Yes your right mark we had one at Hiltons it had 2 360 ford engines side by side big wide front wings the cab was well high compaired to the d1000s we had and a extended bottom grill where the cold start was and it was double drive have a picture somewhere will have to dig it out B.RS had one as well asfords gave it a warranty to the gate dont think it ever got as far as blackwell tunnell with out packing up fords took it back in the end Ralph only got it because we had so many motors on fords and he didnt cost nothing
Hi Marky
Great stuff , I think Hayes posibly was the first Transcon I ever saw in 204 berth Southampton , as I have a dim memory Id forgotten it was HTS , Wasnt their depot at Charlton , south London , seem to remember delivering something or other to wharehouses there . I was told by the driver one of the engines onthe Ford was a slave and could be turned off once on the move and restarted to climb hills , sounds a bit adventurous , but I do remember he had had trouble with that engine and struggled to pull the tilt he had on , injector pumps were on opposite sides to give clearance and the chassis was still only 2inches wider to take both engines . Memory tells me the fitters in BS Peterborough tolling me at the time thier Ford did,nt have a slave engine and it was possible to turn either of them off .
Did,nt know Bedford tried it though .
Frenchy
didnt the bedfords have leyland engines?
BRS at Peterborough operated one of the twin-engined D-Series, and it was driven by Baz Scott. When I started with them around 1983 they still had the trailer that it used to pull - a tandem axle flat that weighed about 9t empty. Remember Baz showing me a photo of it, but would be nice if someone could find one to put on this site.
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i know bedford built their own engines,but i was thinking they put leylands into the twin engined project,
Got this via e-mail,
Following your article in the Commercial Motor 8th May I may be able to
offer some assistance.
In the early seventies I used to be an HGV prototype test driver based at
Boreham airfield which was part of the Ford Dunton engineering complex.
The Ford Double D as it was known was a 6x4 tractor unit with two 6 cylinder
D series engines set upright in parallel. These both drove through a
transfer box and then gearbox to one or both axles. The principle being that
two engines could be powered loaded and one switched off when returning
empty. This was in the days when haulage had decent rates and the carriers
licensing system prevented backloads unless a coveted A licence or
restricted B was in the screen. The engineer who designed this strange beast
was a gentleman called Mush Abner who I had the pleasure of working with
many times. To digress for a moment, Mush took leave from Ford Motor Company
to return to Israel to fight as a tank commander in the Yom Kippur war and
came back intact 3 weeks later. He never talked about being a reservist and
had he not had a tan, no one would have been any the wiser.
Only a small number were built as prototypes at Dunton and, as was practice
at the time, Ford put them out to selected companies for appraisal. British
Road Services and Hilton Transport being ones I can remember. Ford also
provided the same engines for Ralf Hiltons power boat at the time.
The whole project died a death when Volvo and Scania started importing into
the UK and set the benchmark for trucks of the future. All our energies then
went into the ‘Transcontinental’ as a British alternative and we all know
how that ended.
Regards
Peter Croft
Scania South East
Further to this Chris Campbell from Skills for logistics kindly sent me a scan of an article he wrote on this very vehicle… Complete with pictures
It is a large file so click on the link below to read it
CLICK HERE TO READ
wow, 
what a cracking looking motor,looks a right beast,like the west coast mirrors too! 
did any of these survive?
Rikki-UK
This BRS Ford would have been the one I sneakily sat in in the BRS Peterborough depot and started up each engine until I was caught by one of the fitters but he kindly showed me round it.
With my memrory fading its good to see I had not completely forgotten the two Id seen. after 37 odd yrs.
Well done mate.
frenchy.
A very interesting read, i remember the truck ralph hilton had cos i worked there in the 60`s, also remember the huge speed boat he owned as that too was parked in the yard…our depot stood where Sainsburys depot now stands in Charlton, and was previously the old united glass works or U.G.B. and we were the first to move there from our Eltham depot, when the family first acquired it.
As mentioned in another post i used to see the HTS twin engined ford on the old london bridge when the bridge was being dismantled an sent to america the lorry had a flat trailer loading the blocks of stone,it looked a nice truck back then and the story about it has always had a bit of mystery about it.Now that the pictures have been put on here i think a lot of people will now believe it did exist.
Browsing round various other sites, I came across this picture.
Hope it’s of interest.
A great looking motor, it’s the first I heard of a twin engined Ford, although we had almost a whole fleet of them at J G Fielder’s in Bradford, and then bought out by Chapman’s Freight, we had the first D800’s on trial painted in primer and checked by Ford almost every week, we also had the first D 1000’s on trial, but unfortunately never had a twin engine version, which is a shame, because they could have been another great truck from Ford.
But yes as you said Scania and Volvo took the market and flooded the country and like many British vehicles they went into the scrap bin, instead of being made into a good vehicle.
I imagine the 2 gearboxes and 2 gearsticks could cause some confusion, one in 7th and one in 6th 