into your home. I recon I’ll be here for many months yet as it won’t be safe to go out until a vaccine comes along
Regards
Carl
A little bit different but a little that goes behind the scenes in our business in the mid to late 70s.
The 2nd photo shows a young Linda Turnbull sitting at our Burroughs accounting machine, which in its day before computers was the latest in high-tech. This photo was used by Burroughs in office magazines to advertise their latest machine. Whereas a computer uses electronic technology & microchips whereas the Burroughs machine was mechanical using cogs. It was used for our sales ledger, purchase ledger & payroll calculation including giving us a print out of the total amount of wages bill including a breakdown of number of £20, £10 &£1 notes and coinage which we rang into Barclays Spennymoor branch on a Thursday afternoon so they had the money prepared ready for Securicor to collect & deliver to us on a Friday morning, in those days when all our staff including my father & myself were paid weekly in cash.
In the office typewriters were rife as all invoices, letters were still typed but the Burroughs machine did print out Statements to send to our customers and Remittance advises to send along with cheques to our suppliers. Cheque were still written out and our cheque books were three cheques per page with carbon paper to keep a copy on blank pages & hence no cheque stubs, whereas once we went computerised the computer printed off the cheques.
On a night it was usually hell as I was always brought letters & cheques galore to sign to be stuffed into envelopes & franked as usually the prettiest member of staff was deputised to chat to the postman to encourage him to wait till they got the last letters done.
In those days our telephonist-receptionist still used a plug in switchboard like the one illustrated in the photo, which necessitated in them being GPO trained (The GPO still operated the nationalised telephone service before the establishment of BT (British Telecom) My dad always thought the first contact with us by many customers was the telephone & so demanded on the phone being answered within 5 bleeps & often would ring in to ensure it was. Similarly it was not possible to directly ring out from any of the extensions. For instance, if I wanted to ring anyone I picked my phone up & it went to our switchboard and I asked our telephonist to get me someone on the phone she would ring them and say ‘I have Mt Williams on the phone for you, putting you through now’. It was 1980 until we got a more modern system where I could dial 9 to get an outside line.
The final photo is a Telex machine which was like a tickertape machine where messages were sent from a tape with holes in it onto a similar at our side. This was then put into a printer which printed out the message to us. Today the Email system makes life so easy but that gong in the background with fair regularity was quite noisy. About 1980 we got Fax machines but several of our customers in particular Great Universal Store companies including Kays catalogues still demanded the use of Telex.
We went computerised about 1980 long before Bill Gates came along with Microsoft. It was almost like a Wurlitzer Organ in size. I remember a programme had to be designed and written for our specific use which had the capability of giving it all information about each of our 100 vehicles including how much they had cost each week to run per mile even giving us a monthly profit & loss account, but like all things needed so much information inputting it was extremely time consuming process manually gathering all the information. It had two huge discs about two feet in diameter, and at the end of each night we had to back up all work onto a disk & take it down to our vehicle parts stores keeping it far enough from the office block in case of fire of theft giving us back up. How simple this task would be today as we could just save to cloud. Our accountant who also had the task of being office manager had a terminal in his office so he could access directly onto the computer had to ask whoever was using it at the time to shut down their work for him to get access.
Going back to the Burroughs Accounting machine time: My dad insisted that I could do everything from driving & doing a removal through to any office tasks so I could cover in the event of illness, with the exception of mechanical, so our workshops were safe from my efforts, but I still had to know what they were doing, how long it would take & a rough idea of cost. So when our staff were trained into the use of the Burroughs accounting machine I had to watch & take it in as well.
I had travelled down to London by train & was returning the following afternoon to arrive at Darlington Station the following afternoon (Thursday) at 6.00Pm at night and the driver picking me up told me the payroll hadn’t been done as the wages clerk had taken ill & not come in on the Thursday morning.
Her job entailed collecting all time sheets, Clock cards & work records on a Monday so she could on Tuesday & Wednesday work out our bonus scheme the hours worked 40 hours single time, time & half remainder apart from Double time Sundays. Check how much cash subsistence payments they had received & collate to see if further was owed or overpaid so all information was ready to process. All office staff were regular amounts but our maintenance staff were all on bonus schemes based loosely on Bedford hours so their hours & bonuses needed calculating, and thank god all this had been done ready to be inputted into the accounting machine to calculate PAYE & NI . The bank had been informed & had ordered to money to be brought to the bank based on the previous week & said provided we rang them for 9.00AM the could adjust to our payroll
So about 7.00Pm I gathered all the information together & sat down at the machine to spend the next 7 hours of so inputting the data. Racking my mind to how it worked I stumbled at the first hurdle as I couldn’t switch it on & power it up, so I had to ring a member of the office staff to find out how to start it up & fortunately once I’d achieved that I managed to do the payroll finishing about 3.00in the morning.
As I said in those days all wages were paid in cash so it used to take two hours to count out the money & put it into the pay envelopes & always before we were finished there was several wives waiting to collect their husbands pay packets.
Hiya,
Carl, how did you get your drivers out of the yard with staff showing
such gorgeous legs, Er’ you’re looking for a good load planner are you.?
harry_gill:
Hiya,
Carl, how did you get your drivers out of the yard with staff showing
such gorgeous legs, Er’ you’re looking for a good load planner are you.?
I know Harry, it was ‘Hard’ work for all of us. On the left was Ronnie Harris who sadly is no longer with us and next to him is Marilyn Mason and I always kept hoping she will turn up at a reunion, so I could just ‘Check’ she is keeping healthy and looking after those legs, but as she’ll be about 65-66 now it’s quite possible she will not as lucky as you and me who have both kept our charm & good looks. Next to her is Linda who was featured on the solo photo. and I’ve been speaking to her today as she was telling me it seemed just like yesterday she sat at that accounting machine for the photo, her Christine next but one and Anne on right hand side have come along to several reunions. Sadly Anne died quite young whilst still working & before retirement about 4 years ago, and she was the only one who kept in touch with Marilyn, who for her health benefits (of course)I was wanting to ‘check over’
Anyway hope like me you’re staying in & looking after yourself. I’m quite prepared to stay in my home & garden till they find a vaccine as I’m not inclined to go out & commit suicide,
Since my Grandfather William Henry Williams started our business we had been based in Marmaduke Street Spennymoor. My Grandfather had been born in No 14 and I believe each garden in the street was ¼ Acre which was fortunate as the garden on no 14 was used first for stables then a smaller garage and in 1946 a large garage taking up the full extent of the garden. We subsequently bought no 12 and eventually used that garden as a parking area, whilst renting out the house to a string of tenants. We then bought no 16 which was used as an office but sadly the local authority refused permission to use its ¼ acre garden for parking.
During the early 60s we found we were getting cramped for space and started looking for land where we could build new premises. Everywhere we found & negotiated buying objections were made by the local authority & planning was refused. Eventually we purchased the Excelsior Hotel from Cameron’s Brewery which we used as a warehouse. We bought the surrounding land on which Nutters Buildings had stood and applied to build workshops onto the rear of the hotel & convert the former hotel into offices, using the remaining land as parking for our vehicles which again was refused. We did however benefit from at the rear of the Excelsior it had a very large enclosed yard which we could use for parking 2 40ft trailers & tractor units.
Whilst this was going on we had one blessing in that the local authority demolished about 100 houses at the top of Marmaduke Street between it and Derwent Tce. They levelled the land & hard cored it whilst the decided what they could use it for (eventually after several years new housing) & in the mean time let us use it for parking. However it was unfenced & insecure so we had to park vans back to back to ensure they were secure.
Eventually Sedgefield Urban Council joined with Ferryhill & Sedgefield Councils to make Sedgefield District Council and after lots of meetings & discussions agreed to let us move onto Green Lane Industrial Estate Spennymoor which was at the time Durham County’s most prestigious Industrial Estate and the home of Coutaulds & Black & Decker. The land they offered to sell us was owned jointly by Durham County Council & Sedgefield District Council but only on the terms that we use architects approved by them & strict design conditions. The land was Green field site and I remember when we were quoted for leading 4 phase electricity to the site I had to threaten getting Generators & using our own to get the price reduced to what still was a huge cost.
On the first three photos you can see how it was when we moved in late 1972. In the first photo on the left in the distance is the vast Courtaulds site. & on the right Black & Decker. The nearest of the Courtaulds factory was Spennymoor 2 which in fact although Courtaulds built because of poor industrial relations (As Courtaulds saw it) never opened & became Rothmans tobacco factory.
As far as our premises : In the photo you can see, at that time a massive grass area between our parking area & the bottom perimeter fence & we bought a Bedford TK tipper & gradually stripped away the top soil and carried thousands of tons of ■■■■■■■■■ & dolomite onto the site & so eventually the whole area was parking where we could easily accommodate over 150 vehicles.
The first buildings we moved into was our offices and workshops which consisted of 4 45ft long bays 2 with 40 ft fully serviced pits and 2 bays with solid concrete floors there was an office for our Fleet engineer & a shelved spare parts area which was eventually re allocated to our Auto electrician as a workshop when later a new spares department was built. Further through which was underneath the offices was toilet and washing facilities for our maintenance staff & area for compressors Oil storage etc.
The other side is the large warehouse, which part was originally used as our bodyshop & paintshop , but was an error when we built it as it was not built high enough. All our buildings were built at 15ft clearance so they were high enough to accommodate a double decker bus as we thought this would be high enough for all of our needs but we had never thought when planning of containerised storage & when in about 1974 we switched to containerised we could only get 3 high in the centre so it eventually became too small for our needs.
On the 4th photo you can see it when the new body/paint shop was being built again 4 bay and 50 ft long on the other side you can see our new workshop which had been built in an area we had originally had the staff car parking area. It had 2 60ft bays with two 60ft fully serviced pits to accommodate 40ft trailers & tractor units complete. In between was a new spares department which had hatches into both workshops at either side. In front of the spares department was the original concrete wash area which we had a local welding & engineering company, Crissops build metal ramps & was now used for steam cleaning the underside of the vehicles.
On the far end of the new workshop was our Wilcomatic automatic vehicle wash.
The staff car park had been moved further down and not I the photo was the parking area for the majority of our vans. We had a total 20,000 gallon storage capacity for diesel & had delivery of a full tanker load 5,200 gallons every 4 days.
The final photos are when the warehouse was under construction.
As I said the warehouse was not ideal for containerised storage & when Courtaulds closed we leased a 17,000 sq ft warehouse about 30ft high on the former Courtaulds site where we had containers 3 high with the option of 4 if needed.
We were completely self sufficient from servicing & repairing all our vehicles including being authorised by Vauxhall Motors to carrying out warranty work on Bedford vehicles and charging to them removing the need for any of our vehicles ever needing to visit a main dealer. We did our own bodywork repairs including paining and built many of our boxvans & trailers & some for other operators. We also in our paintshop did paintwork for other operators including many for United Carriers, however we would not do any outside work in our mechanical workshops, as wee could not offer a service we would be happy with as our vehicles would have had to come first. Our workshops were open 24 hours 4 days per week with a nightshift carrying out servicing & inspections & the premises were manned 24 hours 365 days a year.
Our first diesel Bedford Marsden integral pantechnicon 4479PT was a SB with the 300 cu in Bedford diesel engine, which was an engine that didn’t always get the best reviews, however as I will explain it probably was the most profitable vehicle we ever owned, with excellent engine mileage. It was the only 300 we ever had as its sisters that followed all had the 330 cu in in all the SBs
Sadly I haven’t yet got a photo of this van & so am illustrating with one of it’s almost identical sisters. However here is a photo of a SB chassis as it would have been when it was taken from the Vauxhall factory over to Marsden’s in Warrington. You can note the wooden driver’s seat that these driver’s who drove these chassis from the factory to the Coachbuilders, wrapped up in Goggles scarfs & thick coats which wouldn’t offer much protection in rainy conditions.
When the SBs first reached the streets they had this bulge on the front shared with the Bedford S type from which the SB coach chassis evolved. We had 3 petrol SBs from 1952-53 and even then Marsden had ‘Flattened the front’, which very few coachbuilders had. Even Duple coaches of the early 1950 vintage had the bulge. Our first Marsden from 1953 had a flat front but the other two we had retained this bulge which is illustrated by this 1953 petrol with bodywork by Spurlings.
4479PT was supplied complete by Adams & Gibbon Durham, our main Bedford agent, and although most of our SBs chassis following were supplied by them we paid for the chassis to A & G & then dealt directly with Marsden, taking our cheque & paying them for the bodywork when we collected, every on by my dad himself, a practice he followed, as he enjoyed driving them until it reached the time when he simply couldn’t spare the time & I used to take a driver, usually the one who was going to be allocated the van. The problem was that we were paying for chassis & getting the final vehicle up to 6 months later as Marsden’s got busier & busier. For several years there was never a time we did not have at least one chassis in with them waiting for completion.
4479PT had quite an illustrious life, being involved in an accident at about 8 years old when the insurers wrote it off as a total loss and after a lot of arguing, I remember having with their loss adjusters agreed to pay us more than the van had originally cost. We then agreed to buy back the salvage at a nominal cost, spend about £200 on body repairs which just entailed removing a plymax panel & minor repairs to the wooden frame & replacing a new plymax sheet. We didn’t even have to repaint the full vehicle, & just painted the replaced parts.
About 2 years later Alan Angus one of our drivers was taking 4479PT to Southern Electricity Board in London with a load of refrigerators. There was a security office at the entrance & who he thought was the security guard told him ’ They’re not ready for you yet. Just park over there driver & go & get yourself a cup of tea in the canteen & we’ll give you a shout when we’re ready’ Coming out after a while, when he was sick of waiting he found the van gone. he had been conned by someone claiming to be the security guard.
We claimed from the insurers & credited Thorn (Tricity Cookers) for the value of the load until our insurers settled. Several weeks went by & the insurers were just about to settle when we got a phone call that one of our vans had been standing in a London street for 3 weeks & did we want to sell it. The police were sent round & found 4479PT empty, When our driver travelled down to London to collect he found the windscreen full of parking tickets. So the insurers paid for the load & we got the van back.
The first engine did over 320,000 miles when it seized up on a journey at about Scots Corner. When we towed it back it was found that one of our fitters had the night before serviced the van which included changing the oil & filters & had not fully tightened the sump plug which had gradually loosened, lost all the oil & seized up.
The engine was removed & a new short motor was fitted and when we eventually sold it it had over 650,000 mile on the clock. We sold it to another removal contractor & we heard it was still running with no major repairs 4 years later.
Hiya,
Er’ Carl, did the servicing lad get a hug and told "don’t worry son anybody
can make a mistake, or given directions to the dole office, that was some
costly mistake to make in my maintenance days the sump plug was always
the last thing to be checked and double checked.
harry_gill:
Hiya,
Er’ Carl, did the servicing lad get a hug and told "don’t worry son anybody
can make a mistake, or given directions to the dole office, that was some
costly mistake to make in my maintenance days the sump plug was always
the last thing to be checked and double checked.
I had that happen to me with the Leyland Mastiff. I was southbound on the M6 near Wigan I noticed the oil pressure falling away and pulled onto the hard shoulder. No sump plug. Dunderdale and Yates came out from Preston with a new sump plug and oil. Mike Mills who was chief mechanic at Bowater Scott’s where they ran Mastiffs, had serviced it as a foreigner the day before. His only comment was ‘Well, I tightened it - good job you’re a professional driver and kept an eye on the dials!’
Did any mechanic own up to their failures? Another time, I had loaded in Bowaters and was heading for Abbey road along Ainslie Street in Barrow. The nearside front wheel came off, brake drum and all and demolished a garden wall, coming to a halt about 50 yards up the road. Bould Irwin at Ulverston were doing my servicing at the time. Keith Irwin insisted that this was an ‘Act of God’, despite the fact that they had replaced the nearside bearings 2 days before. I presume that they hadn’t tightened the locking nut. I had nightmares for weeks after, if a mother had been wheeling a pram along that pavement…
Hi Carl thought would pop this picture from the buses,coaches thread as it has one of your Transits just in view heading says taken in Bishop Auckland1974.
harry_gill:
Hiya,
Er’ Carl, did the servicing lad get a hug and told "don’t worry son anybody
can make a mistake, or given directions to the dole office, that was some
costly mistake to make in my maintenance days the sump plug was always
the last thing to be checked and double checked.
He never touched an engine again, but he was a good employee in many ways just not reliable as a fitter so he was moved into driving a small none HGV van