Iwonder If any of you well travelled men are able to answer a oustion please ,
Around mid 1976.ish i worked for Mortons brs at a depot called EXPORT PACKING NEAR BANBURY one day a scouser arrived at the old airfield yard with 30.twinstick americian single cabs bull nose BLUE -MACKS, driven by i think the drivers were TURKS or IRIANIAN some accidents from L/pool to Banbury, they were dreesed in suits,no food ,no money nothing,no hygine,i allways wonderd whatever happened to them and where they ended up,i think they shipped from southhampton ? they left us ,no trailers,enroute to where ■■,who was the scouser there were two men with him.
At that time ROVER, JAGUAR, MASSY FERGUSSON,BMC. ROUTES,WERE AL SHIPPED BY C.K.D. CASES maybe them companys had somthing to do with the trucks.
One more Oustion please ,at the time NORTHAMPTON BRS were doing the M/Ewith their MARATHONS,also BRSwere recruting fitters to go to Iran or IRAQ,
how was it possible for the BRS DRIVERSto compete with you owner drivers to the M/E …as us at the BRS were strictly regulated on the hours of work and the dayly milage done 220 miles max ,[could be more or less] and the pay per hour.plus night rate,and the dayly night out allowance How on earth did the brs drivers operate/SOME OF YOU MEN MUST HAVE RUN WITH THEM . if BRS were operating 2 standards? we were all 100%union you had to obey their rules.after time the said M/E units did end up at banner lane garage coventry in ■■■■ order…i would be pleased to be enlightend…after so many years…
I think you might find that was 1972/73. The trucks were almost certainly Iran Container Company brand new at that time.This was way before BRS attempted their ill fated adventures to Iran. It was the start of the Hillman Hunter contract and the CKD kits were being shipped by ICC overland. The Macks had been shipped from the States to Southampton for some reason without wheels and they were built up on the quayside. They had skeletal trailers from Crane Fruehauf and containers from Central Containers? Walsall.The road boss was Des Coombes who supervised the drivers who had been flown in from Iran. Des was from Hampshire (not to be confused with a scouser!)
The thing you have to remember is that International road haulage is and has always been an open market. If it had been the other way round and the Iranians had been operating a restrictive operation regarding the hours and pay rate of employees then the shoe would have been on the other foot and the British drivers would have been the ones driving the trucks . The Iranians were more cost efficient and the client ( Hillman cars in this case ) awarded them the contract.
On the other subject, the Leyland Marathons weren’t well suited to the M/E route demands at the time, and proved fairly unreliable. The only company that gave them a good run were a Belgium or Dutch company called Veebalink, and even they gave them the heave after short period of time.
On paper some of them must have looked good with the option of a ■■■■■■■■ Fuller, Rockwell, drive train, and even double drive on a 6x4, they should have been as formidable as the KW’s that Firderici were running, but on one outing 6 trucks were dispatched to Bagdad and only 3 made it past Istanbul due to mechanical faults.
You can’t run a haulage business if your trucks aren’t reliable, customers want their stuff on time.
Jeff…
Thank you Jazzandy,
you seem well informed as if you were involed at some time, you could be right about the year, it was a while ago, however the men and the single tractor units were a parked outside Banbury, and they could well have been onroute from southampton to Wallsall for trailers i do not know or remember .as we were busy taking CKD to all the major docks,also our main depot at coventry did all the hillman export packing and deliver it makes sence CKD KITS BY ROAD…THANK YOU apoligise for mistaking your man for a scouser,however nothing wrong with scouser at all.
The photo is the same trucks, we could not belive they were day cabs ,after reading some of the anglo greek or M/E some men did have and use day cabs quite unbellivable…
Thank you Jelliot,
you also seemed as if you were involved some way with the export of car parts/contracts .not the usual thing a driver would be involed with your information is welcommed.
It is now only years later things drop into the old brain box ,and i wonder whatever, why did we do this or that.
As for the driving export CKD cargo to the M/E .would have been a disaster as you say ,shorter hours ,more money ,was the order of the day back then as you may well know.plus the union involment at all the midlands car plants at the time,and the haulage .Iranian drivers were the safest cheapest route.But where did they load the containers■■? were they shipped to the EUROPE then reloded into them, they were not loaded from where iwas that was the hub for all car export,or coventry.or stuffed at SOUTHAMPTON…any idea.
I worked for ICC in 1972 until 1974. They had 90 Iranian drivers based in Tehran who after that first trip rarely travelled further than Salzburg where the European hub was situated. There were thirty or so European drivers mainly Brits. based in Salzburg who took the containers all over Europe (including UK) for discharge and reloading back to Salzburg. There were also two Guy Big J’s with Gardner 8LXB engines (sorry I made that up about the engines - They were actually Rolls Eagles!) They used to haul containers from Felixstowe for discharge and then reloading normally Hillman CKD kits back to Felixstowe for shipping to Europoort where the Macks continued the trip.
If you read my thread ‘My First continental job’, that’s all about ICC!
As someone who knew alot of Mortons Drivers at the time ,I can say that the export of Hunters going to Iran started in 1969, as they were packed just around the corner from where I worked in Siskin drive, Coventry, and although some shippments may have gone over land, most of them were shipped through Newport Docks.
I can also confirm that the CKD at Chipping Warden (just outside Banbury) were the most miserable bunch of xxxxxx I have ever come across.
The Hillman Hunter is to Iran, what the Morris Oxford (Hindustan Ambassador) is to India or the Fiat 131 (Tofas Sahina) is to Turkey. You can still see thousands of them in the streets of Tehran! Robert 
Another Iran-Mack, more precisely a R763S at border/customs
I took this picture of an Iranian Mack myself, in an oil-field rig-blast yard just outside Baku in Azerbaijan in '97. Robert
These Macks are all R600’s. 700 series are all cab overs.
You are right that originally the CKD cases were shipped by conventional vessels from Newport to Bandar Abbas. The problem was a logjam of vessels waiting to offload at B. Abbas and then once offloaded a lack of trucks to take the kits to Tehran. That was why they decided on the road option as the Peykan plant had all but shut down.
Incidentally right at the start of it all I was manager of Avis Euston Road and rented a fleet of Mandators to Mortons BRS to kick it all off.
It’s worth noting that the Macks, like the Hillman’s were built under licence in Iran; I imagine the difference being that all the Hunter tooling was probably sold to the Iranians lock, stock and barrel. Robert
All the ICC Macks were built in the states. Iranian Macks had different cabs and were badged as Iran Kaveh. Also the Iranians only made conventionals. Also for the record they built Landrovers, Leyland Atlanteans and Massey Ferguson tractors.
hi deckboypeggy the story half right about brs overland my cousin worked for them in lnu139p marathon but can assure ya they did more than 220 miles a day but your right I think the way they were paid was brs demise plus in house crap but my cousin and never minded the pay just one of things was a shame really 
In 1980 I delivered a couple of times to an export packing co up the back of northbound Watford Gap sevices it was Massey Fergusson combines I cant remember their name but it was quite a big place and seemed to do a lot of vehicles. Eddie.
Does anyone on here know what ever became of this AEC , more than likely engine trouble as it`s a V8 ?
They look like theyre in a customs compound, a lot of vehicles and trailers were parked up in them and forgotten due to drug smuggling, and no amount of money could buy them, they were there to show other drivers what would happen to their vehicles as a deterent. That lovely old V8 mandator looked like it was made the right way, big cab, high roof, but at the end of the day it was a leyland heap of ■■■■ mechanical wise unlike the V8 scanias.
I was talking to Bob Carter ( Trans UK ) and they were also running parts for Hillman, but they had the Pakistan contract. It all finished when the Shah was deposed.
Jeff…
They only stopped building them a few years back. Once containerisation took off the overland deliveries all but stopped except at times of port congestion. Most of it was carried by IRIS lines (State owned)
Jazzandy:
These Macks are all R600’s. 700 series are all cab overs.
You are right that originally the CKD cases were shipped by conventional vessels from Newport to Bandar Abbas. The problem was a logjam of vessels waiting to offload at B. Abbas and then once offloaded a lack of trucks to take the kits to Tehran. That was why they decided on the road option as the Peykan plant had all but shut down.
Incidentally right at the start of it all I was manager of Avis Euston Road and rented a fleet of Mandators to Mortons BRS to kick it all off.
Jazzandy…the hundreds don’t refer to cabovers…R600’s really exists, think of export models and the problems every company encountered to give a type
to every vehicle without giving a common type. Many 600’s on the continent were cabovers though
