Hiya John,
F88 was new onto the K Fell fleet in 1976 then eventually repainted and put onto the BTS fleet.
The B/W shot is one I took at about mid day at the Mill in Beetham April 1970 the entire Bewick fleet ! eighteen month old D1000, four month old Mastiff unit and a brand new Bedford K E . The D1000 is loaded with reels and the tandem 4 trailer off the mastiff will be down on the trailer park loaded with reels. The Bedford is loaded with paper sacls from Robinson Sacks in Rochester Kent.
Hi Dennis Good to hear from you again i have not been on trucknet for a couple of years i can’t get used to the new layout dont know how you feel about it.Anyway i found the photos on another site that i am on and thought i would give tnet another go i knew that if you seen them you would give us a more indepth insight to them while you have thanks.
Thanks Dennis 3 different makes of vehicles which one inyour opinion gave you the best service?
Believe it or not John all three of those motors gave excellent service even though they were at the “cheaper” end of their respective markets, well maybe not the Bedford.
The reason they did well and served their purpose in the early days was because we looked after them and drove them sensibly. I drove the D1000, our first Driver was on the Mastiff and he eventually became our Operations Director and one of my younger brothers started on the Bedford as soon as he passed his test. The Bedford was a TK KE and it was the heaviest GVW I could buy at 10ton gvw and still keeping the ulw just under 3ton so it could carry a 7 ton payload but often had 8ton on it’s back !
The Mastiff was, for “A” licence purposes the lightest outfit I could afford to buy which at 26 ton gvw and coupled to the Primrose single wheeled tandem which I had built with wider axle beams so a normal 1100x22:5 wheel could be used ( no centre knave crap !) It could carry 18ton payloads but it needed a steady Driver otherwise with some of the high and heavy loads we hauled and a not too decent driver well there would and could have been problems.
I eventually sold all three on or before they were three years old and they were all three in perfect nick when they went although the V8 Perkins in the Mastiff was just whiffing a bit of burnt oil out of the breather but it was still going well with no probs ! Cheers Dennis.