This was Bob Wyrth’s (RIP) horse. Great bloke Bob, did about 25 years on Air Products, fearsome looking with his beard & he hit the scales at 20 stone +, he drove this on multi-drop mainly along the South-Coast, he was out all week just popping back into Didcot to re-load then off again. Bobs idea of a night-out meal was large Cod & Chips twice & a good few glasses of the Brew. Very popular bloke Bob, he had a regular overnight stop at a boozer in Poole, bearing in mind Bob lived in Reading, when Bob was buried, there were that many people from this pub in Poole that wanted to go they had to hire a Coach to bring them all up! Great character & a bloody good driver!
You take the mick out of me for having a cleaning habit , chris but your wagons shore looked polished up to me , great pictures ,How many driving jobs have you had ? 
hello chris,good pics and disciptions,is air products still going only they had a depot in darlaston west midlands untill a couple of years ago then it was closed and flattened.it was there in the early 70’s,was surprised whwen it closed
curnock:
hello chris,good pics and disciptions,is air products still going only they had a depot in darlaston west midlands untill a couple of years ago then it was closed and flattened.it was there in the early 70’s,was surprised whwen it closed
Hi Curnock, yes mate Air Products are still up & running big style. They contracted out their distribution to Wincanton about 15 years ago, Darlaston if I remember right was a Gas Bottling Depot, they have slimmed down their number of depots & from what you say sounds like Darlaston was one of the casualties.
Regards Chris
Hi Jakey,
Always try to look after my toys mate! How many jobs…■■? Low boredom thresh-hold for a lot of years mate, always wanted to drive summat different & go somewhere new, but hey-ho I got some great memories (some best kept to myself!). We had demo’s & hired wagons on Air Products same as anywhere, although they did stay loyal to British makes until they couldn’t get them any more. Here I am tipping at Brico’s, Coventry with a hired F10.
Here I am in Rainham. If I remember right, the FH12 had only just come out around this time, always nice to have a new/new toy to play with, if you look at my previous post the F10 I had was on a ‘L’ plate, so was prob one of the later ones to be built. This tandem-axle tank I had on was for deliveries that didn’t have a power supply for our cable, so this trailer had an under-slung donkey engine for self-pumping discharge!
Didcot Depot on a Saturday morning October 1990. Brand new tractor/trailer just been delivered, this was reg’d on a ‘H’ plate, I had just run in on off a night-out, you can see 2 of the old 411s on the right of pic being loaded, I was driving 1 of them but can’t remember which. Air Products had their own engineering works in Acrefare, Wales, where thy built their own trailers.
Occasionally you would have a break from the tanks, & pull 1 of these Helium Gas trailers. This was easy life stuff, simply drop the full trailer & bring back the empty 1. You can see the 2 different types of skeletal vessel, 1 longer & lower, the other shorter & taller, you had to be carefull with these cos when full they were top heavy. Sometimes you would have to take an empty skelly to the docks to collect one coming in from the USA, easy as it was I much preferred the tanks!
When Air Products contracted out their distribution to Wincanton, these were the first vehicles they bought in to replace our Strato’s, & the Strato’s were a hard act to follow cos although they were basically just a fleet wagon, they were strong & very reliable, & would take all you through at them & come back for more. These new “Sed Atki Strato’s!!!”, all they were was plastic Iveco’s, they might have been OK for some work but for our job they were how can I put it, crap! They were one of the most uncomfortable wagons I have ever driven, & they were about as popular as “rabies in a guide dogs home” with all, & I mean all the drivers, with some actually refusing to drive them! Eventually after a while they had so many complaints, & drivers off with bad backs, that they wired a driver up with various pressure sencing pads etc & monitored the impact on his body throughout the course of a days work, this did actually show that they were totally unsuitable for our tanker work, so Wincanton had to change them & replace them with ERFs. The day-cab is pictured up at Harwell Laboratories where we had a few tanks on site, the sleeper-cab is pictured as I was leaving Bernard Matthews factory, Norwich having tipped a full load into 1 of 4 tanks we had on the site.
ERFs could do any job you asked them to do, but they have always been a great tanker fleet wagon, all the Oil Companies etc in the UK couldn’t all have been wrong could they!
When they could no longer get ERFs they tried this DAF for suitability, wasn’t really a popular trial wagon so none were brought!
This is the only plastic Sed-Atki that survived with Wincanton, this one wasn’t as bad and the ride on a 6-wheeler chassis was much better, this was actually a really good wagon! We inherited her onto Cryoservice when we took over Air Products small bulk distribution, she was pretty tired when we got her, so we put her on nights-out all week doing Somerset/Dorset/Devon & Cornwall, that killed her off!!! The tank was cut off & spent 5 years running night & day on a DAF 75 6-wheeler, it has been cut off that, re-furbished & is now on this new Scania which is also double-shifted night/day.
We had a few problems with the old A.P. Oxygen wagons, mainly they were just warn out, so borrowed this ERF off A.P. with this short trailer that was from Air Products in Rotterdam, I drove this for about 6 months while waiting for the DAF Space-Cab to be got ready then I had that to play with!
Now here’s a twist considering we are supposed to be behind everyone else nowadays. I had this DAF brand new, she was the first one in the country fitted with the new ORCA pumping system, now half our fleet is fitted with it, with various low/high pressure pumping or pressure delivery options, & various pump speed settings that can be manually controlled/altered by the driver depending on what size of tank you are filling or what pressure you are pumping against, means you can fill anything from a 25 ltr dewer, to a 60 ton tank. All the build work is carried out at our own main workshops in Worcester, & the wagons are sent over from Germany for our workshops to fit it to their wagons!
Sea Bea of Shenington near Banbury. This one was featured in T&D about 2 years ago.