Hello, hope I have the right forum here. Firstly, I am not a haulage lorry driver and never have been. My maiden surname was PRITCHETT and Pritchett Brothers Transport was started back in the 1930’s by my grandfather Richard Pritchett in Wandsworth, SW London. He moved to Brentford, Middx in the late 1950’s and sold the business to Mrs V Butcher in the early 1960’s (approximately). I am intrigued to discover that the business moved up to Ashton in Makerfield and wonder if there are any ex-employees who would be willing to share any memories of working for the business over the years. My father helped his father in the yards at Wandsworth and Brentford and has happy memories of moving vans around the yards (before he got his licence) and also long distance driving jobs when he was older. Thanks very much, Christine.
Pritchettcon1950:
Hello, hope I have the right forum here. Firstly, I am not a haulage lorry driver and never have been. My maiden surname was PRITCHETT and Pritchett Brothers Transport was started back in the 1930’s by my grandfather Richard Pritchett in Wandsworth, SW London. He moved to Brentford, Middx in the late 1950’s and sold the business to Mrs V Butcher in the early 1960’s (approximately). I am intrigued to discover that the business moved up to Ashton in Makerfield and wonder if there are any ex-employees who would be willing to share any memories of working for the business over the years. My father helped his father in the yards at Wandsworth and Brentford and has happy memories of moving vans around the yards (before he got his licence) and also long distance driving jobs when he was older. Thanks very much, Christine.
Hi Christine,
There is John West who is very active on the site,he used to have a couple of trucks as a sub contractor to Pritchett’s in Ashton,once he spots these comments,I’m sure he will be making some comments of his own,
Good luck.
David
Hi Christine. I drove for Pritchett Bros. out of their Ashton depot for a number of years, from around 1973 or thereabouts up until about 1976, and as already stated by 5thwheel, John West subcontracted for them with a couple of units, one driven by himself and the other one by his brother Andy, before they both moved on to richer pastures in the Middle East.
If you look further down this page you’ll find a thread entitled ’ Hauliers around the Ashton in Makerfield area’, recently bumped up by Ray Smyth. If you look on there, you’ll find a fair bit of information concerning Pritchett’s
During the period of time that I spent there, their London depot was based at the bottom of Corney road in Chiswick, wedged between some tower blocks of flats and the river Thames. In fact, on boat race days, it was possible to climb onto the perimeter fence to watch the boats go past.
As you say, at this time, the firm was in the ownership of the Butcher family. Ma Butcher, as she liked to be called, along with her son Barry , essentially ran the company, with some assistance from a transport manager who’s name I have completely forgotten and an accountant with a strange name like Moriarty, or something similar. I don’t ever recall meeting Mr Butcher, but my understanding is that after the company ceased trading, the Butcher’s went on to own and run an engineering company somewhere in London.
The two photographs above submitted by Dean look as though they were taken on the yard in Chiswick.
They suffered a major warehouse fire there in about 1974 which destroyed the warehouse buildings but left the office buildings unscathed.
Of the two photos by Dean, I seem to vaguely recall the 8 legger, although I don’t recall ever seeing it up at Ashton. The other one, the Seddon, unless there was more than one, ended up at the Ashton depot. The chap that drove it was a Scouser called Jack. He lost his licence after testing positive on the breathalyzer and that was the last we saw of him.
You may not be aware of this, but Pritchetts also had a depot down by the river,close to the transporter bridge in Newport. It only remained open for a relatively short period of time, two years possibly, or it could even have been a bit less than that. We ran a night trunk from Ashton down to there and back for quite a while.
With regards to comments from ex employees, I hope there may be a few, although I feel obliged to disclose that quite a number, if not the majority of the drivers that I worked alongside at the Ashton depot in the 70s have sadly passed on.
No doubt when John West sees this thread, he’ll be able to provide further information, more interesting, and far more eloquently expressed than I can.
All the best. Eddie.
Hello Christine,
I think I’m a bit late coming to this thread. The others have more or less said it all, and my contributions are on the ‘Hauliers around the Ashton in Makerfield area’. After being trapped for 4 months we finally got to go and visit our daughter and grandson in Oxford, Oh Joy!
Like Eddie, I remember the yard next to the river at Chiswick, so even then Mrs Butcher must have moved operations from Brentford. I tried to keep out of her way, she seemed to be a bit shouty, but Eddie says she was nice, so there we are! I hope your Grandad got a good deal from her when he sold the business. I think the family already owned the engineering business that Eddie refers to. After the operation closed during the Seventies I was working out in Dammam, hauling containers from the port for SeaLand, mainly to Riyadh and again met her son Barry, who came out as fleet engineer. This must have been a severe culture shock for him, I seem to remember that the garage was built out of containers, and to work on a truck you had to keep your spanners in a bath of petrol, so that the evaporation cooled them enough to hold! Barry may still be about, he would be in his mid Seventies I would think, so if you can find him, he will have lots of memories of the company.
I didn’t visit the London depot too often, Brother Andy and I ran out of Ashton and were mainly given the loads to Scotland, as they were less popular than running down South. If you click on the link at the bottom of this post, there’s a memory of a load (I think out of Kraft or Van den Bergh) where I nearly lost it on the A74 to Glasgow, in among my ramblings!
The fleet was always tidy, and as Eddie has said we all thought the slogan ‘The On Time Freight Line’ was good. This was the early seventies, when American trucking films like ‘White Line Fever’ were starting to be shown in our cinemas, and we started to call them ‘trucks’ and ‘rigs’ instead of ‘Lorries’ (some of the old school on here are still horrified!) so Freight Line instead of haulage contractor just seemed up to the minute.
Always nice to hear from someone with connections to the past. See if you can find Barry Butcher, can’t be too many with that name, except possibly in East Enders?
All the best, John.
Hiya John, glad to see you finally made it. I was beginning to get a bit worried to be honest.
To be fair, I have this sinking feeling that there’s only going to be me and thee contributing to this thread, I hope I’m wrong, but all the same it’s great to go back almost 50 years.
I personally have lots of memories of working for Pritchett’s, most of them good, some of them not so good. The changeovers at Tubby’s for instance. I realise you probably didn’t do many of those, whereas I did loads. It wasn’t the changeovers per se that bothered me, it was the 2am starts. Quite a few of the lads disliked them so they just didn’t turn up, and never got lumbered with them again, whereas one or two of the more reliable types got stuck with them week in week out.
Like yourself, I preferred Scotch, or north east, but try as I might, I just couldnt pry myself free from those bloody changeovers, and on the odd occasion when I got stroppy about it, I’d end up handballing 20 tons of corned beef onto a flat trailer on Liverpool docks. Arthur Wilson just wasn’t prepared to be flexible so in the end I just threw in the towel and moved on. The depot closed shortly afterwards, although I’m not trying to infer that my departure had anything to do with the company’s demise I hasten to add.
We used to load down to Reading quite a lot, and us Ashton lads liked to overnight on Heston services, but if Chiswick got to know that we were in area, they’d make us run into the depot. Something to do with insurance we were told, whether there was any truth in it or not I don’t know, but they’d make us run in there whether our driving time was up or not.
I never really got involved with what the London lads got up to, but I believe they loaded a lot of stuff out of Gillette, somewhere out on the A4 west of Chiswick. One day this guy turns up at the Chiswick office looking for a driving job, produces his licence, and gets a start the same day. They sent him to load out of Gillette which he duly did. This proved to be the first and last time they would ever see him. The police found the empty rig a few days later in a lay - by on the A13 somewhere near Southend. They said some bloke had reported having had his wallet and driving licence stolen in an east end pub a few days earlier. After this incident, all the drivers had to have mug shots taken which were pinned up on a board in the office.
A short while afterwards, 3 or 4 Ashton drivers were parked on the yard in Chiswick and a couple of the lads had agreed to go to one of the London drivers houses for a card game. I’m not into cards, but decided to go along for the ride as it seemed preferable to sitting in the cab.
One of the Ashton lads, a Scouser called Eddie , I forget his surname but he died well before his 30th birthday, dropped his trailer and we all piled into his unit and drove out to somewhere in Richmond.
Well this soddin’ card game went on all evening and by about 1 am, I’d just about had enough, but as there was still a pile of money on the table, I decided to set off to walk back to Chiswick, and just in case you aren’t already aware, it’s a fair old walk from Richmond to Chiswick, trust me.
I crossed the Thames at Chiswick bridge then decided to take a ’ short cut ’ along the Thames back to the yard. On reaching the depot, I climbed over the perimeter fence but as I crossed the yard heading for my wagon, a bloody great Alsatian dog, intent on tearing off one or more of my appendages came bounding down the yard, closely followed by a drunken Glaswegian security guard who appeared to be attempting to outcompete the dog in a frothing at the mouth competition. I managed to leap up onto the catwalk of my unit just before the dog had me.
This raving, rabid, drunken Jock finally appeared to calm down a tad bit after he’d checked out my mugshot, then went staggering off back to the comfort of his bottle of Bells.
When I left the depot at about 5am, after about 3 hours kip, there was still no sign of the rest of the card school. My inebriated Scottish friend emerged from his tardis to open the barrier, then immediately turned his back to me. Just before he turned away however, I noticed that he had managed to vomit down the front of his tunic. All this took place almost half a century ago! so I fully expect he’ll have sobered up by now.
I’ve had many better experiences whilst driving for Pritchett’s than this particular incident by the way.
The former northern outpost of The on time Freight Line as it appears today.
By the way John, I was wondering, you didn’t happen to notice whether the crane jib was up or not as you came past junction 25 by any chance?..just curious.
The guy stood on the right is Ray Hughes. The other bloke is one of two shunters who came from St Helens. His name is Ron ( I think ). The other shunter’s name was Fred. I don’t remember their surnames…Come on, we’re talking almost 50 years ago here.
I do recall that both of them ( the shunters that is ) were nice blokes. The only other thing that I remember is that Fred lopped off a couple of his toes with a hover mower whilst mowing his lawn one weekend…funny how the brain functions isn’t it?..Oh, and Ron was particularly adept at sheeting.
To John and Eddie, Many thanks for all your info and stories. I think my Grandad Pritchett would have made sure he got a good price for the business - he was an astute business man, running a petrol garage and then a pig farm for many years before he passed away. The man called “something Moriarty” was actually Mrs Butchers’ nephew Brian and I have also been in touch with him. I enjoyed reading your stories, even if the technical details passed me by. Thanks again, Christine.
Glad to hear you’ve liked reading about your Grandad’s old firm Christine. It made me read through all the old posts, which I also enjoyed. I have pinched one of Eddie’s photos to show that the trailers originally had Brentford as the base. I also thought the Blue Line trailers were poor quality compared to the Crane Fruehaufs. The modern pictures Eddie has posted of the depot show it more or less as it was in our day. The reception and traffic office on the ground floor and Bill Spragg and secretary’s office upstairs.
His reference to the crane jib had no Freudian meaning. (Well I hope not!) Before carrying for Pritchetts, brother Andy and I hauled a lot of timber from North Wales into Riding and Anderton’s Seven Stars Saw Mills in Wigan. You could see the massive jib of the unloading crane from the motorway and if it was getting to 5.00pm, you could see whether it was still vertical - once they lowered it you were waiting until the morning, it wasn’t going back up!
John.
I have to own up to a slight feeling of disappointment regarding the curtain of apparent finality that appears to have descended on this thread. I was hoping for a little more personally, as I was just getting warmed up.
I realise that there can be very few people if any remaining who could possibly comment on the early years of this company, and fewer still that actually manage to navigate their way onto this forum. Indeed, I suspect there can’t be that many left who, like myself, can only even comment on the company’s final years.
Wouldn’t it have been great to have heard from Barry Butcher John ? I actually met Barry years after the company folded. I don’t remember the exact year, but it would most likely have been in the mid 80s. I was walking my dog across the trailer park ( it hadn’t been fenced off at that time ) when I encountered a chap at the front of the warehouse. It was during the weekend and the place was closed.
Having only met Barry on a couple of occasions, many years previously, I had failed to recognise him. It was only after we engaged in conversation and he revealed his identity that the penny dropped. Barry was a friendly down to earth kind of a chap, and he told me that at that time, he still owned the warehouse, although my latest information is that this is no longer the case.
After a couple of minutes chatting, we both went our separate ways, and that was the last time that I ever saw him. As you say John, no doubt he’ll be in his mid 70s now. Nice guy.
Still, since I have nothing better to offer the thread, I thought I’d just post these two photos. I always have problems putting the photos and text in line, so I’ll just get the script out of the way then deal with the photos later.
One of them is clearly a line up of trailers on ’ the beach '. A number of those Blue Line abortions can clearly be seen in the rank, easily distinguishable by their South Wales markings. The other shot depicting the sheeted load was taken outside The Old Hut transport cafe, just off the A38 Tewkesbury exit from the M50. Both photographs were taken in 1975. I think you may have seen both of them previously John, although to the best of my knowledge they haven’t appeared on the A-in-M thread.
I forget what was under the sheet on the flat trailer, or where it was ultimately destined for, but it would more than likely have been corned beef off Liverpool docks, through Belfield’s as like as not.
This was merely one of Arthur Wilson’s petty methods of dealing with recalcitrant types like myself who occasionally railed against doing changeovers at Tubby’s.
It all proved to be counter-productive in the long run, as it usually ended up taking a day and a half to get the load on, then another day and a half to get it off again. Half the week spent on one load. I can only assume that the rate for the job must have been phenomenal.
I do realise of course that a full two years down the road following her previous post, it seems extremely unlikely that Christine will ever see them , but having come across several other photographs with a Pritchett Bros connection , although the shots leave much to be desired from a quality viewpoint , I thought it a better option to air them on this forum rather than just dumping them in the wheelie bin. They may or may not be of marginal interest to at least someone , who knows ?
Here’s one of Connal’s on Pritchett’s trailer park close by junction 24 of the M6 motorway . This one would have been taken sometime in the early 70s I should imagine . I suspect I may have put this on the A-in-M thread previously actually . Well please accept my apologies if I have , but here it is again .
Here’s one of a Salvesen’s spread-axle reefer on the same trailer park . Different day possibly . Different perspective obviously , but same era definitely .
Another one of Salvesen’s fridges . This one isn’t actually parked on Pritchett’s trailer park , he’s parked immediately adjacent to it , on the driveway leading up to Pritchett’s office block . I’m guessing that he’d either be delivering to , or collecting from Fishwicks the butchers , whose premises were just across the driveway .
This driveway led to a variety of premises , one of which being Tyburn Tankers , a haulage company previously mentioned on this forum .
Finally, or for now at any rate, one of Atkins’ Mercs delivering to Pritchett’s warehouse, Although it may not be apparent, the M6 motorway is a mere 300 yards or so distant in this view, with northbound destinations being to the left.
Judging by the reg. of the Merc, it would appear that this shot was taken post 1975 , and as the fuel pump also seems to have been dismantled , I have to assume that it was taken some time after “The on Time Freight Line “ had ceased to function , leaving just the warehousing side of the business to carry on .
Worked for Pritchetts for a couple of Weeks in the early 60s did mostly local United Biscuits,loaded somewhere in south London with Cigarette Coupon stuff back to Yard in chiswick another Driver asked where it was loaded for, Newcastle, and he said would not mind it if you got a night out for it.but cant remember the Formans name but his favourite was grab a Brush here,s Mrs Buchers that was enough for me.
It’s good to know that there are still the odd one or two of us left that remember Pritchett’s, and it would be perfectly correct to say that we did shift a lot of stuff around the country for United Biscuits ,….Associated Biscuits as well .
The main UB depots that I can recall were Aintree, Reading, Uddingston, Billingham and Burton on Trent. No doubt there were other depots as well , although I’m unable to bring any to mind just at this moment .
With regards to Ma Butcher however, she could be a bit like Marmite, or Guinness, inasmuch as there didn’t appear to be any middle ground , you either liked her or you disliked her . I personally found her to be o.k. Friendly , but with underlying air of ruthlessness .
That said , being based at Ashton , I only came into contact with the lady on the odd occasion , but on those occasions she always came across as being extremely genial and always addressed me by my Christian name.
Had I been based at Chiswick and had to cope with her on a daily basis however, I may well have formed a different view of the old girl.
Still……Rest in peace Ma ……You may well be gone , but you’re certainly not forgotten.
Good to hear from you Benjamin.