This picture of a LAD-cabbed Leyland sleeper posted on another thread got me thinking about what 1960s UK roads might have looked like if we had moved to sleeper cabs when the Europeans did.
It does rather beg the question: if the TGWU hadn’t dug its heels in opposing sleeper cabs (and continued doggedly to do so into the ‘70s, when we really did start losing ground to Continental competition), would the British road infrastructure have evolved (as it did on the Continent) to accommodate truckers with proper overnight facilities?
There are variables here; one of which is that the French state owns the truck stops along its autoroutes, whereas all ours are in private ownership. Against that argument, we have to recognise that the Routier stops came first (before France’s motorways) and that they were, and still are, private.
Arguably, our AECs, Guys, Scammells, Leylands, Atkinsons, ERFs and Fodens would have evolved their sleeper cabs at the same rate as the Scanwiegeans did with their F88s and the like. If Sweden had the TGWU there would, arguably, have been no F88 in the first place. Discuss!
The type of operations that would have used sleepers probably wouldn’t have been unionised forms anyway.There was no actual construction and use laws banning sleepers.
What we always had was archaic dimensions limits which was arguably more the problem.
The manufacturers just couldn’t find enough space within our ridiculous overall length limits.
As for the unions they have always been anti road pro rail and they wouldn’t have wanted any relaxation of dimensions limits and still don’t.
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You make five valid points there CF. From this we can infer that union opposition was by no means the only factor in keeping sleeper cabs off the shelf. With regard to your first point, might not the BRS trampers have benefitted from sleepers?
Recently read in the classic commercial mag that Atkinson made the guardsman in 1964 but the atki buyers weren’t interested so they made the mk2 instead and then tried the higher viewline.
Unfortunately if your buyers are not interested in sleepers you won’t sell them and if you don’t sell any there’s no point in developing them.
Unfortunately when the continentals arrived in the 70s the drivers were all over them and unfortunately the British manufacturers had to play catch up but were by then a generation behind…
Its not a sleeper cab though is it and there were “continentals” that arrived on UK shores before the 70s
Ah, my mistake, i thought the rear window was a sleeper area but a Google revealed a cutaway that shows it wasn’t, i thought it looked like a missed opportunity…
From the driver’s point of view there is no advantage in having a day cab.Even on home every night trunking I hated the cramped environment of our fleet spec day cabs which were luckily made economically unviable by their collapsing residual values.Also the insurance of not being caught out by running out of hours which obviously was less of an issue with log books.Ironically I think day cabs provide more of an incentive for drivers to push on and get home when used in the distance work environment.
Though that’s true, it has to said that several significant changes in recent decades changed the picture with regard to day cabs. Even as recently as the early '90s, if you had a pre-speed-limiter day cab you could run heavy from the South-East to Yorkshire and back at 60+mph in less congested traffic in one shift. You could never do that today with current congestion. 
Not so much the 60s, but In the 80s , Stan Robson (owner of Robsons Transport Carlisle) specced day cabs only.
If they did buy any sleeper cabs for whatever reason, maybe a cancelled order, cheap deal or whatever, they took out the bunks, as they did not believe in drivers sleeping in trucks.
I heard this story many times from some of their drivers back then,.so I’m assuming it is true.
In 1977 when I first worked for BRS in Scotland our trunker fleets were mainly Guys and Seddons. Continental marques were unheard of in the main so the idea of a sleeper cab would have been an alien concept 
Even the truck rental fleet, which you would have thought would be the most up to date and flashy motors, were all day cabs.
Yes, I imagine it was patchy at BRS. My original point was that we were not doing sleeper cabs in the 1960s, when the rest of Europe were doing it big style.
By the '70s we were starting to catch on, by which time it was too late to compete. There were sleeper cabs in the 1970s English regional fleets, but in relatively small numbers.
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When the other BRS regions were buying modern trucks up here in Scotland we were still buying these.
Blimey! And they’re on '77 / '78 plates. 
I worked for National Carriers, in the same yard (and same group) as BRS and BRS truck rental.
They bought 2 ex Ryder rental day cab Sed Atks for delivering North Scotch, tramping …which were knackered when bought.
So I and the other lad spent more time driving BRS rental top notch motors with sleeper cabs, than we did the Sed Atks when they always broke down.
Incidentally I took a Leyland Buffalo (as in pic) out one day on a job.
I can say it was/is the worst truck I have ever driven…60s tech in the early 80s.
IIRC two Scania day cabs were the first Swedes to arrive at BRS Gateshead, that was 1972.
and I’ll bet they were Scania 80s too - worse than driving a D-series Ford!
Not sure about the 80s,.before my time.
But the 81s were far better sprung than the D series Fords, in fact a far superior motor in every way.
Ours was a predominantly day cab fleet into the early 1980’s.Terrible junk Gardner powered B series and SA and DAF 2500 which luckily for me was, all on its way out destined for the gas axe with non existent residual values, when I started.
Don’t think there’s any connection between pre speed limiters and day cabs v sleepers ?.
By late 80’s we’d moved wholesale to sleepers DAF 2800 ATI, Volvo FL10, DAF 85 and 95.Even our 2300 rigid drawbar prime movers were sleepers.All pre speed limiters although at least one of the two 2300’s was retro fitted .
The day cabbed DAF 85 rigid prime movers were an exception nicer to drive than the short sleeper Merc 2534 but the Merc did provide that extra cab space and insurance if run out of hours.They were UPS A frame drawbar spec not Carryfast close coupled.
I’m not sure about any overall load deck compromise forcing those choices in the rigid configuration ?, but full sleeper rigids seem to have historically been the default spec for Continental rigid/drawbar operators at least but would logically take load deck space ? .
Overall length compromise seems to be the main factor.Sleeper and 45 ft semi trailer seems to be the default now.
You say: Not sure about the 80s,.before my time.
But the 81s were far better sprung than the D series Fords, in fact a far superior motor in every way.
The Scanny 80 certainly looked the part and was comfortable to sit in - until you drove it! I drove a day cab 80 on an L-plate ('73/74 then). The clutch design couldn’t cope with double de-clutching (which we ALL did then as a matter of course) so the gears were a nightmare straight off. It had an 8-sp sychro box, so not the 10-sp one like in the 110). The gear lever ran ridiculously close to the driving seat so you either couldn’t move the stick or you trapped your hand (I suspect the LHD model didn’t have this problem). To cap it all, it couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. The Ford D-series unit with a V8 Cummins in it (not a wonderful engine in itself!) I drove immediately afterwards performed rather better.
