Does anybody remember a haulage compnay from Hayle, near St. Ives? My then wife and family used to holiday often in Cornwall and were always on the lookout for a place to buy and thought of them as a possible source of employment.
I think the wagons were marroon in colour.
Never got to go ask them because even the most run down of cottages, which we would have taken on anyway, were beyond our budget. 
Dennis Oates maybe â â ?
That name rings a bell, but not in this context I think.
However, just did a bit of googling âŚand you are right, but they have moved from St. Ives to Penzance and, I believe, still in business with international frigo transport.
Thanks. That was troubling the ageing brain cells. 
I remember Vivian and Kenny. Kenny was a good mate of my dad when they both drove for Hichens. They both got upgraded to Seddon Atkinson sleeper cabs when Hichens bought a few at the end of the 1970s. Vivian had snow-white hair when I knew him (from the mid-70s onwards). He was still with Hichens. Canât remember what he drove at that time, though.
I passed my test in Redruth in 1975 and started driving for the Family Loaf at Bodmin, after six months i went to Sunnybanks transport Liskeard, i had an old AEC eight weeler doing a lot of timber. They also had a few new Leyland Bisons and one Volvo G88 day cab.
Anyone remember them?
Steve.
Pollystag I also passed my class one in Redruth but in 1973 after two weeks training out of Groseâs yard in St Austell and still have my artic licence, finished my test at 1.30pm and up the road in a GUY Big J with 20 tons of milk powder ex Dairy Crest for Richard Benney of Helston, he was a bit of a rouge in transport but I stayed for a year then came home to Hampshire and started my own company which today is run by my two boys, how time flyâs when you are doing what you enjoy, Buzzer,
Just to jog my old memory, can you tell me when HGV driver licences became compulsory?
I remember I was working for K & M at the time and didnât need to take the test, but my yoiung brother there did (in fact they took him on to pass the test and then continue in the job), and an older mate had to take it (and failed for not using the handbrake) because he had been out of the game during the qualifying period.
But I canât remember when I was at K & M, hence the question. 
I think it was the 1968 transport act that introduced them so shortly after that I guess.
Speaking of K&M ⌠I loaded bulk coal , coke and Coalite out of most of the Yorkshire , Notts and Derbyshire pits in the late 60s ⌠Pye Hill , Oxcroft and Bentinck collieries being some of the most frequently visited , and recall seeing K&M motors loading those 20â open top containers on a number of occasions .
That wouldnât have been you by any chance would it Spardo ?
Oxcroft , Bolsover , Askern ,Grimethorpe and many others whose names I have now forgotten were rarely a problem , but Pye Hill and Bentinck ⌠Jesus wept ⌠One lump of coal dropping off the end of the belt once every twenty minutes . Talk about â Have you booked your bed driver ? â
I have already mentioned my faulty memory but it all seems a bit tight to me. I think I was in Oz from '66 or '67 to about '70. So, as I had been driving road trains then I must have been driving artics beforehand. But I had a year in the Merchant Navy in '64 or '65. I was 21 in December '63, passed my car test and immediately started driving lorries. Somehow in amongst all that I had to cram in helping Mr. Wimpey with a 6 wheel AEC to build the M1 past Sandiacre and, during a spell when we were rained off got a start with Shawâs of Stapleford on a 4 wheel Albion, my first tramping haulage job. It was there later when I was told âyou are on that Dodge artic from Monday so take it home and learn how to drive it over the weekendâ. 
Then came Ilkeston Haulage with a Scammell Highwayman.on general but a lot of whisky from Dumbarton. All I know for certain is that I was at K&M when some of them had to take the test. And I was at Stirlandâs (Bristol night trunk) for a year with an L reg Atki, so that must have been '72.
What was the qualifying period for grandfather rights, I have no idea how I managed it in so short a time frame?
@eddie_heaton You are right but are conflating 2 different companies. K&M at Bulwell and later Hucknall operated a large fleet of artic flats but also rigid tippers and you certainly would have seen them around all those pits. But not with open top 20â ( and later 30â) container tippers. That was Bulkliners, who were owned by a firm with a fleet of green tippers at Ollerton (name escapes me 
). I worked for them on 2 different occasions out of the Freightliner depot in Beeston, Nottingham. One of which was during the 1st (I think) minersâ strike when we were attacked by mass pickets out of Coalite at Bolsover. They were set up to feed the nightly Freightliner trains to London but they couldnât cope so we ended up in convoys down the M1 taking coal and coke south and bringing scrap back, usually for SPT in Rotherham.
If only I had had a camera or at least kept a diary, my brain might not be so much mush now.
The qualifying period for grandfather rights was from Jan 1969 until December of the same year.
I think you had to have spent 6 months driving the class of vehicle that your licence would subsequently cover you for , and as you are no doubt probably aware , at its inception , there were 8 classes of hgv licence . Classes 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 . There also existed classes 1a , 2a , 3a and 4a .
The latter four being for vehicles equipped with automatic transmission , although very few of those existed in the UK at that time to my knowledge .
Class 1 covered all groups , class 2 covered 6 and 8 wheelers , class 3 four wheelers only and class 4 was reserved for articulated vehicles under a certain weight . Scammell Scarabs and suchlike I should imagine .
Thanks Eddie, but now you have thrown my brain into a tail spin, I could have sworn I didnât get back from Oz until 1970. So how the hell did I prove that I had been driving artics for all of '69, did you have to get a confirmation from an employer?
BTW, when I was in Oz the only licence I had was an NT Lorry Licence, not acceptable in Sydney for artics, just for roadtrains and everything else in the NT.
Ah, just re-read your post, perhaps I got back mid '69 and got my 6 months in that way. 
As @buzzer used to have fun with my employment record, I could cram an awful lot of different jobs into a few months, I just loved the variety.
Edit to my previous post ⌠the qualifying period for hgv licence grandfather rights was from February 2nd 1969 until February 1st 1970 , not from January until December as I previously stated .
My source of information also states that the cost of the medical for the licence was expected to be three guineas .
So perhaps I got back in August '69 then, totally unaware of how lucky I was . 
It doesnât matter now, but I wonder if there is any way you can find out such things.
