Hello all
as a old retired driver with dementia from the early 60’s can anybody remind me why we had A,B,and C licences in our windscreens any help would be greatly appreciated I can’t remember.
Many thanks
Welcome to Trucknet roizee. I been around a while but not that far back, or I was but it was when sitting in Dad’s passenger seat 
I am sure one of our older, & more knowledgeable than me, members will be able to explain this in full. Chris
A & B licences could operate in any traffic area. C licensed carriers could only operate in their own traffic area until 1968 when operating licenses began.
That is very simplistic and I’ve had a couple of pints [emoji23]
Now I thought that an A licence allowed any goods to be carried unrestricted on mileage, B licence was similar but on restricted mileage and C licence was only for carting your own product? 
Pete.
I’m with you “windrush”, Wheel Nut needs to avoid drink posting.
Dog tired:
I’m with you “windrush”, Wheel Nut needs to avoid drink posting.
+1, on both accounts. 
A Licence Basically any goods carried for Hire and Reward anywhere in the country (or abroad before we were switched to Operator Licensing). However, A Licences were much coveted and were weight restricted, which dictated the size of lorry, and its unladen weight, you could use. At its most simplistic if you had a 15 tons A Licence allowance you could run an 8 wheeler (or max weight artic) and two four wheelers.
A Contract Licence This was a means of running an extra lorry on A Licence, so your lorry could go anywhere in the country, but only for a dedicated customer who gave you a written contract. A lorry on A Contract Licence could only carry outbound and inbound goods for that customer specified on the licence.
B Licence This was a restricted Hire and Reward licence usually given to tipper operators for coal, aggregates, sand etc haulage. Also milk collection, livestock transport, and so on. Only the goods specified on the licence could be carried by the lorry. Also, most, but not all, B Licences were mileage restricted, limiting how far you could go. Usually the mileage radius you could operate in was from a point such as the Town Hall, or main Post Office, in the nearest town or city to your operating centre. There were some B Licences for specialised products that allowed you to operate nationally.
C Licence This was the own account transport fleets’ licence for carrying the company’s own goods only.
gingerfold:
A Licence Basically any goods carried for Hire and Reward anywhere in the country (or abroad before we were switched to Operator Licensing). However, A Licences were much coveted and were weight restricted, which dictated the size of lorry, and its unladen weight, you could use. At its most simplistic if you had a 15 tons A Licence allowance you could run an 8 wheeler (or max weight artic) and two four wheelers.
A Contract Licence This was a means of running an extra lorry on A Licence, so your lorry could go anywhere in the country, but only for a dedicated customer who gave you a written contract. A lorry on A Contract Licence could only carry outbound and inbound goods for that customer specified on the licence.
B Licence This was a restricted Hire and Reward licence usually given to tipper operators for coal, aggregates, sand etc haulage. Also milk collection, livestock transport, and so on. Only the goods specified on the licence could be carried by the lorry. Also, most, but not all, B Licences were mileage restricted, limiting how far you could go. Usually the mileage radius you could operate in was from a point such as the Town Hall, or main Post Office, in the nearest town or city to your operating centre. There were some B Licences for specialised products that allowed you to operate nationally.
C Licence This was the own account transport fleets’ licence for carrying the company’s own goods only.
----------Also there was Contract C , this was for when a haulier would supply a vehicle and driver to an own account Company and operate it on behalf of that company , this was used widely during nationalisation and was a loophole to enable hauliers to continue operating rather than get nationalised (BRS) it did not allow for return loads unless they were goods owned by the o/c --toshboy
toshboy:
gingerfold:
A Licence Basically any goods carried for Hire and Reward anywhere in the country (or abroad before we were switched to Operator Licensing). However, A Licences were much coveted and were weight restricted, which dictated the size of lorry, and its unladen weight, you could use. At its most simplistic if you had a 15 tons A Licence allowance you could run an 8 wheeler (or max weight artic) and two four wheelers.
A Contract Licence This was a means of running an extra lorry on A Licence, so your lorry could go anywhere in the country, but only for a dedicated customer who gave you a written contract. A lorry on A Contract Licence could only carry outbound and inbound goods for that customer specified on the licence.
B Licence This was a restricted Hire and Reward licence usually given to tipper operators for coal, aggregates, sand etc haulage. Also milk collection, livestock transport, and so on. Only the goods specified on the licence could be carried by the lorry. Also, most, but not all, B Licences were mileage restricted, limiting how far you could go. Usually the mileage radius you could operate in was from a point such as the Town Hall, or main Post Office, in the nearest town or city to your operating centre. There were some B Licences for specialised products that allowed you to operate nationally.
C Licence This was the own account transport fleets’ licence for carrying the company’s own goods only.----------Also there was Contract C , this was for when a haulier would supply a vehicle and driver to an own account Company and operate it on behalf of that company , this was used widely during nationalisation and was a loophole to enable hauliers to continue operating rather than get nationalised (BRS) it did not allow for return loads unless they were goods owned by the o/c --toshboy
Plus there was an “F” licence purely for farmers carrying their own produce. I think. 
windrush:
Now I thought that an A licence allowed any goods to be carried unrestricted on mileage, B licence was similar but on restricted mileage and C licence was only for carting your own product?Pete.
Yes that’s right Pete
Tony
Oh! the trials and tribulations of the 1933 Road Transport act concerning Carrier Licencing which I had the “pleasure” of being involved with during the last 4 years of the system prior to Operator Licencing being introduced and the commencement of the “free for all” which has carried on ever since the early 70’s.
Apart from BRS and a small number of Private Hauliers who had a crème la creme “A” licence with a “Normal User” that stated “General Goods Great Britain” all other “A” Licences had fairly strict conditions attached to them. The “Normal User” was a document that stated what type of traffic a particular “A” licence carried and sometimes the customer’s name or names was also stated. A Haulier could source a new seam of traffic but only continue for a short period of time before he was obliged to apply to the LA to vary his “Normal User” to add this new source of traffic which was , usually, objected to by other hauliers and always by BR ( BR were usually not able to carry the traffic but never the less always claimed they could!) The old Carrier licencing system was based on evidence of need which had to be proved and usually supported by the customer which in turn always had more traffic chasing fewer motors which consequently produced far better returns for hauliers. I’ve just scratched the surface of the old carrier licencing system as there was much more to it than this one post. I hope my post may have stirred some other TN members to post their memories of Carrier Licencing.
Cheers Bewick.
I didn’t suffer too much from the A,B and C licensing. I guess I was one of the new generation. I started hauling timber on a 'contract A ’ licence in 1969 for my uncle Jack, who had originally worked for George C Croasdale in Haverthwaite, near Ulverston in Lancashire.
Jack had set up on his own in the Scottish Borders, and I asked if I could provide his haulage. When I was still 20, I worked for him, at that time we burned the ‘snedded’ branches, and I worked in the forest for him, also driving the ex army Ford crane we used to load the wagons. Some weeks before I was 21 I bought a Leyland 14 tonner 4 wheeler and started hauling his timber - mainly to Riding and Anderton’s seven star sawmills at Wigan. Although I did go to Wallsend, Hexham, Glasgow, Ellesmere Port and somewhere in Yorkshire.
I bought a Triumph Spitfire in Preston from a man who was called Blamire. He told me that they had run a successful haulage firm, with regular trunk runs to London, but had struggled to come to terms with modern legislation, so had closed the firm down. ‘You’ll be alright, you’ve grown up with it’ . I suppose we did.
When ‘O’ licensing came in, I carried on carrying for Jack, but also bought sheets and carried for Bowater Scott from Barrow, my home town. Further to that I bought Vans and Curtain Siders.
That was the start of my haulage career, which carried on to overland to the Middle East and 10 years in Saudi Arabia.
Happy Days!
John.
And there was a Special A Licence that was issued as an interim permit at the time of partial de-nationalisation of BRS in 1953-1955.
gingerfold:
And there was a Special A Licence that was issued as an interim permit at the time of partial de-nationalisation of BRS in 1953-1955.
Your right there GF I beleive those “Special” “A” licences were dished out with the sale of the BRS motors which were then traded all over the UK by Dealers who had purchased them in job lots. It was these “Specials” that were to become the coveted “Goods Great Britain” licences !
But to illustrate how restrictive an “A” licence could be was when I was looking around for an “A” licence in very early '68 I came across a Kendal based single vehicle business ( A Guy Invincible Light 
called Furness Road Services and this motor had been parked up since Christmas eve 1966 or just over one year. I knew the Driver who by then was working in a local engineering works, and he gave me the details of the chap that owned the motor, which was actually still parked up in the village that the Driver lived in. Anyway I contacted the owner and got the details of the licence which he said I could transfer if that was possible, anyway when I looked at the Normal User it was basically tied to one Customer The Barrow Steel Works Co Ltd and was " Steel ex Barrow to mainly the Midlands but as required" and that was it ! The first problem was, if it had been possible, was it would have meant an attempt to try and rekindle work from Barrow Steel which was by that time in '68 more or less in the hands of Brady’s with a small amount carried by Athersmiths. So there was no way I could have contemplated crossing my Pals Jack and Bob Brady Snr., even had it had been possible. The second problem that the LA pointed out was that the licence had been dormant for too long so as far as they were concerned it was “defunct” ! However I did manage to source an “A” licence that was transferable from a Haulier in Sedbergh who was winding down. Eventually I obtained two “A” licences from this Haulier plus I applied for the grant of a third “A” licence in my own right which was the subject of further trauma for a 23 year old ! Cheers Bewick.
Old hauliers have told me that they bought worn out lorries purely to get the coveted A licence and then scrapped them without using the vehicles. I was told of one company who purchased a whole fleet of tippers for that reason, (possibly B licences?) and then inherited so many outstanding bills with them that the company had run up and it almost finished them.
Pete.
windrush:
Old hauliers have told me that they bought worn out lorries purely to get the coveted A licence and then scrapped them without using the vehicles. I was told of one company who purchased a whole fleet of tippers for that reason, (possibly B licences?) and then inherited so many outstanding bills with them that the company had run up and it almost finished them.Pete.
That’s correct Pete. And there was the stripping down of a newly acquired lorry (new or second hand) to get the tare weight as low as possible to meet a weight allowance on the licence. Every lorry going on the licence had to be weighed on a Public Weighbridge. Spare wheels and carriers were removed, passenger seats taken out, batteries removed, a couple of gallons of fuel only in the tank, minimal oil and water, and so on.
Good Afternoon all !
Since I started following this thread , I had a look at the gathering of paperwork that my father accumulated during his haulage business started in 1946 . His first acquisition was a C Licence from a retiring taxi business in Sedbergh . It included a contract for the carrying of the Sedbergh School Boys trunks from th various school houses within Sedbergh , and the transportation to the Railway Station , 1 mile away . That was accomplished with an Austin 10 ( or 12 ) saloon and a small trailer which he constructed himself . Ill try to scan the newspaper reports of his struggles to get a B Licence for a radius of 25 miles from Sedbergh . Any interest to you fellows ?
Cheers ,
Cattle wagon man .
cattle wagon man:
Good Afternoon all !
Since I started following this thread , I had a look at the gathering of paperwork that my father accumulated during his haulage business started in 1946 . His first acquisition was aC Licencefrom a retiring taxi business in Sedbergh . It included a contract for the carrying of the Sedbergh School Boystrunksfrom th various school houses within Sedbergh , and the transportation to the Railway Station , 1 mile away . That was accomplished with an Austin 10 ( or 12 ) saloon and a small trailer which he constructed himself . Ill try to scan the newspaper reports of his struggles to get aB Licencefor a radius of 25 miles from Sedbergh . Any interest to you fellows ?Cheers ,
Cattle wagon man .
Hi CWM, It would be of very great interest to me, As you know my family had wagons in the twenties, Regards Larry.
If i recall there was also an F licence that was issued just to farmers who wanted to carry their own goods
cattle wagon man:
Good Afternoon all !
Since I started following this thread , I had a look at the gathering of paperwork that my father accumulated during his haulage business started in 1946 . His first acquisition was aC Licencefrom a retiring taxi business in Sedbergh . It included a contract for the carrying of the Sedbergh School Boystrunksfrom th various school houses within Sedbergh , and the transportation to the Railway Station , 1 mile away . That was accomplished with an Austin 10 ( or 12 ) saloon and a small trailer which he constructed himself . Ill try to scan the newspaper reports of his struggles to get aB Licencefor a radius of 25 miles from Sedbergh . Any interest to you fellows ?Cheers ,
Cattle wagon man .
I’m going to get my objection off to the LA in the morning without fail ! Cheers Dennis