Buzzer
nmp
That’s a 5MW-cabbed unit 
Meanwhile, on a more serious note: the Green Party has pledged to meet Zero 1 expectations by turning all time-expired ERF trucks into cows. Setting the release of diesel particulates against bovine flatulence has been one of the obstacles. It’ll be sad to see vintage ERFs absent from shows but at least the Kent Show will be restored to an agriculture authenticity much needed in recent years.
ERF-NGC
Can’t remember whether we’ve explored this before, but I’ve just noticed the word TRETEUROPA across the front of the battered French tilt doing Middle-East work (and photographed in Yugoslavia). Presumably this was the name of a transport company. If so it may or may not be connected to the NGC pulling it. Or, of course, it may just be an old trailer the owner driver has bought to do M/E with. If Dean or anyone else with French links could investigate, we might be able to make a link.
Cheers,
ERF-NGC
Bet she didn’t get to drive the damned thing! 
Meanwhile (later)…
I found this pic on flikr. It shows James Burke filming at Sun Works. It has to be when he was filming the ERF documentary called ERF 1974 in which he interviews Peter Foden about the company. There is plenty of test track footage including an outing in the cab of an NGC with the driver being interviewed on the road. I’ve still to see this appear on YouTube, as I hope it one day will! There’s more about the film in Lorries of Arabia Book 3.
ERF-NGC
Think it reads FRETEUROPE if that helps with your research Les!
Of course!! That makes much more sense. Can’t believe I didn’t read it like that. Many thanks. 
Freteurope it is. I’ll start a-googlin’! 
ERF-NGC
EDIT to say that all I can find online is a modern French freight-forwarding company called Fret Europe SARL, which seems concerned with road/rail freight-forwarding and may or not be the one we’re looking for. It was commonplace to see trailers in freight-forwarders’ liveries, so this may be the one. Watch this space!
EDIT to add pic
Bump for Les. Bloody hell, the twenty characters and three post rubbish is a pain in the freckle. 
1 Like
I received this today. It’s a flyer that was sent to ERF fleet operators in 1973 – the year the ERF NGC was born – along with a questionnaire asking them whether they were interested in a credit card system to go with their European service coverage.
The picture of a TIR-plated but day-cabbed A-series ERF was hardly a good advert for ERF as a supposedly cutting-edge Euro truck manufacturer; so I wonder if they didn’t want to put a picture of their 5MW Euro-spec sleeper cab on there because the 7MW-cabbed NGC was just being unveiled; and that they didn’t want to show the NGC because it hadn’t been unveiled yet. I reckon these were printed at the tag end of 1972 and that ERF were holding their cards just a little too closely to their chests!
ERF-NGC
At last! Today all our pictures from the past seem to have migrated to TN2, so you can scroll back to those TN1 days before Feb and search the archives again! 
ERF-NGC
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Morning Ro. I wonder if we will see the Collins unit out on the show circuit this year.
There’s around 13 years difference between the reg of both respective vehicles that’s for sure.
Only a Cheshire perspective could put Brussels as even close to the ‘geographic’ centre of the EEC if that’s what they were trying to achieve.Just local from South East England.
Munich maybe Stuttgart would have been better to make a statement and the day cab A series wasn’t going to cut it.
Fingers crossed for that one Colin! I do hope so. Anything in the Peterborough area is the one to watch out for.
Ro
ERF-NGC
Just thumbing through a copy of Commercial Motor w/e July 23rd 1983. In the small ads under ERF is this:
NOW BREAKING A-series, B-series, 7MW European. All major components available. Tel: Alan Perrins (0922 54411)
I wonder which NGC(s) he was breaking. Mysteries!
Still on the look-out for an ERF NGC in the livery of Ommeren / NYK, rumoured to have been working out of Silvertown in the '70s. Here’s an Atki in that livery.
“TR” reg, so probably one of Pitter’s from Southampton?
Ah yes! And that raises the point that UK fleet trucks were painted into the Dutch Van Ommeren livery: it was common practice in the Netherlands at that time to paint fleet trucks in the livery of the freight forwarder in whose service they were operating. Indeed, the NGC to which I referred belonged to the GL Baker fleet. 
For officianados of the NGC, you may remember that Richard Read’s KFH 251P had suffered some cab damage by fire on a Middle-East trip. Subsequently the cab was scrapped and the unit was converted to RHD, given a B-series day cab and put to work on locals. Here it is to the right of the pic.
Well today, Cookie has sent me these two pics of the same unit after it left Richard Read. It seems it lived a longer life than we thought. A B-series with an NTC 335 in it would have been a rare thing!
It even subsequently acquired a third axle:
Wow, great detective work, that truck must have made some money…
A different world back in those days i suppose.
The detective work was, of course, Cookie’s and not mine.
Richard Read was the local ERF dealer at the time and their engineering dept, overseen by his son, I believe, undertook several quite spectacular conversions, including some interesting wreckers. They converted that NGC to a B-series look-alike themselves. As you suggest, it must have made a good living over its years of service. The other two NGCs in RR livery ended up in their graveyard behind the premises, photos of which are on this thread and were taken by Marcus ‘Bubbleman’ Lester. The Eric Vick pair went to Trans Arabia.
Ro