OK Carryfast, if the big ■■■■■■■■ steel cab combo was the answer to all of trucking’s prayers, why did the Ford Transcontinental not beat the foreigners into submission?
It had the backing of the world’s second largest vehicle manufacturer behind it, an almost bottomless pit of funding, a new state of the art production facility, a widespread dealer network etc etc etc.
Surely it should have rewritten the history books?
.
Carryfast:
…too many of them were still living in their own backward world of Gardner powered Atki Borderers and ERF A series…
Goodness me Carryfast.
You’ve clocked up 12’278 posts here on TN now. I don’t know how you do it, but I digress…
I’ll have a fair bet that 12’000 of them peddle this same point.
All I can say is you must really passionately believe it.
I do think it’s quite unfortunate that you have such a blinkered and ill judged view of our road haulage industry of the 1970’s onwards.
There are many people, good people, who have forgotten more than you or I will ever know about it…Bosses, drivers, fitters, traffic planners etc. Some of them are even on TN and try to educate you that you are not correct in your one-track thinking. Why are you so totally shut-off from their knowledge and experience?.
The eventual demise of British make truck manufacturing had far more to do with poor government policy, poor labour relations, poor dealer dedication etc than it ever did with a poor end vehicle product.
Off subject I know, but Leyland closed AEC to remove it from the market place - how could that have been a good business decision for a firm that had outstanding customer loyalty and an excellent product of the day. Leyland cut off their funding, so there was no development, so the sales began to drop, so after a few years the case was made to close it - not invest in it. When MAN closed ERF they calculated that 75% of the ERF customer base (which accounted for a strong percentage of UK truck sales) would transfer without question. Some did, many didn’t and went for Volvo / Scania etc. ERF was closed with a strong order book and excellent customer base, but once it’s property and assets had mostly gone, and manufacture centred on Europe, the end was inevitable. It upset Peter Foden greatly that the end came on his ‘watch’ as it were. The sale to Western Star being the beginning of that end. Nothing at all to do with the product. Just look at the number of EC11’s that are still earning their keep today at 15+ years old.
.
No he means blinkered as in oblivious to the bloody obvious.
But your claptrap does bring people to reach into the far depths of their minds and come out with previously unheard of stuff, so as frustrating as you are, you do serve a purpose.
.
The serious flaw in your argument is that the backwards thinking customer base that according to you were stuck in the dark ages went out and bought Volvo, Scania etc rather than the ■■■■■■■ powered domestic products.
For a customer base that was so resistant to change and reluctant to part with their Gardner engines that was a serious change of direction.
They didn’t buy updated versions of the British lorries that had served them so well, they went and bought unknown and unproven new fangled stuff from people they were at war with, in the case of the Germans and Italians just a few years before.
hiya as i said i don t post any thing on the steel cabs no more…i see on the whole of page 8 and part of page 9
no one else has posted about MW 5 cabs. its a stupid …k heads shouting there fat…
Carryfast you come on here shouting about ERF and british trucks going bang…your yankie drivers will put up with some
■■■■ to drive…i ve driven a few yank trucks and been to Canada a few times… untill the 90s there was nt one single yank cab
with half as much Drivers space…meaning steering wheel area…as a B series ERF or Marathon. the steering wheel
took most of the space you need an extending leg to operate the clutch 30 inches to the floor and 9 inches to get your
foot to the clutch pedal. where if you had an LV cabbded ERF with a Perkins V8 you had an almost flat floor…
theres plenty of people will agree the yank cabs was crap in the driving area…OK the sleeper area was better
you need to remember the main part of the uk transport hub in the 60s was only 450 miles from one end to the other
London to Glasgow including Liverpool Hull and Manchseter…Glasgow and north was specialist transport so was Cornwall and Devon.
where your yankie crap cabs, drivers put up with those for 3 or 4 days just driving we could nt do much more than 7 hours or we
would have run off the edge…dont rave how good yankie cabs are…it was nt untill the Sweeds and the French got into the usa
yankie cabs got better … now lets go back to MW cabs i like reading about them
Carryfast:
…who in reality were the ones who had the knowledge,ability and motivation to create the products required to take on the competition and beat it and,as in the case of products like the NGC,often did and deserved to be paid accordingly for their skills…
So we do agree that the product was up to the job, well developed by the very best well paid engineers and with the proper policy and investment could have actually out-paced the foreign competition, not just kept up with it. Good, we agree on something!.
The likes of the NGC were just not the right product, in the right place, at the right time.
UK fleets did trial the NGC and then went on and ordered multiples of B’ Series with Gardner 240’s - if there had been the demand, ERF would have built as many RHD NGC’s as the industry wanted, but the truth is, and I’m sorry to upset you, that more money could be made, more reliably, for much longer with a Gardner 240 in 1975 than it could with a ■■■■■■■ powered NGC or similar. Those are the facts…but I guess you will still argue the industry bosses were ‘backward’s thinkers’, and picture them in their leather studded chair in the wood panelled boardroom, reminiscing of ‘hand cranking’ the old Scammell 6LW at the start of every day, not seeing why things should change.
How wrong you are.
I knew hundreds of these so called '‘backwards thinkers’.
The vast majority were the exact opposite.
As I’ve said before, good men. They had built their large fleets up from nothing, they wanted change, they wanted improvement, they valued their drivers and their drivers respected them - that is how they built their business!.
They wanted Gardner’s for jobs that Gardner’s did best. They wanted ■■■■■■■ for jobs that ■■■■■■■ did best.
These men would pay the £1000 premium that ERF charged (another policy that stacked the odds against them) just for supplying a Gardner powered chassis, because the vehicle on that job would earn it back in months.
I’m afraid it’s your view of the ‘facts’ that don’t fit into history Carryfast, as hard as you may hammer them with your 12’000 blows.
Carryfast:
…the so called ‘bad labour relations’…
Are you joking?.
Leyland on strike every week.
Gardner on strike for months.
Motor Panels in turmoil.
Component manufacturers laid off…
Operator’s waiting months for delivery of new British chassis, waiting weeks for spares… The competition was laughing at us!.
Carryfast:
…Or the realisation that companies like ERF going to the wall was just a part of that just like many others sooner or later in the day.
Like…say…JCB?.
A shining example of a British heavy manufacturer that has remained at the top of it’s game with the right levels of investment and good labour relations. A model example of what could have been for ERF.
Carryfast:
…on the inevitable downward spiral that led to their inevitable end…
But it wasn’t inevitable.
It SO SO wasn’t.
3300John:
hiya as i said i don t post any thing on the steel cabs no more…i see on the whole of page 8 and part of page 9
no one else has posted about MW 5 cabs. its a stupid …k heads shouting there fat…
Carryfast you come on here shouting about ERF and british trucks going bang…your yankie drivers will put up with some
[zb] to drive…i ve driven a few yank trucks and been to Canada a few times… untill the 90s there was nt one single yank cab
with half as much Drivers space…meaning steering wheel area…as a B series ERF or Marathon. the steering wheel
took most of the space you need an extending leg to operate the clutch 30 inches to the floor and 9 inches to get your
foot to the clutch pedal. where if you had an LV cabbded ERF with a Perkins V8 you had an almost flat floor…
theres plenty of people will agree the yank cabs was crap in the driving area…OK the sleeper area was better
you need to remember the main part of the uk transport hub in the 60s was only 450 miles from one end to the other
London to Glasgow including Liverpool Hull and Manchseter…Glasgow and north was specialist transport so was Cornwall and Devon.where your yankie crap cabs, drivers put up with those for 3 or 4 days just driving we could nt do much more than 7 hours or we
would have run off the edge…dont rave how good yankie cabs are…it was nt untill the Sweeds and the French got into the usa
yankie cabs got better … now lets go back to MW cabs i like reading about them
Good to see you back on an MW thread Mr H!.
Everything you say is true - and what about the brakes?.
Have you seen the front brake shoes on a Kenworth etc?. About 4 inches wide in the 80’s as opposed to 7 inches on even an LV of the 60’s!.
Anyway, lets all stop ‘shouting our fat’ on these MW pages - we’re all wasting time when we could be filling in the huge information gaps left by the ERF records. As Robert said, there is work to be done!.
…So come on, get typing John!.
If you go to the European 1975 thread I’ve just posted a little poser for you get your teeth stuck into! Robert 
.
.
.
Carryfast:
…How is the fact that anyone would choose an F88 over a decent Motor Panels cabbed 300 + hp ■■■■■■■ engined ERF.Or the fact that as ERF pointed out a Gardner powered guvnor’s heap was more in demand during the 1970’s,even into the late 1970’s,than either of the former two anyway,a supposed ‘flaw in my argument’ that the domestic market was infested with a Luddite and/or disloyal customer base.
Err…it was more in demand because they could earn more money with it!. Simple.
More money = newer trucks = better wages etc.
The bosses I refer to above were not ‘Luddite’s’ Carryfast, they were brilliant businessmen operating in a very very competitive marketplace.
They paid fair wages, employed good drivers, ran good vehicles and made good money.
Anyway, this is becoming tedious. Lets get back to 5MW’s - the title of this thread.
.
Carryfast you, quite interestingly said: While ERF’s ideas regarding product rationalisation and therefore economies of scale in producing obsolete designs alongside up to date ones seems to make equally no sense.IE why continue to offer such obsolete engine designs and cab designs when it was obvious that the 7MW had moved the game forward regarding cab design as of at least 1973 and the turbocharged ■■■■■■■ had long since made its naturally aspirated versions,let alone Gardner,obsolete as of at least the late 1960’s.In which case surely the logical answer was a turbocharged ■■■■■■■ one option engine fit and then ditch the 5 MW,let alone junk like the LV,as soon as the 7MW arrived.In which case I’d suggest that missing the point of the idea of economies of scale,through pandering to the outdated demands of the domestic market,was arguably a large factor in ERF’s failure.
That would have meant a bog-standard ERF tractive unit would have had a ■■■■■■■ 290 or 335 (later a 350) and a 7MW cab with a choice of RHD or LHD; to meet all needs.
The trouble with standardising to the point where you dictate to the customer what he wants is that you run the risk of losing the customer. In my opinion, this is what happened when Mercedes introduced the EPS gearbox in the '80s. Before the (horrendous IMHO) EPS came along, Mercedes had a massive market in UK from long-haulers to supermarket-trolleys. Almost overnight, Brit customers voted with their feet and bought Scanias - and those lightweight P-cabbed 92s and 112s appeared in legion supermarket yards. It was surely a salutary lesson… Robert 
newmercman:
No he means blinkered as in oblivious to the bloody obvious.But your claptrap does bring people to reach into the far depths of their minds and come out with previously unheard of stuff, so as frustrating as you are, you do serve a purpose.
Hmmm… Not sure I agree with the last bit. E R F Peterborough has stopped posting, since the Loon cranked up his bilge pump. The knowledgeable members are put off by the bs merchants, IMO.
robert1952:
That would have meant a bog-standard ERF tractive unit would have had a ■■■■■■■ 290 or 335 (later a 350) and a 7MW cab with a choice of RHD or LHD; to meet all needs.The trouble with standardising to the point where you dictate to the customer what he wants is that you run the risk of losing the customer. In my opinion, this is what happened when Mercedes introduced the EPS gearbox in the '80s. Before the (horrendous IMHO) EPS came along, Mercedes had a massive market in UK from long-haulers to supermarket-trolleys. Almost overnight, Brit customers voted with their feet and bought Scanias - and those lightweight P-cabbed 92s and 112s appeared in legion supermarket yards. It was surely a salutary lesson… Robert
It’s a good point but history/experience suggests that a good all round ‘premium’ type can be a better jack of all trades than trying to split limited resources between a maybe over estimated ( perceived ) market for a ‘fleet’ type wagon and a ‘premium’ spec one.IE as I’ve said the DAF 2800 and 95 both made great fleet type wagons at least on trunking operations in my experience and even as 4 and 6 wheeler rigids either as drawbar prime movers or even solo in many more enlightened markets.
IE it was sorting the 24-32/38t gross market that mattered.While on that note even 4 wheelers have often long since run along,what would have then been,the lines of a 7MW with a de rated ■■■■■■■ NTC in it.
None of which matches the retrograde idea of the EPS shift.
While in the case of the 92 v 112/142 unfortunately the Brits like ERF only had the resources to go for one market or the other not both and history suggests that it was the latter which mattered more. 