Remember seeing lots of BMC Mastiff units on the road at one time . Never had any experience of driving or working on them but would be very interested as to how others found them in use on the road .
My Dad and Brother had one on Cartransport (BRS), thought they were better than the AEC Mercury’s they replaced. NMP
I drove a Mastiff tractor unit & York box van single axle trailer for many years in the 70’s all over the U.K.delivering plastic cups for vending machines. I graduated to a Mastiff from a Laird (same thing only a gutless 6 cylinder engine instead of the Perkins V8 in the Mastiff). The Mastiff was OK at the weight we were pulling, but I wouldn’t have wanted to drive it at it’s plated weight of 26 tonnes! It needed a rebuilt engine every 18 months or so even at the lower weight we were pulling ( about 3 tonnes payload, seldom more). On nights out(usually 3-4 a week) I used to sleep in the cab on a makeshift bed across the seats, or in the summer on a single mattress in the trailer when I had done at least one drop to make room to sleep. About 12 months after I left, the firm abandoned Leylands and moved on to sleeper cabbed Volvos. Talk about jumping too soon! All in all I would say that the Mastiff was a cheap option to buy, but by the time you took into account the lousy fuel consumption and the maintenance costs and crap residual value, a unit like the lighter Volvos would have made more economic sense.
I accept that the Mastiff and the D1000 were much maligned and accumulated a bad reputation from both operators and drivers alike, however as regards the Mastiff it was never meant to compete with the premium makes but that is exactly what it was wrongly expected to do ! My first foray into articulation as I built up my fleet was to purchase firstly a 26 ton gvw c/w a Primrose tandem 4 trailer and secondly a 28ton gvw unit along with a tandem axle York SL34 trailer. The first thing I had to do was to treat them with respect which meant a couple of decent Drivers which I had, and then they required meticulous maintenance which they got ! This entailed fitting them with Autolubes and changing the engine oil every two weeks, filter every second time. Apart from a bit of fuel starvation trouble on the 28 tonner which I cured by having an additional “inverted jam jar” fitted in the “vee” next to the pump and a faulty gear box change in the first couple of weeks they both gave me perfect service during the time we ran them. Their work consisted of two round trips per week each to and from the London and Kent areas. I can say that with 18 ton on the tandem 4 in the hands of a lesser Driver there could have been problems but fortunately this never happened. Neither of the two Perkins engines were touched although I recall that the 26 tonner gave off a wiff of burnt engine oil in it’s latter months of service but that was all. I sold both of them on for decent money to an operator in Kent. But I do acknowledge the bad reputation they had, but you get what you pay for and you must accept that you can’t get “a pint out of a half pint pot” !! Cheers Bewick.
