One of our Ford Transit Lutons caught in Bishop Auckland Market Place. We had two similar AUP241F & DUP574G both identical with fibreglass bodies with wheel boxes and drop frame tailboard with roler shutter above, so I don’t know which one this is we also had a similar Bedford CF KPT65H. Al three had Perkins Diesel engines (Before Ford or Bedford designed their own)
My son, Paul, came up with an interesting question about the photo of the transit in Bishop Auckland Market place, when he asked me what would it be doing there?
Because where it was parked, at that side was only the side of the Town Hall and a church.
When I look at the photo behind the busses I can just make out a wooden stall, so I think it must have been a Market day. Thursdays was market days and it was a favourite day for Barclays Spennymoor to ask us to collect cash from Bishop Auckland branch as there was always a lot deposited during market days.
I have told the story before on trucknet and I think this photo could illustrate what happened. Probably were the Transit was parked was as near as possible the driver could get to the bank, and a member of the bank staff would probably be standing at the back of the van as our driver and other bank staff carried bag upon bag of cash (Notes and Coins) out of the bank, passed the stalls and behind the busses over the road to where the van is parked.
It’s a pity you cannot see the sides and back of the van as not only were these bodies, built by Marsden, very smart looking vehicles (Not run of the mill Transit lutons) but also if we had a shot in the back of the no doubt open van we would have clearly been able to see the piled up bank bags.
So much for security in the sixties.
Hi Carl, that would look good on a lost goods in transit claim form.
jeffreyk:
Hi Carl, that would look good on a lost goods in transit claim form.
Hi Jeff
Cash and bullion was not covered by our insurers, fortunatly. Orriginally when we started doing this type of work, late forties, early fifties for Martin’s Bank which was taken over by Barclays they accepted full responsblility including security. Talking to the various Bank Clerks who travelled from time to time with me when I was driving I always said if anyone approached me I would hand everything over, and in all cases the agreed that they would do the same. The appearance of Securicor in the North East in the seventies put an end to this work.
Another Job we did for Barclays was collecting Bank fittings and furniture from I think Old Street London, where they had a warehouse, and delivering into all their branches in North East as they redevelloped them.
Carl
harry_gill:
825christineh:
Carl Williams:
MUP577J Bedford KF 330 cu in diesel engine with Marsden Integral fibreglass pantechchnicon body with wheel boxes drop well, underslung tailboard and roller shutter above.
MUP577J and MUP578J followed by NUP856J registered about a month later were the last three of many of this specification Bedford KF Marsden Pantechnicons ordered. Subsequent Bedfords were longer with 466cu in Bedford diesel engines. In this photo MUP577J had been repainted as new phone number showing from orriginal livery. I would therefore suspect it was then over 10 years old. If anyone knows the location of the photo I would appreciate that information.
It is nice to see a photo of a working vehicle, which I think on this instance was on the South Coast. I am also pleased it is clean, unfortunate about the rusty front bumper.I can remember trying to climb in these without showing my knickers
hiya,
Got any photo’s Christine??.
thanks harry, long retired.
No, thankfully it was the days before camera phones 
825christineh:
harry_gill:
825christineh:
Carl Williams:
MUP577J Bedford KF 330 cu in diesel engine with Marsden Integral fibreglass pantechchnicon body with wheel boxes drop well, underslung tailboard and roller shutter above.
MUP577J and MUP578J followed by NUP856J registered about a month later were the last three of many of this specification Bedford KF Marsden Pantechnicons ordered. Subsequent Bedfords were longer with 466cu in Bedford diesel engines. In this photo MUP577J had been repainted as new phone number showing from orriginal livery. I would therefore suspect it was then over 10 years old. If anyone knows the location of the photo I would appreciate that information.
It is nice to see a photo of a working vehicle, which I think on this instance was on the South Coast. I am also pleased it is clean, unfortunate about the rusty front bumper.I can remember trying to climb in these without showing my knickers
hiya,
Got any photo’s Christine??.
thanks harry, long retired.No, thankfully it was the days before camera phones
hiya,
■■■■ !!!, 
thanks harry, long retired.
Hi Carl. I read with great interest your thread re. the cash collections you did in the 60’s.As you well know Oughton Carriers were involved with the delivery of Tobacco and Cigarettes and our vehicles were equipped with sophisticated security systems.Indeed we may have been one of the first to have delivery vehicles fitted with satellite tracking devices.It amazes me that a Bank allowed cash collections on vehicles not equipped with such equipment and considering the cost entailed makes me very envious. However it just shows that in the '60s things were more relaxed.
regards Barrie.
Barrie Hindmarch:
Hi Carl. I read with great interest your thread re. the cash collections you did in the 60’s.As you well know Oughton Carriers were involved with the delivery of Tobacco and Cigarettes and our vehicles were equipped with sophisticated security systems.Indeed we may have been one of the first to have delivery vehicles fitted with satellite tracking devices.It amazes me that a Bank allowed cash collections on vehicles not equipped with such equipment and considering the cost entailed makes me very envious. However it just shows that in the '60s things were more relaxed.
regards Barrie.
Hi Barrie
I know you took every precaution on security, which you needed carrying loads of cigarettes. However what we did for Barclays was totally different. It was on an ad hoc basis, with no regularity. If my memory serves me right, they would ring, without warning and request a van when one was available, with no specific time. Always one way or another we got one of our small vans and sent it to the bank, without prior knowledge of where they were getting the cash. However it was normally either Bishop Auckland where OK banked the bus fares or Sedgefield where Wilkinson’s banked their bus fares. (With lots of change from these, banks always had lots of cash). I think on one or two occasions we might have gone to Darlington. So it would have been impossible for someone to plan a hold up, as there as nothing regular or planned timing etc. At the worst it could only have been someone snatching a bag or two as they walked past, but in those days I don’t think anyone would think to do that.
However it was so different with you. Your vans were known for carrying cigarettes, and did regular routes and deliveries such as your ■■■■■■■ run. It must have been a constant worry, and your dog must certainly have earned his food, as very few would have dared to go where it was. I hated walking past on the pavement and was always wary.
I had no such worry with high security loads but like all in haulage had so many other worries, but even then I wish we could go back to those days, particularly with the knowledge I have today.
Carl
An Ariel photo taken during the 1960’s of our garage at Marmaduke Street Spennymoor. Looking carefully at the photo I can see a van reversed into the front of the garage, loading or unloading, whilst another is parked on the street outside of our offices. The garage doors are fully open. Sorry for the quality of the photo, but nice to see a photo of every day working conditions.
The second is the full length of the street. Far left is H Raine & Sons with Oughton Carriers next door.
Barrie, if you look there is one of your vans parked on the street outside, but unfortunately like me with ours unrecognizable.
Further right is our garage then further right still is Eddie Howe’s garage (OK buses) where again the doors are wide open but no buses outside.
I think the photo might have been taken by Ernie Brooks when he made one of his often trips over above us in his gyrocopter. Ernie had designed and built his small single seater gyrocopter which had great prospects for military and police use and just as he was being ‘discovered’ tragedy stuck and he crashed and was killed during testing, taking all his thoughts and designs , stored in his head, with him
I didn’t realise but if by clicking on page and zoom on the second photo you can get a clearer picture.
Looking again at the blow up photo at the top is the notorious Bessemer Park Estate, (Part of the Poulson court case) that were prematurely demolished. Below Bessemer Park on the right, the white building is the Essoldo (Tivoli) cinema (Now a gap after burning down) and to its right the waste ground is now where the library stands. To the left of the Essoldo is Cheapside Motors, with Cullines fun fare caravans where they winter quarters stood. Clearly the photo must have been taken between November to April for them to be there.
I was disappointed that the area covered did not extend to the top of Marmaduke Street where we parked. This was referred to in a recent post by Barrie Hindmarch, but looking more carefully whilst zoomed in if you follow along the parallel road above Marmaduke Street, which is Barnfield Road at the extreme left hand side of the picture you can make out one of our parked vans, right at the edge of the road. Had the photo covered a bit more of this area, I would have been interested how many there were parked there.
Another photo turned up.
Taken from a recent post by Pratman on scrapbook memories
Bedford TK chassis cab stretched to fit our standard 28ft demountable boxvan bodies built in Spennymoor by our own company Coachskill Ltd. In this case body is in Ness Furniture of Durham livery
Prattman has just added these photos, on North East thread of UBU bedfords with demountable luton bodies taken at their vast upholtery factory at Chirton, Noth Shield were they made about 1,000 three piece suites a week
When we took over the UBU mail order deliveries of beds from Team Valley and upholstery from Chirton we took over 6 of the Bedford chassis and 8 demountable bodies.
The demountable had frames that you reversed onto with the body on and it went onto the fame to pull out without. We put up four of these frames at our depot at Green Lane and usually had two bodies there to change with. One night in high wind one body blew off and presumably we repaired it and got a crane from Stephenson’s Bishop Auckland to lift it up again.
I think we repainted all or most in our livery and they ran between both Team Valley and Chirton and us at Spennymoor, bringing the beds and three piece suites into our warehouses at Spennymoor for sorting and onward delivery to our warehouses in other parts of UK.
I looked at the photos on vehicles on photos to see if I could identify our vehicles, but when referring to my vehicle list noted that these vehicle registrations were not included
Earlier on when talking about the RTITB and the training levy I mentioned the Disabled Discrimination act, which one day arrived in the post on my desk.
It was about the same time as the training levy no doubt passed by a similar disfunctioning government.
Quite bluntly we were told, that unless we claimed for and were granted a certificate, based on the number of employees we had at that time, we had to employ 10 workers who were registered as disabled. If I am not mistaken it was administered through the local employment offices.
It was something that large employers could accommodate, but not in our case and particularly not in road haulage. One case I heard of was Thorn with its Smart and Brown factory in Spennymoor and they got round it by allocating particular pieces of production to the local Remploy factory. We were not able to do anything like that.
I got an employment officer to visit me and successfully argued that the type of traffic we did, including household removals and van traffic carrying furniture, white goods (fridges and Cookers) and boxed yarn needed man handling off the vehicles, often with the driver alone and if they had anyone disabled who they felt could do this, first of all I would suggest them to look closely at why they were registered disabled and question this, and secondly if they were legit and able to do the work I would interview them and give genuine consideration to employing them.
Provided I gave an undertaking that I would review regularly our needs to see that we had no work for disabled I was granted exemption. However I was informed that as far as office work I had to give preference in considering disabled workers.
Well, I had my responsibilities, to other workers, Red blooded male drivers who looked forward to helping poor defenceless damsels who worked in our offices into their high cabs and giving them lifts into the centre of Spennymoor, so they could catch busses home. Also I had the responsibility of seeing these young ladies report to work on a morning often in miniskirts. (It was hard work but someone had to do it!).
There has to be enjoyment in life, something to brighten you up on a dark miserable morning and female workers coming to work in wheel chairs or with sticks ad crutches never would do, so needless to say, no disabled person, ever had the qualifications to work in our offices.
For your benefit Harry and all others who need to see the evidence of my problem here are three photos of the office staff about 1974.
It’s a total surprise how you’ve lasted this long after having to put up with office staff like that!
Retired Old ■■■■:
It’s a total surprise how you’ve lasted this long after having to put up with office staff like that!
Hi
Yes, It used to get very ‘hard’… at times
Carl
Going back to training.
One thing we always did, at dad’s insistence was have our telephonist receptionist trained by GPO (General Post Office who ran the nationalised telephones before BT was created.) Dad was always annoyed when he rang companies up and the phone rang and rang and he had to wait for a reply. He always said that the telephone was the first and most important impression you got and he was turned off using companies where you had to wait or had a ‘bad speaking reply’. One case that comes to mind was our solicitor Joe Hall, J.P.Hall & Co. When you rang them often you had to wait five minutes for them to answer, and got the impression no one was there. I can remember him telling Joe that people will think you have gone out of business and packed in.
GPO ran two day courses at their telephone exchange at Middlesbrough. I know a little more about this course than I might have, because my ex-wife, Susan Firth, as she was then was sent on the course when she joined us as telephonist-receptionist in late 1976. It gave them instruction as to how to speak clearly, deal with calls efficiently, putting them through to the various extensions promptly and also answering all calls within five rings. They also had to do a small time answering the phone as a GPO operator. In those days if you remember on long distance calls you still had to ring the operator to put you through, after giving the number you wanted to call. (How times have changed.
If dad was out of the office or more correctly the drivers’ rest room, he used to regularly ring in to check the phones were getting answered quickly, and if there ever had been a delay, it’s me who would have got the blame.
When we eventually got the facility to dial nine to ring outgoing calls directly, it was only put on my extension and his with everyone else still passing through the switchboard, so our telephonist was still dialling out the numbers and had the responsibility of keeping records including the number rang, who was making the call and the reason, so that we could ensure no private calls were made. As for both me and dad we tended unless it was a private call , or someone we were familiar with, to go through the switchboard as it was more impressive, particularly if you were ringing a customer, for our telephonist to say ‘Good morning, It’s W.H.Williams here, I have our Mr Carl Williams for you, putting you through now’.
The other thing I remember about telephone calls when I first started was that my telephone manner was too abrupt. ‘Make conversation with people’, I was told. I suppose I was too much ‘Hello, what do you want, goodbye.
Carl Williams:
Prattman has just added these photos, on North East thread of UBU bedfords with demountable luton bodies taken at their vast upholtery factory at Chirton, Noth Shield were they made about 1,000 three piece suites a weekWhen we took over the UBU mail order deliveries of beds from Team Valley and upholstery from Chirton we took over 6 of the Bedford chassis and 8 demountable bodies.
The demountable had frames that you reversed onto with the body on and it went onto the fame to pull out without. We put up four of these frames at our depot at Green Lane and usually had two bodies there to change with. One night in high wind one body blew off and presumably we repaired it and got a crane from Stephenson’s Bishop Auckland to lift it up again.
I think we repainted all or most in our livery and they ran between both Team Valley and Chirton and us at Spennymoor, bringing the beds and three piece suites into our warehouses at Spennymoor for sorting and onward delivery to our warehouses in other parts of UK.
I looked at the photos on vehicles on photos to see if I could identify our vehicles, but when referring to my vehicle list noted that these vehicle registrations were not included
Going back to UBU (Universal Bedding and Upholstery) highlighted in the recent photo, and where we fitted in is a fairly long story, and I apologise if anyone is bored, but all in all I think it will interest many.
UBU had two factories: Chirton, North Shields making upholstery (Three piece suites)
Team Valley Gateshead making beds and mattresses.
For the few oldish drivers amongst you, some will remember Lunarest Bedding vans in 1950s running up and down the A1
UBU (Universal in the name gives it away) belonged to the giant Great Universal Stores empire, run by Sir Isaac Wolfson
Sir Isaac Wolfson, 1st Baronet FRS[1] (17 September 1897 — 20 June 1991) was a Scottish businessman and philanthropist. He was managing director of Great Universal Stores (G.U.S. or Gussies) 1932-1947 and chairman 1947-1987. He established the Wolfson Foundation to distribute most of his fortune to good causes. Great Universal Stores was a mail order business. He joined the company as a merchandising controller in 1932, becoming joint managing director in the same year. The company was in trouble when he joined but he turned it round and made it into a very strong business and the principal source of his wealth. He also had other successful business ventures. He was succeeded by his son Leonard Wolfson.[2]
Wolfson was a brilliant financier and this was central to his early success.[2] Later he backed James Goldsmith. He also underwrote the hire purchase agreements of washing machine entrepreneur John Bloom at Rolls Razor but withdrew financial support in 1964, leading to the company’s voluntary liquidation
As it says above GUS was a mail order company but there was so much more.
On the high street the furniture retailing side of the business was represented by Times furniture stores and Woodhouse and Cavendish Stores. Nearly every town in the north east had Woodhouses selling furniture and certainly every city had Times Furniture
Manufacturing the beds and upholstery they had UBU, whilst buying in most other products
On the mail order side they owned Great Universal Store catalogues which was the largest part of the mail order business with catalogues in many different names. Most houses one time or another had a GUS mail order catalogue.
The other part representing 40% of GUS mail order was Kays catalogues, which was run as a separate company.
Finally the road transport side was run as GUS Transport.
UBU main office Team Valley
Great Universal Catalogues main office Old Trafford Manchester
Kays Worcester
GUS Transport by coincidence Worcester, although no direct connection with Kays.
I will explain next our dealings and how we had to deal with all the above four, all having their say in what we did, and how, although owned by the same company, they all fought with each other, like brothers trying to impress Wolfson to prove they were the best.
hiya,
Thanks Carl for showing some of the W.H. Williams office talent, myself
as a driver would have been no use diversifying my knowledge to office
duties I’d never have got any work done.
thanks harry, long retired.
harry_gill:
hiya,
Thanks Carl for showing some of the W.H. Williams office talent, myself
as a driver would have been no use diversifying my knowledge to office
duties I’d never have got any work done.
thanks harry, long retired.
Hi Harry,
Although, they may look relatively well presented they had to be capable and eager to work hard to get a job with us.
When each came for an interview, after a very brief introduction, I sat them down at a desk with a typewriter, scrap paper, a calculator and several blank letterheads. I then gave them a sample invoice and gave them a number of miles (like 635) at so many pence per mile and a number (like 23) drops at something like £2.64 per drop. They were then told to make the calculations and setting it out by typing on a letterhead giving a net amount to which they had to add VAT to give gross amount, and only if this was correct and set out correctly did I continue to interview them and offer a job.
This was done no matter what prior qualifications or experience they claimed to have. You would have been surprised the number who came along from other employers where they had responsible positions and quite high rate of pay, who were incapable.
In the late sixties to mid-seventies, prior the computer days they sat day on day writing accounts in large ledgers,(We used the Kalamazoo accounting system for both sales ledger, and purchase ledger as well as payroll and everything had to be calculated manually), typing invoices as well as dealing with sometimes stroppy drivers and difficult customers. Yet it was a very happy place to work. This went for in the accounts and general office, as well as a driver or in the workshops.
Unfortunately as we expanded in the later seventies and eighties and employed more office staff as well as more workers in all departments, the pleasure of going to work every morning seemed to end for everyone. In the early days they were all friends and had parties and socialised out of work but as time progressed often some didn’t even know each other as offices were located in different parts of the site.
Carl
Yes Carl, I can remember doing the wages on the old Kalamazoo system. Then we got the accounting machine that was the size of a small truck. Chris