Hi Dennis,
Did you ever buy any of your SA 400.S from Ryland Warrington [ North Cheshire Motors ] i joined them in 1976 but cannot remember any sales to yourself. We supplied many chassis up your way, Brady,s / Woodhouse etc. My boss was Jack Green whom i am still in touch with who emigrated to Australia around 79/80.
You certainly ran a magnificent fleet and your stories make a wonderful and enthralling read of a transport operation.
The Merc sk,s i presume you bought from Cicely what was the story behind the purchase of these ? and did they perform well ?
Thanks & regards
Peter Gandy
Gandy. Did you supply Miles Fox with some other new Seddon Atkinson? RCK 11X , A541 NFV, and GFV 740W i can remember them arriving at Duck Street. Miles use to sand the cabs down by hand, the hand paint them!!! Mirror finish, and had proper sign writing applied.
Hiya Peter, Please feats your eyes on the rear end shot of this beauty Aug '76 ! The K. Fell Sed Atk sleeper next to the Bewick 8LXB was supplied by Hardman Bros. of Walton-le-Dale and a firm I would never deal with !! I’m saying no more ! However I can tell you that I bought Sed/Atks from Scotts of Penrith as well as—wait for it---- Malc Woodhouse Snr who of course had got them from Rylands ! 
I recall attending the launch of the Sed/Atks with Malc Woodhouse at Rylands Warrington and we homed in straight away with the wrong positioning of the air intake under the n/s wing. The Redmonds attended the launch on that day and we told them in no uncertain terms what we thought, they weren’t very happy and IIRC they turned away from us and declined to engage in the design short comings ! As you will recall that under wing air intake caused serious problems with the intake of rain water. We converted all ours PDQ and some before they entered service. Happy Days and nice to hear from you. Cheers Dennis.
Hi Tarmactipper, yes the early 78/79/80 8 wheelers were ours, i left Rylands around 81 when the recession hit and moved to Lancashire Truck at Liverpool, the Volvo dealers, and what an eye opener they were, i will always have Seddon Atkinson as my first love but the Volvo,s were on a different level, particularly the F10/F12, superb trucks, the later 400,s early 80,s onwards would have come from Ryland Preston.
Dennis, i think Hardman,s were a sub dealer of ours, i remember them complaining frequently that they never got any Gardners, most of
our allocation of tractor unit,s went to Ancliff, Philmac, Holt Lane and others who would pay an inflated price as i remember.
Apart from the air intake issue which caused many problems the other issue which caused much angst was the stupid front grilles, the design
of which changed every 6 months !!!, we had to feed stupid metal trim strips onto the grill which then rusted immediately and fell off !!!
If anyone knows of a restored 400 for sale please let me know, i really want one !!!
Hiya Peter, I’ll tell you the main reason why I wouldn’t deal with Hardmans ( J. Greenwood) was when I was buying the haulage interests of Davy & Co (Grange) Ltd in June '76 which was made up of three subsidiaries of K. Fell & Co, J. B. Hudson Ltd and J. L. Ion Ltd. was the fact that the price they put on that 6 month old sleeper ( 250 ■■■■■■■■ parked next to the new LXB was more money that I could buy a new 8LXB Sleeper at the time ! John Davy showed me invoice from Dec '75 which Greenwood had “stuffed” into him and the fictitious list price quoted was inflated and then “big deal” less 17% discount IIRC and Davy still got his “ears pinned back” ( as Malc and I used to say!). Absolutely disgusting so guess what I tackled Greenwood the next time he came scrounging into the yard and all I got was a load of waffle along the lines “are you accusing me of robbing Mr. Davy” --“Yes I ■■■■■■■ am and you can ■■■■ off out of this yard” ! They had also stuffed him on a 1974 RR engined 32/4 but that was a way back a bit so I just threw the slipe at him about that one, the Arrosol ! Hudson Engineers did the same with Davy on an ERF “A” Series so they got ■■■■■■ off as well. When I was taught to “deal” by The Master a.k.a. Malc Woodhouse Snr you soon no what to look for and how to deal with cretin Salesmen Cheers Dennis.
gandy:
Hi Dennis,
Did you ever buy any of your SA 400.S from Ryland Warrington [ North Cheshire Motors ] i joined them in 1976 but cannot remember any sales to yourself. We supplied many chassis up your way, Brady,s / Woodhouse etc. My boss was Jack Green whom i am still in touch with who emigrated to Australia around 79/80.You certainly ran a magnificent fleet and your stories make a wonderful and enthralling read of a transport operation.
The Merc sk,s i presume you bought from Cicely what was the story behind the purchase of these ? and did they perform well ?Thanks & regards
Peter Gandy
With regard to the Mercs yes I did buy them from Cicely ( ■■■■ Frankland) but they came about when we started up a Euro fleet running into Holland and W. Germany and plus I was very friendly with John Gough the Mercedes Northern region Sales manager who was based at Doncaster but I had known him since he was sales Manager at Crane Fruehauf Oldham and he had supplied us with many 40 ft CF tandems during the mid/later 70’s. The Mercs were great motors all 440’s and they were bomb proof. Cheers Dennis.
Also posted on Peak district
We had four 401’s as below plus SNC288X (my motor) ARJ431Y and ARJ432Y. All four gave you a shower when going round corners after it had been raining, apart from that I quite liked them - and so did my ankle snappers 
^^^^ 
Lawrence Dunbar:
Nigels first artic.0
Nice to see that you taught the youngun proper roping and sheeting Larry . Very tidy job . Dave
