Im not sure what year it was but my first memories are of the Mammoth Major mk5 and Dyson trailer my dad drove with a canopy over the roof of the cab it was in red and yellow and was a 1959 model . I cant remember where I went I just remember the motor , my dad said that Id been with him in a mk3 Mammoth Major but I dont remember it at all. The Henry Longs yard had a mixed bag of motors ranging from MKV AECs to Ergos and they also had 1418 Mercs which were being used due to Northside Truck Centre opening on the same site and having heavy links to Longs. He just missed out on a new Merc and ended up with an Atki with a 180 Gardner when everyone else were getting Mandators, but then the Mercs arrived and I don`t think they bought anything else but Merc after that
Tyneside Wrote:
Often wondered about Moles. I can remember them working in Newcastle, especially when the City Centre motorway was under construction. Think they were running a lot of Dodge four wheelers then (late sixties)
How many motors did they run and where was there yard ?
I know that eventually they were taken over by Bowey along with John Scott & Sons. Bowey ran the whole transport operation under the A Mole name, Ted Smith was the senior man along with Barry Anderson who ended up at Owen Pugh’s.
When my father drove for Anthony Mole the depot was along Bowsden Tce in Gosforth (not a lot of space), not sure how many motors they had early 50’s, probably not a lot but dad did say they were great to work for, where they moved to from there I’m not sure either, no doubt they expanded so would need a bigger set up. I was surprised much later in the early 80’s after leaving the army and living in Fatfield, Washington to see a Mole’s Sed Aki 200 four wheel tipper parked, a lad a few doors away worked for them I presumed they had finished years ago (by what you say they must have). The livery wasn’t the same, the chassis was Maroon and the cab all White, I don’t think they went by the name much longer after that period I never saw the wagon again so assumed they had gone completely. Cheers Franky.
As a newby on BRS Oxford about 1950 they gave me a pre war Albion petrol with hand crank to start it doing a regular London multi drop run for a few weeks waiting for a new Seddon artic to come in . i used to keep the engine running all day long to save swinging it ,it was always so reliable -the times i wished it would break down so i could get shot of it !
TonyJ105:
earliest I can remember is standing behind dad in his half cab foden coach , I must have been all of about 3 , so just about room for me in the corner while he drove it. when I got to about 4 or 5 I went with him in the traders , first 1686ME , then XRP451 , mostly round London toy stores and the docks, I remember being thankful of seeing Whitworths on the way back one time in 1686 , I was absolutely frozen , and I was late starting school when I was 5, apparently I with him in the queue at one of the London docks, I do remember that one although its only vague, slept in the cab and had a wash in the back of the lorry.
TruckNetUK.Old Time Lorries.Your Earliest Lorry Memories…Oldest Lorry.P1. VALKYRIE. Foden Motorcoach.Shearings Motorcoach Holiday Tours.
HALLOWEEN,Tuesday,31st October,2017.
Foden PVSC6/Bellhouse Hartwell C33F Motorcoach,Chassis No.27746,FBU 235,Oldham,March 1949.New to Shearing,Oldham.Jackson.TonyJ105.:-
Yes.This beautiful Foden motorcoach was new to Shearing,of Oldham,the one and the same Shearings Motorcoach Holiday Tours company of
today,which is based in Wigan.This motorcoach is operated by Jackson in the photograph - Jackson Motorcoaches of Blackpool ? 
I wonder 
Shearings has a long and colourful history,which began in 1919, and has merged and/or taken over many other motorcoach operators in it’s long history - Smiths,Spencers,Happyway,Wallace Arnold,National Holidays,etc… In fact I once counted how many motorcoach operators that make up the present-day Shearings were taken over,or merged into the above named companies that are now Shearings: The number came to around 45! I did the counting in around 1993…and this was before Shearings took over Wallace Arnold,which itself took over several motorcoach
operators
In fact,the Shearings group itself has been the subject of being bought and sold several times since the 1980s by big business groups:Mecca,then
Shearings became part of Rank after Rank took over Mecca,then Shearings did a management buy-out in 1996.Then somewhere along the way
3i and Indigo Capital became the owners,but sold Shearings to a management team in 2014.In April 2016 Lone Star Funds bought Shearings.
VALKYRIE
I’m the same age as GF, '48 model, my early memories nearly always involved Bedford OLBs as father had a new one every couple of years working for a London builders merchant on multi-drop in the home counties. Sometimes, if his motor was in for service it might be an Austin K series, he used to moan about that, reckoned they weren’t a patch on his Bedfords. Started riding with him at 3 years old, had my first night out in his regular weekly digs in Ramsgate at 5 years old in 1953 while he was looking after me as mother was in maternity hospital producing my little brother. Also from a very early age our next door neighbour who was the foreman fitter at the local Esso depot used to call for me when he got called out on breakdowns and would take whatever motor was handy, so I got a ride on all sorts of motors from 10cwt Ford vans to Scammell 15MUs.
Bernard
VALKYRIE:
TonyJ105:
earliest I can remember is standing behind dad in his half cab foden coach , I must have been all of about 3 , so just about room for me in the corner while he drove it. when I got to about 4 or 5 I went with him in the traders , first 1686ME , then XRP451 , mostly round London toy stores and the docks, I remember being thankful of seeing Whitworths on the way back one time in 1686 , I was absolutely frozen , and I was late starting school when I was 5, apparently I with him in the queue at one of the London docks, I do remember that one although its only vague, slept in the cab and had a wash in the back of the lorry.TruckNetUK.Old Time Lorries.Your Earliest Lorry Memories…Oldest Lorry.P1. VALKYRIE. Foden Motorcoach.Shearings Motorcoach Holiday Tours.
HALLOWEEN,Tuesday,31st October,2017.
Foden PVSC6/Bellhouse Hartwell C33F Motorcoach,Chassis No.27746,FBU 235,Oldham,March 1949.New to Shearing,Oldham.Jackson.TonyJ105.:-
0Yes.This beautiful Foden motorcoach was new to Shearing,of Oldham,the one and the same Shearings Motorcoach Holiday Tours company of
today,which is based in Wigan.This motorcoach is operated by Jackson in the photograph - Jackson Motorcoaches of Blackpool ?
Shearings has a long and colourful history,which began in 1919, and has merged and/or taken over many other motorcoach operators in it’s long history - Smiths,Spencers,Happyway,Wallace Arnold,National Holidays,etc… In fact I once counted how many motorcoach operators that make up the present-day Shearings were taken over,or merged into the above named companies that are now Shearings: The number came to around 45!
operators
In fact,the Shearings group itself has been the subject of being bought and sold several times since the 1980s by big business groups:Mecca,then
Shearings became part of Rank after Rank took over Mecca,then Shearings did a management buy-out in 1996.Then somewhere along the way
3i and Indigo Capital became the owners,but sold Shearings to a management team in 2014.In April 2016 Lone Star Funds bought Shearings.VALKYRIE
sorry mate I think it was bought from Sheltons coaches in Wollaston by my dad, Don Jackson aka ‘diesel don’ from Wellingborough Northants, his first step in self employment , he part exchanged the Austin ruby for it , much to my mums annoyance , she didn’t like tootling around in the bus instead of the car. more buses and lorries followed on over the years.
tony jackson
I can vaguely remember my old chap calling at our home one day and taking my mother and I (aged 3) to deliver a load of pigs to Palethorpe’s sausage factory in Evesham in his 1947 war-time spec. Thorneycroft Sturdy. I remember the reg. of that particular lorry as GDF■■? as it, together with it’s two sisters stayed with the firm until the late 1950s. They didn’t throw vehicles away after three years in those days! If memory serves the other Thornies were registered as JAD■■? and JDF■■?. I could never remember the digits on the number plates as they were all referred to by the first three letters.
My earliest memories are of a Shell Mex Scammell Tanker, approx 1952ish. My Dad’s pal, the wonderfully named “Sunny” Nisbett would take me out for the day in the Scammell.
Can your picture that nowadays? Health and Safety eh!! I would be about 5yrs old at that time, I was hooked!! Many years later in the Naughties I worked for a short while as a shunter in Tyne Dock, one day talking to the drivers shop steward Les, he mentioned his Dad had driven for Shell at the Jarrow terminal. It suddenly clicked with me!! Was your Dad called “Sunny”? I asked. Yes was the reply 
l had been mistaking his surname for Nesbitt, and he hadn’t “twigged” with my surname. He was quite a few years younger than me, and the last time I had seen him he was just a child. We got on very well in the short time I was there, but unfortunately soon after I left he became very ill and died.
My dad had a pub on the very busy A63 between Hull and Goole, his many varied customers included lorry drivers and travelling salesmen, (never women)
We had a cleaner who was a neighbour to our family before dad taking the pub. Mrs May was Scottish & in her 60’s Frank her new husband was late 30’s and worked for a local farmer. He used to call in for his liquid lunch every day and take me to York sugar factory with beet. He drove an Austin with an LAD cab, the same cab as a Dodge, Albion and Morris. I was the king of the road sat up there.
I wore calipers on my legs and struggled to get in the cab so drivers lifted me in and out. Frank died mid 40’s with farmers lung [emoji22] but other drivers would stop off and pick me up. Apart from health and safety, how many parents today would trust their eight year old to relative strangers and let them go off in a lorry for the day?
The pub car park seemed to be full of Albion, Dodge, Foden and Commer and I knew all the drivers by name and when they would be back.
I can remember at least 4 drivers settling down with my dads cleaners and bar staff. It was like a dating agency. I drIve past the old pub now and imagine all those old lorries still parked there [emoji14]
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My earliest memory is going into the old Manchester Abbatoir on Water Street in my Dads Ford 4D cattle wagon, probably with a load for one of his old employers. That went in 1961 so I was no more than a 5 year old, the same age as the Ford. He replaced that with a Morris 7 tonner which my brother, 12 years older than me, had collected the chassis and cab from a truck dealer in Bolton on a Saturday morning and I remember pleading with him to take me with him to the Bodybuilders which was in the next village which he duly did and we walked back home, a bit of an adventure at the time I thought, and I remember him carrying back something called “trade plates” which he said had to go back to the bloke who sold the wagon whom it seems, as he told me only in recent times, could occasionally do a better deal on new wagons than a main dealer.
My parents ran a pub in a small village when I was a boy. As there were five pubs in the village. it was hard to make ends meet and my father started going round to other pubs and village shops, selling crisps, sweets and chewing gum out of the back of a Humber estate. As business got better and the rounds expanded, he bought a Commer 15cwt and then a 3 ton Austin lorry from the Royal Navy. It had benches in the back and had been used as a personnel carrier. Dad fitted it out with racks and shelves for all the confectionery and started selling cigarettes as well. I can remember spending the Summer holidays in the early Sixties; riding round Suffolk and North Essex in the dark blue bonneted Austin. But then a London Overspill council estate was built in our village and as our pub was the only one to sell Watney’s Red Barrel, all the cockneys came to drink at the Queen’s. The pub trade boomed and dad sold the Austin and the rounds to a competitor as he had too much work in the pub. Even to this day; when driving through the villages and towns of East Anglia, I can be heard muttering to myself,
" That place used to be a pub. That place used to be a pub."
Earliest memories were riding with dad in a foden dg carting out of the opencast mines round Chesterfield over to Neaps Cliffe power station in Sheffield . I was only about 7 , but I knew the way , Dad always “relied” on me to guide him through Sheffield . That would have been in the late 40s and Dad packed up driving lorries soon after , but the seeds were sown . When I passed my test I started on an ex army Bedford and was "promoted " to an ageing Foden fg .Dad passed away before I passed my test , but he would have kicked my arse for driving lorries had he been alive. Dave
.
As I said earlier I have no recollection of the Military vehicles I travelled in during our time in Libya, however I do remember very well travelling in one of the Foden FG’s in this pic! I would have been about seven or eight when I first rode in it, I also rode in the two Leyland tractor units, Bedford rigids and the Bedford van plus a later S20 chinese six Foden and several Commer strokers but the Foden came first. 
A trip from Reading to the Corona factory at Nottingham sticks in my mind as they gave me a tour of the works and I watched the bottles being capped, Dad driving, Grandad in the passenger seat and yours truly perched on the bonnet with Gardner power throbbing away under my arse! That would have been a long day in the fifties at 30mph and on the way back we were following an old Jaguar by RAF Benson and the passenger door came open and a young girl fell out onto the road. She was covered in blood but alive, Dad came close to running over her!
Pete.
windrush:
As I said earlier I have no recollection of the Military vehicles I travelled in during our time in Libya, however I do remember very well travelling in one of the Foden FG’s in this pic! I would have been about seven or eight when I first rode in it, I also rode in the two Leyland tractor units, Bedford rigids and the Bedford van plus a later S20 chinese six Foden and several Commer strokers but the Foden came first.0
Pete.
Hi Pete, This is a cracking photo of these old wagons, Thank you for posting them, Regards Larry.
