Your old lorry photos

thorpe said:

were they that bad?

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Cab-over Pete said:

I drove one like that for two days. It seemed like the cab was the size of an average dining room and the engine would only rev up to about 1500 rpm.

When the gaffer offered it to me I politely declined and went back to my smashing little Volvo FL6

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Netherfield said:

Must have been a Gardner then.

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Netherfield said:

Must have been a Gardner then.

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thorpe said:

what happened to gardner?

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Netherfield said:

To cut a long story short, they were stuck in the middle ages, every engine hand built by one man.

At one point there was an 18 month waiting list, not helped by striking workers.

Hugh Gardner refused to have a Turbocharger fitted while has still alive, without it Cummins and to an extent Rolls Royce were cheaper and more powerful.

Government brought in a new law, all HGVs had to have a minimum 6 BHP per ton, left them stuck at 30 ton and weights were lifting quickly.

Foreign truck makers had their own engines, Gardner where stuck with Foden, ERF, Seddon Atkinson and a some bus makers, as the truck makers went to the wall so did Gardner.

Got sold to Hawker Siddeley, then Perkins, Perkins had already bought Rolls Royce diesels, it was said they bought Gardner just to take them out of the opposition.

Hawkers, and laterly Perkins built them with Turbo's, but it was too late and the last big engine The 6LYT was a total disaster, absolutely unreliable and leaked oil like it was going out of fashion.

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Cab-over Pete said:

I spent many an hour in TKs and frog mouth Dodges too. I can still hear the little whistle the TK handbrake gave out when applied. Also, the little flap/door arrangement on the side of the cab to give limited access to the engine.

Dad started with Contractamix at Stratford on a Dodge before moving to W Freeman and Sons on brewers grains then the milk tankers. Contractamix became Mill Feed Services and is now Harbro, I think.


We occasionally went to Hemmings mill at Barford. I was only telling my lad about it a few days ago. I don’t remember delivering anything there, but Dad collected bags of feed sometimes. Just along the road from Hemmings there was Oldhams of Barford who ran cattle trucks and moved furniture with the same lorries. Imagine turning up to a house now to move their furniture with a truck smelling of cattle!

I think John Gardner moved from Myton to Mere Hill near Loxley, opposite Blake’s haulage yard, another milk haulier who my uncle Jimmy drove for. The first time I went to Mere Hill was about 20 years ago. I was amazed at the amount of old lorries, trailers, tractors and machines there were strewn about the place, many of them grown into the bushes around the yard. They seemed to go on forever. It’s a lovely farm.

Blake’s yard is now a small bunch of houses. They got into fridge trailer haulage but I don’t think they are in business any more. Stobarts took over the warehouse at Alcester.

I’ll bet you knew an owner-driver named John Buckingham. He used to come to my Dads farm with a blue Bedford TK and a drag trailer, both tippers with fold flat sides. He delivered fertiliser and then took grain away after folding the sides up. Always with his shirt open to the waist and a string vest underneath, he could carry two one cwt bags on his shoulders at once carrying them into the barn. I was only a kid and would shuffle them to the side of the lorry for him.
In later life he had to have a leg amputated if I recall correctly. After that, he still drove but could only carry one cwt I heard he had to have the other leg removed and that finished his working days, that would have been over 25 years ago.

I met a woman the other day who was a member of the Spiers family. You will no doubt remember their fleet of livestock lorries based near Claverdon.

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thorpe said:

were they that bad?

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Renaultman said:

I think the case may be that the Volvo was that good, we were all Bedford ERF until I bought an FL10, it was like 10 steps forward.

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thorpe said:

after a bedford only 10?

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Renaultman said:

It did replace a TM not a TK

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thorpe said:

be 20 step's over a KM then

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JWL said:

All those names and places are all part of my younger days, as for more TK's I remember a pig farmer fetching straw(Pinkneys seems to ring a bell) from by the side of the Stratford to Loxley road with their TK's with a Lister bale elevator fixed over the cab picking up idiot bricks dropped from the baler, no sledge or accumulator and dropping them on the little artic trailers behind with a couple of lads stacking. Roped up then off to Claverdon.
Another name, bit more recent and evidently still going as I spotted one of their artics in Hereford the other day, Barry Jeffries. He used to drop 4 or 5 bulk trailers off on a Friday night, leave a tractor unit and I would fill them in the field straight off the combine so they were ready to pick up on a Sunday evening.
Never did get round to taking a HGV test and none of those I worked for ever thought it worthwhile to run their own lorries apart from one chap I worked for near Barford who used an old Ford D tipper to run corn into Hemmings. He was close enough to have it classed as a agric machine so was not exactly kept up to Ministry standards, that was an entertaining drive there in a morning.

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