cav551:
Never having done international work I cannot swear that this story is not stretching the imagination or not, but nevertheless:
The first European journeys were in the late 1970s collecting oranges from Spain. There were I think two drivers who did this with Gardner 240 powered ERFs or Seddon Atkinsons, one of whom I believe has been mentioned in an earlier thread. It is claimed that during the return journey over the mountains, the vehicles never got out of low range in the Fuller gearbox for several hours.
during my time with the company which was from the early 80s the drivers who were doing the international work were terry barden,richard harris and also derek wells.
ensor mills at rochdale was the first north western depot opened up.
it was initially ran by fred riley then he left and trevor stringer took over and then trevor left and fred riley came back again.
later on a purpose built depot was built at queensway castleton in rochdale below are a couple of pictures of the old depot at ensor mills.
The story came fromTerry Barden. The Rochdale picture shows another flatbed Transit, which I think initially came from the Chartham depot at Nickle Farm. There was another Transit, this time a dropside referred to as Donâ s Truck which was used by Don (Baldock??) the site maintenance man at Spelmonden.
I donât remember the name of the guy who ran the office at Chartham other than that the East Kent drivers were always moaning about him.
Bert Willis, one of the drivers at Chartham had a â â â â â â â 220 A series ERF. These had an engine stop control on the bonnet that had to be pulled out to start and pushed in to stop. Another story that went the rounds concerned Bert.
Bert had knocked it out of stick on the long descent to the Medway bridge on the M2. For some reason the engine had stalled. If the stop control was out, in these circumstances it had to be pushed in and pulled out again to restart the engine. With the engine dead, no power steering and over 70 mph on the clock, Bert was a bit worried to say the least.
john roberts was the east kent depot manager and he could try your patience,you could have a row with him over something hes done or hasnt done and then give him a telling off and when you done that he would agree with what you said and always say i know,that always stopped you when you was in full flight with him.
bert willis he was a character i can always remember when he would come up to paddock wood for work whenever you gave him something to do it was always when ive had a cup of coffee,you would then have to tell him another couple of times,but when it came to telling bert to go home there was never a coffee and you only had to tell him once and you wouldnt see him for dust.
many years ago bert had an altercation whilst coming through london during the day.
a bus driven by one of our colonial friends pulled out in front of bert and bert only just missed him,bert got out of the cab confronted the bus driver and grabbed hold of him by his tie and yanked him forward then bert slammed shut the sliding window of the bus cab,trapping the bus driver with his face stuck against the glass window and his tie caught in the window,the police came along and bert got nicked
Derek Ransley was promoted from shunter at Paddock Wood to Traffic clerk in about 1977. Not that long afterwards he came into work with an extremely âalteredâ face, having been caught by the husband. Having had a sheltered childhood this was quite a shock for me to see.
Other Paddock Wood drivers of the period were: brothers Brian and Dennis Keeves, Roy Podd, Robin Parr, Keith Ransley, Rex Sharman, Charlie Creasey, one of the night men, who had the last AEC purchased by Henleys - a P reg Marshall Tautliner and David â â **** the other night man who had JKL210 L the only Mercury Tautliner .
Eric?? Watson and I had a night out in Lowestoft on 9 March 1976 ( Iâve still got the log book) going to see Loganâs Run in the cinema. We had loaded and delivered a Charcon building somewhere nearby. There had been a mix up loading and he had somehow managed to get 9 tons on his Marshall six wheeler EKJ 260K and I had 14 tons on KKJ 290 E which was the 5 pot Atkinson four wheeler. Strangely enough it never batted an eyelid and seemed to actually go better. The following morning we piggybacked KKJ home.
No Date, but Brian Keeves and I took a Charcon building to a farm up the side of a mountain near Kidwelly in Wales. Having loaded in the morning we had a night out in Cardiff and carried on the next morning. We stopped on the way nearing our drop to ask directions. Brian later told me that the conversation went like this:
" You turn left after the 'phone box, but donât blink boyo or youâll miss it"
Brian: " Whatâs that, the turning or the phone box?"
" No⌠The Village!"
cav551:
Derek Ransley was promoted from shunter at Paddock Wood to Traffic clerk in about 1977. Not that long afterwards he came into work with an extremely âalteredâ face, having been caught by the husband. Having had a sheltered childhood this was quite a shock for me to see.
Other Paddock Wood drivers of the period were: brothers Brian and Dennis Keeves, Roy Podd, Robin Parr, Keith Ransley, Rex Sharman, Charlie Creasey, one of the night men, who had the last AEC purchased by Henleys - a P reg Marshall Tautliner and David â â **** the other night man who had JKL210 L the only Mercury Tautliner .
Eric?? Watson and I had a night out in Lowestoft on 9 March 1976 ( Iâve still got the log book) going to see Loganâs Run in the cinema. We had loaded and delivered a Charcon building somewhere nearby. There had been a mix up loading and he had somehow managed to get 9 tons on his Marshall six wheeler EKJ 260K and I had 14 tons on KKJ 290 E which was the 5 pot Atkinson four wheeler. Strangely enough it never batted an eyelid and seemed to actually go better. The following morning we piggybacked KKJ home.
No Date, but Brian Keeves and I took a Charcon building to a farm up the side of a mountain near Kidwelly in Wales. Having loaded in the morning we had a night out in Cardiff and carried on the next morning. We stopped on the way nearing our drop to ask directions. Brian later told me that the conversation went like this:
" You turn left after the 'phone box, but donât blink boyo or youâll miss it"
Brian: " Whatâs that, the turning or the phone box?"
" No⌠The Village!"
on the subject of derek ransley his lorry he was driving at the time was spotted outside a house of a woman he was looking after whilst her husband was at work at the time (you know what i mean)
derek was not the best liked person in the world and the driver who spotted it reported it to the traffic office and two drivers were sent out to collect the lorry and bring back to the yard.
so no doubt that would have been an interesting one listening to derek explaining his way out of that one.
another incident with derek involved a chap called norman horsford who at the the time was working for mitchell & robertsons from staplehurst (he later came to work at henleys thats how i know this story)
norman was waiting to be called into the henley yard for loading but derek ransley kept pulling henley lorries round in front of him,after a while norman got fed up with this,if you know norman you will know hes laid back and also strong as an ox,those of you that knew derek would also know that derek wore a wig in the later days.
norman asked derek what was going on and derek gave norman a load of mouth as usual,norman done no more than got hold of derek got him in a headlock whilst this was going on the wig fell off dereks head,norman suddenly let go and stood back,norman told me later for a minute i thought his head had fallen off!with that derek picked up his wig and went running off with it in his hand
I dont know about you Chris, but i wouldânt want to be put in a headlock by Norman Horsford!!!. Heâs not too well apparently so i wish him all the best.
Mark R:
The Mercedes van K550 UKP at Teynham was an ex-Henley vehicle and not new to Teynham depot. It had already been painted in WRM livery when we got it so i dont know if it was originally in Henley colours or not.
I remember that van, Mercedes Benz 308D, according to my computer, last known mileage was 134,073 miles on the 29/7/03 when someone bought a door lock for it.
Probably scrapped by now.
Bewick:
I met Jack Henley on a number of occaisions via our involvement with WRM,Jack had a very âlow opinionâ of the 3 of them,thought they were a [zb] shower !! I recall one evening after weâd had an excellent dinner, Jack informed me that he owned one half of Kent and his wife owned the other half !!! No mention of Roy Hook on the thread,why ? Cheers Bewick.
I remember âRoy Hookâ, one time, âTraffic Patrol Policemanâ, if my memory serves me right, I didnt work there for long, just killing time around 71 / 72, just as a matter of interest, about 1992 / 93, I had a spell as a "Theatre Porter", at a Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, imagine my surprise when I went up to the ward to collect a patient one day to be confronted by, no less than, "Old Man, Percy Henley", he was getting on by then, and he didnt want to go where I wanted to take him, even with a pretty Nurse for company, but we got there in the end, where`d the years go !.
If it can be repeated, what was the story about why Roy Hook came off the road?
Bearing in mind the story was second hand, (probably more), at the time âcav551â, it allegedly involved an alleged ? car, on an alleged crossing resulting in an alleged âseriousâ accident, if I heard it once, I heard it half a dozen times but nobody could ever confirm it, long time ago now.
Mark R:
I dont know about you Chris, but i wouldânt want to be put in a headlock by Norman Horsford!!!. Heâs not too well apparently so i wish him all the best.
norman is a bloke who is literally strong as an ox and hes a typical old school driver i can recall on several occasions that one of the younger paddock wood lads would give norman a bit of old chat,one thing norman would not put up with is back chat so he normally left it a couple of days and would catch up with the relevant driver normally in the mess room,he would go up to the said person whilst they would be sitting down and squeeze their leg just above the knee,with normans strengh it wouldnt be too long that the said person would be rolling about in the floor in agony,therefore they wouldnt give norman any back chat again!
tyreman:
Another of the preserved vehicles. Was this new to Henleys? I canât find out much about this one.
hello paul no this wasnt new to the company jack purchased this second hand from lee davey (a good friend of jacks)who owned the caravan sales company on the a20 at harrietsham
If it can be repeated, what was the story about why Roy Hook came off the road?
Bearing in mind the story was second hand, (probably more), at the time âcav551â, it allegedly involved an alleged ? car, on an alleged crossing resulting in an alleged âseriousâ accident, if I heard it once, I heard it half a dozen times but nobody could ever confirm it, long time ago now.
i must admit i never knew.
no one ever mentioned it even though there was still a couple of blokes on the firm when i was there who were on the road when roy came off those being lofty and sooty.
all i new was that roy took over from a chap called bill blunt who was running the transport for jack at the time
a promotional shot for commercial motor on tautliners taken down the driveway of spelmonden.
erf b series akk 122t,seddon atkinson 300 jgj 110t,ford d series ekn 790t and the ford transit curtainsider rkj 190m
Came across J71OKO down the interesting end of Madera Drive durning the 1992 London to Brighton run. This part of the road was full of vehicles that had brought restored vehicles to Brighton or were there to take them home. The AEC Y Type was entered in this run.
tyreman:
Came across J71OKO down the interesting end of Madera Drive durning the 1992 London to Brighton run. This part of the road was full of vehicles that had brought restored vehicles to Brighton or were there to take them home. The AEC Y Type was entered in this run.
a very new looking j71 oko although a lot of people mocked the colour of the henley lorries they looked pretty good when nice and shiny like this but when the colour faded it did look a bit sad.
j71 oko was allocated to paddock wood driver martin kemp,this was the only tractor unit on the fleet fitted with pto for tipping, this was for the sole purpose of taking an old bulker trailer from the workshops at spelmonden which was used as a scrap metal bin and tipping off at the scrapyard then returning with the brown envelope for jack
then returning with the brown envelope for jack
[/quote]
I shall probably be corrected, but I think Jack actually shared some of the contents with the fitters. There was certainly a âPetrol allowanceâ for workshop and Goudhurst office staff, which I think was 2 gallons a week from the pump at Spelmonden.
hops played a very big part in the traffic for the company in the 60s 70s and 80s here shows an aec marshal loaded with hops on the companies own farm(spelmonden estate at goudhurst in kent) for onward delivery to reigate
