Why tenuous links?
Someone asked a question, I jumped into action with my books, magazines and the wonderful wide web and found several things I didn’t think I knew. What other remarkable discoveries have you made about the road transport industry?
The search started while looking for information about the LAD cab which I thought was built by Coventry Motor Panels. I discovered they had built a lorry called Owen named after a bloke who owned a factory in Rubery, Birmingham. Sir Alfred Owen bought the business of Coventry Motor Panels from Jaguar Cars in 1940
His company in Rubery built components for Eaton gearboxes and went onto build lorry axles with Rockwell. He set up the company Rubery Owen Rockwell at Llay near Wrexham and supplied axles to many trailer manufacturers which included Boden and Crane Fruehauf before they were merged.
Another famous company linked to Rubery Owen was BRM which was formed in 1949
Over the years, many famous drivers plied their trade in BRMs, the Drivers Hall of Fame including Juan Manuel Fangio, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Tony Brooks, Joakim Bonnier and Pedro Rodriguez to name but a few.
Where will it all end?
Rubery Owen 
that’s a name that I haven’t heard of for years along with G.K.N. Sankey and all the rest of those companies involved with British vehicle manufacturing in the 60’s and the 70’s. Who remembers seeing all those flat backed lorries with those steel stillages on heading to places like Birmingham, Bathgate, Cowley, Coventry, Dagenham, Dunstable, Longbridge, Leyland, Luton, Ryton, etc, the list goes on and on.
How many times did you get stuck behind a Pressed Steel Fisher or a B.R.S. car transporter heading between The Midlands and Swindon or Oxford or vice versa and having to stay behind them for miles before you came to a stretch of three lane road before it was safe to overtake.
Who can remember seeing very often, two brand new Jaguars going flat out along the Fossway between Stratford and Cirencester in the 60’s which seemed to be a testing ground for quite a few of the Coventry car manufactures.
And what was the name of that company from Liverpool who used to transport car bodies, I think that they brought them from Speke, who had trailers which were almost 16 feet high. You would always see them early on a Monday morning southbound on the M6 before stopping at The Hollies for their breakfast.
Some of these factories weren’t the best places to take a thirty six foot trailer and it often involved asking a forkie to move a row of stillages just so you could get round a corner.
Did anybody have to wait more than five minutes to get tipped in these places 
.
Regards Steve.
mushroomman:
Rubery Owen that’s a name that I haven’t heard of for years along with G.K.N. Sankey and all the rest of those companies involved with British vehicle manufacturing in the 60’s and the 70’s. Who remembers seeing all those flat backed lorries with those steel stillages on heading to places like Birmingham, Bathgate, Cowley, Coventry, Dagenham, Dunstable, Longbridge, Leyland, Luton, Ryton, etc, the list goes on and on.
How many times did you get stuck behind a Pressed Steel Fisher or a B.R.S. car transporter heading between The Midlands and Swindon or Oxford or vice versa and having to stay behind them for miles before you came to a stretch of three lane road before it was safe to overtake.
Who can remember seeing very often, two brand new Jaguars going flat out along the Fossway between Stratford and Cirencester in the 60’s which seemed to be a testing ground for quite a few of the Coventry car manufactures.
And what was the name of that company from Liverpool who used to transport car bodies, I think that they brought them from Speke, who had trailers which were almost 16 feet high. You would always see them early on a Monday morning southbound on the M6 before stopping at The Hollies for their breakfast.
Some of these factories weren’t the best places to take a thirty six foot trailer and it often involved asking a forkie to move a row of stillages just so you could get round a corner.
Did anybody have to wait more than five minutes to get tipped in these places .
Regards Steve
It was Harpers that moved the car bodies from Speke, Rockwell Thompson formerly John Thompson (ettingshall W-ton) made the bare trailer axle beams which Thomas Ingles transported to ROR at Llay, they also made Albion, Foden, Maudsley, Commer and many other lorry axles.
At BRS we transported mini subframes from Rubery Owen and GKN Sankey into Longbridge works, it took 5 mins to swap trailers on the park then 2-3 hrs to get the notes processed !
There’s a fabulous old film about Rubery Owen called “For Every Vehicle”. It was filmed about 1950 and shows just about everything the firm was involved in, and great footage of their components being fitted to motors from little Austins to the Mighty Antar at Thornycroft’s. The commentary is by a proper Cholmondley-Warner-BBC-newsreader-type character who calls wheels “fwheels”!
Hugely entertaining, and part of the Leyland Museum film archive collection, available on DVD or VHS, either from the museum or maybe on Ebay or Amazon.
Trev_H:
It was Harpers that moved the car bodies from Speke, Rockwell Thompson formerly John Thompson (ettingshall W-ton) made the bare trailer axle beams which Thomas Ingles transported to ROR at Llay, they also made Albion, Foden, Maudsley, Commer and many other lorry axles.
At BRS we transported mini subframes from Rubery Owen and GKN Sankey into Longbridge works, it took 5 mins to swap trailers on the park then 2-3 hrs to get the notes processed !
Well done Trev 
, it was Harpers who I was thinking of, green wagons and they certainly used to fly along, have you any idea where there depot used to be ?
I am not sure if they transported the body shells for the Triumph Stag or the Rover 2000 
.
Regards Steve.
mushroomman:
Trev_H:
It was Harpers that moved the car bodies from Speke, Rockwell Thompson formerly John Thompson (ettingshall W-ton) made the bare trailer axle beams which Thomas Ingles transported to ROR at Llay, they also made Albion, Foden, Maudsley, Commer and many other lorry axles.
At BRS we transported mini subframes from Rubery Owen and GKN Sankey into Longbridge works, it took 5 mins to swap trailers on the park then 2-3 hrs to get the notes processed !
Well done Trev , it was Harpers who I was thinking of, green wagons and they certainly used to fly along, have you any idea where there depot used to be ?
I am not sure if they transported the body shells for the Triumph Stag or the Rover 2000 .
Regards Steve.
Hi Steve,
I don’t know where their depot was but they were definitely Liverpool based, I seem to remember them being on strike for a very long time and closing down not long after. They had a lot of those dark green Commer 2 strokes pulling those huge car body trailers that just used to skim under the motorway bridges, their main work was for Jag/Rover/Triumph group and I’m sure in their last years the lorries were yellow with black lettering.
Someone recently reminded me on here of the other company to bring ford Fiesta bodies from Germany. T J Edwards with the blue 7.5t Mercedes and trailers!
mushroomman:
Trev_H:
It was Harpers that moved the car bodies from Speke, Rockwell Thompson formerly John Thompson (ettingshall W-ton) made the bare trailer axle beams which Thomas Ingles transported to ROR at Llay, they also made Albion, Foden, Maudsley, Commer and many other lorry axles.
At BRS we transported mini subframes from Rubery Owen and GKN Sankey into Longbridge works, it took 5 mins to swap trailers on the park then 2-3 hrs to get the notes processed !
Well done Trev , it was Harpers who I was thinking of, green wagons and they certainly used to fly along, have you any idea where there depot used to be ?
I am not sure if they transported the body shells for the Triumph Stag or the Rover 2000 .
Regards Steve.
Harpers? Did they run green Leylands with trailers that looked like ovesized horseboxes? I remember the kids asking what they were for, and me telling them they were Giraffe boxes 