Loads dinky corgi and matchbox
Carryfast,
The bloke I worked for who had the Tm had a fleet which consisted of the two aforementioned 2300 Dafs, the KM & TM, a 1617 & a LHD 2032 Merc, a Berliet TR305, the Sed Ak, two 111s and an F7, every single one of them was rescued before its previous owner sent them to be scrapped and every single one of them should’ve been scrapped, I had to start somewhere and I had every single motor as my own at some time, except the TM 
It was where I got my first continental trip in an artic, although by that time I had gone up in the world and had a 400 Sed Ak sleeper with a 290 ■■■■■■■ 
The same guvnor had, before my time, turned an F86 into a sleeper cab by nailing, yes nailing 
a timber frame to the back wall of the cab and sticking a li-lo on it, spending money was not one of his hobbies
For what it’s worth, the TM wasn’t a bad lorry in your specs at least, but Bedford was a bad company, so it was always going to be doomed, the DD engine, although unfamiliar, was not that bad on fuel compared to the opposition, as long as you drove it like you’d stolen it, but people had recent memories of the other two strokes, bad memories too, add that to the Bedford factor and any sane person would be buying the gardner powered Atki, or if they were in a hurry a 110 or an 88, see, it ain’t rocket science
How much would a kenworth have cost in the uk compared to say a marathon or an Atkinson or a scania or Volvo at that time
kr79:
How much would a kenworth have cost in the uk compared to say a marathon or an Atkinson or a scania or Volvo at that time
And how practical would it have been?
ramone:
kr79:
How much would a kenworth have cost in the uk compared to say a marathon or an Atkinson or a scania or Volvo at that timeAnd how practical would it have been?
To most of us not very but to someone who thinks an 80 ton roadtrain is the most sutitable truck for european road transport it’s a good choice.
kr79:
ramone:
kr79:
How much would a kenworth have cost in the uk compared to say a marathon or an Atkinson or a scania or Volvo at that timeAnd how practical would it have been?
To most of us not very but to someone who thinks an 80 ton roadtrain is the most sutitable truck for european road transport it’s a good choice.
Its like i said earlier horses for courses
georgeking:
How many Bedfords’s did you own Carryfast?
At the time when it mattered none because to my knowledge there were’nt many places paying teenagers enough money to save up the capital to buy a zb brand new TM 4400 and the start up capital required to start up as an owner driver by the age of 21. 
Carryfast:
georgeking:
How many Bedfords’s did you own Carryfast?At the time when it mattered none because to my knowledge there were’nt many places paying teenagers enough money to save up the capital to buy a zb brand new TM 4400 and the start up capital required to start up as an owner driver by the age of 21.
Maybe you should have got in touch with Dennis i think he was very young when he got his first Bedford…not a TM though far too shrewd ,some may say tight others sensible 
newmercman:
Carryfast,The bloke I worked for who had the Tm had a fleet which consisted of the two aforementioned 2300 Dafs, the KM & TM, a 1617 & a LHD 2032 Merc, a Berliet TR305, the Sed Ak, two 111s and an F7, every single one of them was rescued before its previous owner sent them to be scrapped and every single one of them should’ve been scrapped, I had to start somewhere and I had every single motor as my own at some time, except the TM
The same guvnor had, before my time, turned an F86 into a sleeper cab by nailing, yes nailing
For what it’s worth, the TM wasn’t a bad lorry in your specs at least, but Bedford was a bad company, so it was always going to be doomed, the DD engine, although unfamiliar, was not that bad on fuel compared to the opposition, as long as you drove it like you’d stolen it, but people had recent memories of the other two strokes, bad memories too, add that to the Bedford factor and any sane person would be buying the gardner powered Atki, or if they were in a hurry a 110 or an 88, see, it ain’t rocket science
So what we can conclude from all that is that a British guvnor has been shown to have been retarded enough to have bought a day cab F86 and decided to try to turn into a sleeper by ‘nailing’ a zb timber frame home made sleeper onto the back of it with the added luxury of a li lo so not exactly a KW Aerodyne like it’s driver might have had if he’d have been lucky enough to have been a Brit ex pat working in the States or Oz at the time then.
We’ve also managed to establish that being able to spec a truck properly is’nt exactly rocket science considering that you’ve admitted that ‘my’ ‘spec’ for a decent TM would’nt have been bad considering I knew all that at the age of 16. .
But what you should have said is that the TM ‘would’nt’ have been a bad lorry in my specs because you can bet at the time that not one British guvnor would have ordered a 16 tonner powered by a 8V71 motor with a 9 speed fuller in it and not one British guvnor would have ordered a 32-38 tonner with a zb turbocharged 8V92 in it. 
kr79:
ramone:
kr79:
How much would a kenworth have cost in the uk compared to say a marathon or an Atkinson or a scania or Volvo at that timeAnd how practical would it have been?
To most of us not very but to someone who thinks an 80 ton roadtrain is the most sutitable truck for european road transport it’s a good choice.
There does’nt seem to be any 80 tonne road trains in this topic. 
Carryfast:
georgeking:
How many Bedfords’s did you own Carryfast?At the time when it mattered none because to my knowledge there were’nt many places paying teenagers enough money to save up the capital to buy a zb brand new TM 4400 and the start up capital required to start up as an owner driver by the age of 21.
Not to put too fine a point on what you say “carryfast”,I started when I was 20 not with a brand new top of the range motor like you aspired to but with a lowly,secondhand,Thames Trader!! You have to crawl before you can run the 100yds in 10 secs! obviously this fact escaped you and would seem not to have been contained anywhere in your business planning! But me thinks that you set the bar too high for yourself “carryfast” and therebye claim it was financially impossible for you to start up! The word “bottler” somehow comes to mind to describe you my son! Never mind, at least the transport industry escaped a fate worse than death by having you inflicted upon it! Phew that was close(well not really by the sound of it!) cheers Bewick.
Bewick:
Carryfast:
georgeking:
How many Bedfords’s did you own Carryfast?At the time when it mattered none because to my knowledge there were’nt many places paying teenagers enough money to save up the capital to buy a zb brand new TM 4400 and the start up capital required to start up as an owner driver by the age of 21.
Not to put too fine a point on what you say “carryfast”,I started when I was 20 not with a brand new top of the range motor like you aspired to but with a lowly,secondhand,Thames Trader!! You have to crawl before you can run the 100yds in 10 secs! obviously this fact escaped you and would seem not to have been contained anywhere in your business planning! But me thinks that you set the bar too high for yourself “carryfast” and therebye claim it was financially impossible for you to start up! The word “bottler” somehow comes to mind to describe you my son! Never mind, at least the transport industry escaped a fate worse than death by having you inflicted upon it! Phew that was close(well not really by the sound of it!) cheers Bewick.
Ouch!
Bewick:
Carryfast:
georgeking:
How many Bedfords’s did you own Carryfast?At the time when it mattered none because to my knowledge there were’nt many places paying teenagers enough money to save up the capital to buy a zb brand new TM 4400 and the start up capital required to start up as an owner driver by the age of 21.
Not to put too fine a point on what you say “carryfast”,I started when I was 20 not with a brand new top of the range motor like you aspired to but with a lowly,secondhand,Thames Trader!! You have to crawl before you can run the 100yds in 10 secs! obviously this fact escaped you and would seem not to have been contained anywhere in your business planning! But me thinks that you set the bar too high for yourself “carryfast” and therebye claim it was financially impossible for you to start up! The word “bottler” somehow comes to mind to describe you my son! Never mind, at least the transport industry escaped a fate worse than death by having you inflicted upon it! Phew that was close(well not really by the sound of it!) cheers Bewick.
But the issue was’nt about what I was doing it was about what British manufacturers like Bedford and the rest were doing based on the (■■■■■■) demands that they were faced with from their customers at the time.
However unfortunately for them buyers like me were still at school at the time with just our pocket money as capital 
and then on a teenagers factory wage which was’nt enough to get them out of the zb that those customers,who could afford to buy their products,had left them them in .
However there were a few owner drivers out there who were lucky enough to get the breaks required in getting the right jobs, paying the right money to earn some capital,which did then allow them to not have to do all the crawling bit with the Thames trader,but just bought themselves the next best thing to a brand new TM 4400 in a second hand imported KW and went off happily subbing on international work with it which is propably exactly what I ‘would’ have done given a few more bob at the time when it all mattered .It’s all a matter of luck some made it some did’nt.
However none of that would have helped those British manufacturers who needed home market orders for well specced new wagons from those established firms in the industry who could afford them and history shows they just did’nt get them because those established firms were still ordering Gardner powered day cab Atkis during the 1970’s and there is an example of a day cab F86 being bought by an operator and then having a wooden home made sleeper nailed on to it unless nmm is having a laugh.
Which all seems a bit different to how the Australian truck manufacturing industry seems to have progressed during the same period.
But if it was a case of having to be an owner driver with a Thames Trader on UK work and then running a fleet of Gardner powered wagons during the years when I’d rather have been driving that second hand KW around Europe and/or mid east I think I’d prefer what actually happened in missing out thanks.
Its not about what trucks you run it’s about how much money you make out of running them.
I’d rather run a fleet of box standard tidy legal trucks and make a good living than some blinged up motors and be chasing round like a lunatic to keep the overdraft down
“carryfast” IF!! you ever were in the mid/east how come you ever got back and avoided getting a good “stoning” when you would no doubt have upset the locals!! There’s no justice in this world! Cheers Bewick.
Bewick:
“carryfast” IF!! you ever were in the mid/east how come you ever got back and avoided getting a good “stoning” when you would no doubt have upset the locals!! There’s no justice in this world! Cheers Bewick.
Not in this case because if there was one thing that both me and the arabs agreed on it was a liking for yank trucks powered by Detroit motors.
But I would’nt have liked to see their reaction to someone daring to even try to enter the place with a zb Gardner powered Atki although using that tent instead of a sleeper cab just might have made them think that the Brits were’nt much different to camel driving bedouins just so long as they remembered to wear some bed sheets brought from home and put a bit of rope on their head .
But I’ll never know now what might have actually happened because as everyone knows I got lumbered with a zb council job and then uk night trunking instead but at least I’m lucky in that the guvnors did,eventually,realise that a DAF 2800 was better at 32 t or less than a zb 2300/2500 after I’d shown them that it could do the job faster and use less diesel doing it.
kr79:
Its not about what trucks you run it’s about how much money you make out of running them.
I’d rather run a fleet of box standard tidy legal trucks and make a good living than some blinged up motors and be chasing round like a lunatic to keep the overdraft down
So it would have been the Thames Trader and the fleet of Gardner powered Atkis for you and international subbing using that second hand KW for me.Great it’s a free world everyone’s happy but did’nt read about any of those operators in the Kenworths in the UK topic being unhappy about their wagons and the money they seemed to be earning doing exactly as I’ve said 
.
Carryfast , you sound like a peak cap wearing cab happy driver who can talk a good game but cant actually do it.Driving a KW around europe ffs how old are you?It isnt about what you drive its about what money can be made driving/operating the ■■■■ things.If the TMs were so great word would have spread like wild flower and as for the KWs ,horses for courses … you cant put it where oh never mind
carryfast, I would say that there was more drivers who drove an Atkinson or other British lorry to the middle east than there was who drove a yankee lorry out there and quite a few would have been owner drivers starting out with a lorry they could afford to buy and run.
When they had earned a bit of money they then bought a better lorry for the job and this would depend on when they started if it was 60s and 70s it would be mostly a British lorry and later most likely a continental make.
The biggest difference between that era and the present is there was no credit cards and hire purchase was difficult to obtain so people had to buy a vehicle they could afford to run and something which they knew was reliable and how to repair as well if things did go wrong.
cheers Johnnie
I bet Edward and William stobart are glad you never got the breaks you could have had the European haulage industry sewn up with your knowledge