Berliet GPRK 10 with ‘Relaxe’ cab and 6 cylinders engine 180 hp.
Is it me or does that cab (GPRK Relaxe) look very Dodge Barreiros ish?
No, the “relaxe” cab was a Berliet design but you are right because Barreiros built a licensed model on the middle range it built like ‘Saeta’ .
Hi all in the early 70’s PBC Transport from Southampton ran 4 TR 280 Berliets as well as Fodens of all descriptions and some Mandators of which i drove one GOW 78 L anyways one day i got the job of a load of sheepskins down to Mazamet near Toulouse,i was excited as this was the longest trip i had been tasked with but the old mandator started getting hot south of Bordeaux and despite toppin her up after letting her cool she seized up,my rescue came in the form of one of the berliets driven overnight bobtail from cherbourg we tipped the skins went to the garage secured the knackered AEC on the back of the stripped down tilt and made for home this was late friday night and Bernie who was the regular driver on the berliet wanted home for saturday night,as we got north of Bordeaux he was out of it and let me take the wheel and this was the first time i drove a berliet and the first LHD as well but in those days there was not the traffic of today,Bernie woke about 8am by which time we were well up though France and got to Cherbourg about 4 in the afternoon,another Mary Hopkin moment cheers Buzzer.
Hi JD… and all…I also had GOW As my first motor on PBC… I was later promoted to a French reg Berliet, with which I did Italy for quite a while. Total luxury after the Mandator! I recall it had a brilliant Electric retarder as per on coaches of the time…( TELMAR was it ), however I discovered one rainy night that it wasn’t a good idea to use it too zealously when running bob tail. 2 pirouettes but stayed out of ditch! I remember Bernie by the way…what was his surname?..
Baldrick1953:
Hi JD… and all…I also had GOW As my first motor on PBC… I was later promoted to a French reg Berliet, with which I did Italy for quite a while. Total luxury after the Mandator! I recall it had a brilliant Electric retarder as per on coaches of the time…( TELMAR was it ), however I discovered one rainy night that it wasn’t a good idea to use it too zealously when running bob tail. 2 pirouettes but stayed out of ditch! I remember Bernie by the way…what was his surname?..
Hi Balders i assume your move to the hills went ok,i remember those retarders and what you said about running bobtail and using them is correct,the only downside was that they were extremely heavy but must have saved loads on break relines,As for the mandator with no sleeper cab getting into that TR 280 must have been heaven,when i got the AEC first job was to get two bits of hardboard to fit across the engine bonnet and to fit on the window ledge and make sure they met flush in the centre,then a trip next door to the yard where you could purchase for a nominal sum a roll of foam rubber to suit from Declaremink,i remember getting in to bed was an art especially if you had bin on the old cafe calvas being led astray by Scory P.But the most important thing was to make sure you locked the door ,this i ommited to do and when Pat came to arouse me in the morning he opened the drivers door and out i fell amid raucus lafter from him,a lesson well learnt there.I cant remember Bernies surname but TIR Tone may know,he used to go with the ■■■■ girl who worked for truckline who i think was married but think she divorced and married bernie in the end,i think he also had a brother on the firm as well,Franky Allen had money in Truckline from the beginning and as you remember them Berliets were french registered plus some of the Mandators, he had an office on the quay but i cant remember the blokes name who ran it ime sure someone will.At this stage in the early 70’s it was unusuall for a brit company to have a setup in France but you used to get exchange permits in them days so FH had it all in house,another Mary Hopkin moment mate.
Inside a Berliet TLM 10 M2 from 1963 with 2 gearstiks…
youtube.com/watch?v=5v2UbArlUkU
All good with move boss thanks!.. a tad chilly at 1200 metres with heaps of snow. Highland cattle would be at home here…
I think Bernies surname was Safe. Came to me last night. Not him in person , you understand! Funny thing the old memory box… Old pat and the Calvas eh, he nearly always had a bottle of schnapps lurking in the cab somewhere too.
Plenty of drivers cut there Continental teeth on PBC. Was old " Polish Ted " in the workshop then? Getting trailer bulbs out of him was like pulling teeth, you’d think they were made of Gold and paid for by him!
cheers nowJD…
Baldrick1953:
All good with move boss thanks!.. a tad chilly at 1200 metres with heaps of snow. Highland cattle would be at home here…I think Bernies surname was Safe. Came to me last night. Not him in person , you understand! Funny thing the old memory box… Old pat and the Calvas eh, he nearly always had a bottle of schnapps lurking in the cab somewhere too.
Plenty of drivers cut there Continental teeth on PBC. Was old " Polish Ted " in the workshop then? Getting trailer bulbs out of him was like pulling teeth, you’d think they were made of Gold and paid for by him!
cheers nowJD…
Hi again " frosty " Balders now i thought his surname was thompson but there you go,Polish Ted and his french berei were lurkin in the workshop wot a miserable B he was plus two other fitters cant remember there names but one of them is into carriage driving as well.Of course who else but FH would call a company Public Benefit Coal (PBC) he used to do deliveries to the old mother in law but was a crafty old so and so he used to put a big beach stone in the bottom of the coal sacks when filling them and retreive them when he tipped the sacks so the punters never got the correct weight if any one said any thing about the stone he used to tell them they were weights to stop the wind blowing them awayof the back of the lorry.when i started for them the wages wuz £35 all in (no sleeper cab) god we must have bin mad.
Cheers Buzzer.
Only time I drove a Berliet it was a PBC around the parking lot at Eurostop Strasbourg. I let the PBC driver have a go on my Mack and he showed me how the range change worked on the Berliet. He thought I was king of the road in my ■■■■ Mack and I thought he was king of the road in his luxurious Berliet!
BERLIETGPRK 10 with Tual § Gourmelen body;
Interesting read I had here…
I think I might share with you some chapter from Berliet history that is not really well known on the West. But first I have to move to Poland 
There used to be a Bus/Truck factory in Poland. Poland was expecting a boom for the buses (as, just like in the rest of the World, 50s and 60s trend was to replace trams with buses), but what was in offer for the city buses was already outdated Jelcz/Skoda model (designed mostly by Czechoslovakian engineers with some Polish improvements):
Good bus, but more 1950’s than 1970s.
You can see it’s towing a trailer designed to help it copy with volume of passengers (also bendy versions were derivated in Jelcz).
Jelcz, it’s manufacturer after several modernisation decided to go for building new model from scratch. After some other ideas, they came up with this:
It was very modern bus, one of the first buses in that part of the word that had very low floor (not as low as modern buses, but still much lower than most of the buses of its era)
It was very good prototype, but still needed some work - for example the engine was not able to copy with the weight and at this time in Poland there was no engine that would be good for that model.
But big changes happened in Poland. After 1970 events, new party leadership took power. New first secretary Edwart Gierek promised people new standards of life and turned to the west for financial help. West, hoping that Gierek will bring more democratisation to Eastern Bloc was (at least at the beginning) keen to lend Poland money, but off course this is where politics comes in. The loans were coming with some conditions and that conditions were often that the money have to be spent on the West to help out the local industry that is in trouble…
This, together with that some companies friendly to French communist party had shares in Berliet resulted in that surprising decissions: thanks to the pressure from the West as to that the money lend has to be spent there, and to pressure from Big Brother that was keen to support French communist, the project Jelcz 039 was scrapped and instead Jelcz bought a license from Berliet for manufacturing their bus PR 100.
Soon first ones left the Jelcz factory (fitted with Leyland engine that Jelcz has already license for):
There weren’t the most modern ones, despite modern look, and they proved to be a complete disaster. Unlike the West, in Poland not many people could afford their own car, so the town buses were working really hard. Pictures like this:
were nothing unusual.
So since all old buses were build in traditional way, on a frame, so they were coping well with being overloaded. The licensed Berliet PR 100 was made as a truss (is that good word?), so under this conditions, they were just literaly breaking in half. And apart from that many other faults were causing a constant problems - for example the french suspension was unable to copy with a Polish roads.
Soon the decision was made that Polish engineers have to do something to solve this problems and Berliet was put back on the drawing boards.
The result was Jelcz Berliet (and after the license expired just Jelcz) PR 110M:
The body was strenghened, some changes were made to suspension, many elements were unificated with other products of Polish motoring industry (for example headlights are the same as in Polski Fiat 125p and later FSO Polonez) etc etc. Also third doors were added to copy with the volume of passengers.
That leaded to another problems as engine was located in the back, and since the rear overhang was lenghtened, the truss started to break behind the rear axle. Still it was not so common occurence as the previous problem with original Berliet design.
And so the Jelcz PR 110M (M for Miejski - City) started to dominate Polish roads. During communism there were basically two types of the buses in the big towns - Jelcz PR 110 was a standard single bus and Ikarus
from Hungary that we were getting in exchange for Jelcz trucks was dominating the bendy bus market.
Soon the cooperation bewteen Jelcz and Hungarians became so close, that since the Polish body supply was much higher than the engines and other bits, the French-Hungarian cross breed was developed. It was basically speaking a solo Ikarus bus like this:
with modified Berliet body on it and it was called Jelcz L11:
Some work was carried to develop a bendy verion of it, but both Ikarus and Berliet objected. Strangely nobody objected when similar project soon apeared in Yugoslavia as Ikarus - Zemun:
(this is actually very typical thing for Eastern Bloc - the BIg Brother was taking care so that one country not became too good in something, and if they were, their project were blocked and soon strangely similar projects popped out in another Eastern Bloc country. So remember that Jelcz 039 prototype that was scrapped after license for Berliet was bought? Meet Skoda 14 Tr, a Czechoslovakian troleybus, that look a bit different in production version, but the prototype of it was identical to Jelcz 039:
)
But back to Berliet.
Jelcz PR110M, a Berliet derivate was manufactured in Poland till 1992, when it was replaced by Jelcz 120M, which was, basically speaking, the same bus, fitted with modern engine (I think it was some MAN engines) and auto ZF gearbox.
The production of this bus, with some modernisation, mostly face liftings, was continued as far as to 2007 year.
So well after Berliet was already forgotten in the West, Poland was still dominated by the buses that were designed (at least by apearance) by French engineers from Berliet.
I hope it wasn’t too boring and there was not too much digressions in it
Evening all, orys, congratulations on a very interesting and informative post. So little is known, or even understood here of the products of the former Eastern Bloc. Less of the international trade deals that went on before the collapse of the Bloc. I had a limited personal involvement with Hungarocamion, back in the late 70s, but was aware that “our” bus people were chasing every opportunity for “bus” business in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
Shame that Leyland were not there, as they did have a trading record!
Your comments regarding the French specification needing “fine tuning” to suit the local market, reminded me of one steamy humid morning in a North Carolina Coca Cola depot, when with horror I realised that the enormous, (and I do mean enormous), giants of crew, could not possibly fit behind the steering wheel of the (Renault), Mack Midliner, that I was presenting to them! Boy in the days of Telex being fastest communication, it took some little time for that fact to sink in to my French design colleagues! Good job the local Mack people could do a workable and quick specification alteration!!!
Good luck health and happiness for 2013 to everyone, Cheerio for now.
Berliet TLM 15 M , the engine is a 6 cylinders from 14,780 lit, with a typical french semi-trailer.
Happy New Year 2013.
Evening all, Fantastic thread full of interesting facts and stories from a golden age, back in the mid 80’s I got a short term contract to run newsprint from London to Leeds every night and the truck supplied was a turboliner, having come from the likes of the Leyland Mandator then the Buffalo the R340 was like driving a Rolls, my first truck with a proper bunk, a radio that I could actually hear, a night heater and I could stand up in the cab, what luxury.
I now run a Magnum Swedish spec LHD 6x2 rigid on euro work and absolutely love it.
Equitran:
Evening all, Fantastic thread full of interesting facts and stories from a golden age, back in the mid 80’s I got a short term contract to run newsprint from London to Leeds every night and the truck supplied was a turboliner, having come from the likes of the Leyland Mandator then the Buffalo the R340 was like driving a Rolls, my first truck with a proper bunk, a radio that I could actually hear, a night heater and I could stand up in the cab, what luxury.
I now run a Magnum Swedish spec LHD 6x2 rigid on euro work and absolutely love it.
When I came to France to live and started with Gauthier I was given 2 or 3 different wagons over the first few weeks and one was a Turboliner wagon and drag (traditional). I was welll impressed with the level of driver comfort and space inside when realising that these were being phased out in favour of the Magnums which were coming into the fleet. I also drove one of what used to be called the New Generation Mercs and liked the Epicyclic gearbox (which I was already familar with).
But it was the Magnum that I set my sights on and was both pleased and surprised when, after only about 6 weeks with the firm, that was what I got, a brand new, not even yet signwritten, Magnum. Brilliant. Apart from that horrible elbow destroying ZF gearbox, the best wagon I have ever had. 
I wasn’t always a Saviem fan. As a transport manager back in the 80s and 90s I sometimes hired in motors to cover busy periods and was less than impressed with the old club of 4 cabbed ones. Rightly or wrongly they came with a bad reputation, one had to be parked on the side of the road as the fuel tank straps were so corroded that the tank was in danger of falling off, and we used to joke that if you bought a Renault jacket they gave you a free wagon. 
The Turboliner and the Magnum banished all that from my psychie. 
After being asked by Michel for Gauthier pictures I found this link to a section of their website which I hadn’t seen before:
transports-gauthier.com/ChargeUtile.htm
It gives the history of the company, in French of course, from the earliest days after the war and there are a great many photos of lorries demonstrating the company’s enduring support of Berliet/Renault for many years.
They only began moving away from French lorries after I left at the end of 2002.
Of extra interest to me personally, are the pictures of many people that I knew (one, the Portuguese, Manuel Rebelo, (Manu) still lives just down the road from me and we often meet when he or his wife are walking their old Spaniel), most still with us, some not.
My thanks to Michel for prompting this trip down memory lane.
Saviem:
Evening all, orys, congratulations on a very interesting and informative post. So little is known, or even understood here of the products of the former Eastern Bloc. Less of the international trade deals that went on before the collapse of the Bloc. I had a limited personal involvement with Hungarocamion, back in the late 70s, but was aware that “our” bus people were chasing every opportunity for “bus” business in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.Shame that Leyland were not there, as they did have a trading record!
Your comments regarding the French specification needing “fine tuning” to suit the local market, reminded me of one steamy humid morning in a North Carolina Coca Cola depot, when with horror I realised that the enormous, (and I do mean enormous), giants of crew, could not possibly fit behind the steering wheel of the (Renault), Mack Midliner, that I was presenting to them! Boy in the days of Telex being fastest communication, it took some little time for that fact to sink in to my French design colleagues! Good job the local Mack people could do a workable and quick specification alteration!!!
Good luck health and happiness for 2013 to everyone, Cheerio for now.
Hi Saviem Just a quickie re your post of 26/02/2012 I have just become become the proud owner of a Renault 385 ti Turboliner (1995) currently on Irish plates (West Meath) but originally registered in Grimsby N 385 PJV .I bought because of its rarety and intrinsic value to show in its existing condition in 2013. Another reason for buying it was because of my experience of running an R340 in the 80’s a really under rated machine , so look out for the R.V.I flag to be flying this year ! Regards et bonne chance .Noel Minchew
One of the famous GLR typ, this is a GLR 200 with the 6 cylinder engine, 6 gears with optional splitter.
