Two, so different Bedfords
Suedehead:
What would be the going rate for a minimal pack(couple of tea chests and half a dozen mod 30s) for 500 cu ft (ish) from W9 1QS ground floor to Swindon 1st floor?
Serious question btw,used to do a bit years ago ,the mil wants to move nearer .
Was thinking of hiring a van but i feel a “Bernard Cribbins” moment beckoning!!
Much as I would not want to take work away from decent removals firms, the thing I’ve found is that if you’ve done removals on anything like a serious basis it doesn’t take long to dust off unused skills and set to work with a hire wagon.
(Conversely, taking the job on yourself reminds you (quite quickly, I find) how much older and unfit you are.)
ParkRoyal2100:
Suedehead:
What would be the going rate for a minimal pack(couple of tea chests and half a dozen mod 30s) for 500 cu ft (ish) from W9 1QS ground floor to Swindon 1st floor?
Serious question btw,used to do a bit years ago ,the mil wants to move nearer .
Was thinking of hiring a van but i feel a “Bernard Cribbins” moment beckoning!!Much as I would not want to take work away from decent removals firms, the thing I’ve found is that if you’ve done removals on anything like a serious basis it doesn’t take long to dust off unused skills and set to work with a hire wagon.
(Conversely, taking the job on yourself reminds you (quite quickly, I find) how much older and unfit you are.)
Hi ParkRoyal
I agree with you, but last time I tried to carry a wardrobe I found that where I used to be able to hold it close to my body and let that help take a bit of weight, my stommach got in the way and the thought of the sheer hard work now makes me cringe.
So being lazy I would no longer try, and when I ave occasionally got amateurs cheaply to pick up an odd item, seeing their efforts at handling furniture again makes me cringe.
If I was moving today I dn’t know what I would do as round hear, no old established companies have survived and al tat have started I don’t think I could trust. Only one left is Pickfords and they are the last I would consider, ebven if they offered to move me for nothing.
carl
Don’t like Pickfords then Carl,can i ask what you have got against them.
Unlike a lot of other firms they are still trading so they must be doing something right.
jeffreyk:
Don’t like Pickfords then Carl,can i ask what you have got against them.
Unlike a lot of other firms they are still trading so they must be doing something right.
Hi Jeffreyk
They certainly never would have been trading during the years they were nationalised, and never would have survived when the Freight Transport corporation was set up, had they not been given prime town centre property for nothing.
We had to pay our taxes (at one time my father was paying 19/6 in the pound) and much of this tax was being paid to Pickfords as a subsidy to keep them in business when they went from year to year making losses and giving unfair competition.
However even in those times they had a bad reputation that stopped most potential customers using them. But like all of us tey didn’t need to make money to survive nd just went to the Treasury.
During my time at BAR meetings I met many of their so called managers that I would not have employed as porters.
Recently you might have noticed their ‘Financial Restructuring’ need I say more!
Carl
Found this today Carl , made me laugh that the licensing authority were amazed at what dad was taking in his trucks .
JAKEY:
Found this today Carl , made me laugh that the licensing authority were amazed at what dad was taking in his trucks .
Hi Jayey,
Yur dad obviously didn’t like putting all his eggs in one basket- very wise.
For about 4 years we carried pigeons. They used to hire 5 vans most weekends. Picking up about 7-ooPM Friday night and taking down to various parts of south. Unloading baskets so they could release pigeons and then back with empty baskets ad returning to collection points. Often we had vans loaded for delivering Monday morning, unload them and reload them when they returned with their Mondays loads. It was good money and we increased our efficient use of vehicles
Carl
Hi Carl , dad use to carry the girl guides and the cubs and scouts and once or twice donkeys 
, my dad didn’t give a toss .
An advertisment from 1963 , which should be of interest to you removal boys .
Cheers , cattle wagon man.
Hi CWM that’s a great advert , bloody big body on that wagon , heavy steering springs to my mind with a great big luton full . 
Hi Jakey,
I think that the Bedford would struggle on level roads , never mind when fully loaded. 
Here`s another advert , -this time from 1964.
Maybe not all of the furniture-carrying type, but still worth viewing.
Cheers, cattle wagon man.
Three - in - a - row for you lads . 
. Another advert, and another manufacturer , 1964.
This Leyland 90 will no doubt be very slow when climbing any hills. 
If the rear framework/doors are strong , then it would be grateful for a push.
Cheers , cattle wagon man.
cattle wagon man:
An advertisment from 1963 , which should be of interest to you removal boys .Cheers , cattle wagon man.
Hi Cattlewagon man
Thanks for showing that ad that spent so many weeks in the early sixties in Commercial Motor.
Hills were Bedford main agents from Manchester, who had Marsden Coachbuilders of Warrington build them quite a number of these pantechnicons on the Bedford SB passenger chassis, many of which they sold off the shelf or had them in the process of being built and so very quick delivery.
Any readers from Manchester might correct me but I think that they must have eventually sold out to Syd Abrhams, who followed on with the tradition, but switching the body building to Bowyer Brothers (Boalloy) Congleton, and selling a cheaper much inferior built van.
Our first Marsden was 1953 on Bedford SB petrol, and when in 1961, no doubt inspired by that advert dad decided to buy his first Bedford SB diesel he considered buying from Hills, but by buying the chassis from Adams and Gibbon our local Bedford agents and putting it into Marsden who we dealt with as an individual customer he saved £170 on the Hills price. Here is a photo of 367MPT our third of this model (1963) together with a similar run by Devereux.
As it says on the advert Marsden had by 1960 designed and fitted the fiibreglass front end and roof whereas in our original 1953 it had aluminium front end, carefully bent and shaped to give a not too different shape and the roof was canvas over wood.
So good to see the advert again, thanks
Carl
JAKEY:
Hi CWM that’s a great advert , bloody big body on that wagon , heavy steering springs to my mind with a great big luton full .
Hi Jakey
Not so big against what we and the trade were buying a few years later when the maximum length was 36 foot instead of the 30 ft. Those vans were only 1800 cu ft.
As you say there was no power steering, and when we got each new one we found they were usually fitted with Mitchilin X radial tyres all round. It was legal to have cross plys on the front and radials on the back and with radials on the front the steering was heavy. We took the radials off the front on every occasion and fitted cross plys and they were as light almost as if you had power steering. They were a dream to drive in fact dad always said he prefered driving that model SB than his Rolls Royce Silver shadow. The seating possition with the height of vision and I can assure you Cattlewagon man that you could fly over the roads from Kirby Stephen past Kirby Lonsdale Sedberg better than you could with any car and onto the M6 near Lancaster, as you could see over the hedges and those vans fully loaded took the bends at speeds you could never hope to achieve in a car, if you knew nothing was coming and could overtake any old croneys sauntering along in their cars. But they were the days when we were allowed to go through Barnard Castle and over the bridge.
Carl
Thanks Carl for the info .
Strange, they don’t go so well on their side!
Carl Williams:
Strange, they don’t go so well on their side!
I have to say there were a few occasions in years gone by when things almost came to that. From memory the worst were going east up over Scammonden not long after the M62 had opened, and three or four occasions on the Severn Bridge when a sou’wester was on, not helped by being full to the gunwales with a backload of toilet rolls (from a Bowater depot in S Wales [Barry I think?]), though had the wagon decided to have a lie-down I’d have had no shortage of stock to clean myself up with.
,those Marsden bodies don’t like that sort of thing .
Hi Carl , Jakey , et al,
Another magazine advertisment for you .
It appeared in the March/April 1963 issue of " Payload " , which was issued by Austin Commercials.
Its surprising just how useful these old magazine adverts can be for digging up the past` .
( And my missus wonders why I keep them for so long 
).
Carl ,- I know what you mean about the narrow road and bad corners of A 683 , between Kirkby Stephen and
Kirkby Lonsdale 
. It was heavily-used by all the Durham/Lancashire traffic , until the opening of the M 6 in October 1970.
A few ( I.C.I. ) chemical tankers rolled-over, but I can`t recall any furniture vans toppling .
Cheers, cattle wagon man.
