#1 Ford 4D…Harrisons of Dewsbury, 1959
#2 Commer TS3…Fred Chappell, Batley, 1961.
#3 New Atki 8 wheeler…Fred Chappell, Batley
#4 New Atki artic…Fred Chappell, Batley
Then moved on to fuel tankers, ERF, Foden, AEC etc.
And enjoyed every minute of my working life. Never smashed one up, never injured anybody. 
Fred was a good man, he gave a few of us young uns a start in life and I’ll be forever grateful to him.
Of course, I ‘exchanged paint’ occasionally, lost a mirror here and there 
Lawrence Dunbar:
My first Artic Foden Ex BOC Rotherham, Leyland 680 PP & The Foden 12 speed box, This was a great bit of gear I did lots of long distance work , In fact more than local tipper stuff, I took Spratts from North Shields To Hull Grimsby & Frazerbrough, Top paid jobs, Regards Larry.
Hi Larry,MET547G was Rotherham registered but actually spent its working life at Teesport,i know this because i drove it!!
noisy bugger as well it was,if i can upload the photo i will,taken on Teesdock Road
Ste46:
0A small family firm in Derbyshire, working the local gravel pits and limestone quarries. Loved it (at the time!)
Steve
That Trader looks to have an Albion D/D back end, or are my eyes deceiving me ? Great idea though all the same ! Cheers Bewick.
Bewick:
Ste46:
0A small family firm in Derbyshire, working the local gravel pits and limestone quarries. Loved it (at the time!)
Steve
That Trader looks to have an Albion D/D back end, or are my eyes deceiving me ? Great idea though all the same ! Cheers Bewick.
I’ve enlarged the photo, and the hubs are very similar to Albion hubs but I don’t think that they are. Would it be a County conversion, and if so whose axles did they use?
gingerfold:
Bewick:
Ste46:
0A small family firm in Derbyshire, working the local gravel pits and limestone quarries. Loved it (at the time!)
Steve
That Trader looks to have an Albion D/D back end, or are my eyes deceiving me ? Great idea though all the same ! Cheers Bewick.
I’ve enlarged the photo, and the hubs are very similar to Albion hubs but I don’t think that they are. Would it be a County conversion, and if so whose axles did they use?
Albion of course ! 
I can’t think of another axle manufacturer with hubs similar to the Albions, but County could have purchased the axles from Leyland/Albion for their Ford conversion work ? The only other Trader conversions were trailing axle jobs, Primrose, York and Boyes ? Cheers Dennis.
joeshell:
Lawrence Dunbar:
1My first Artic Foden Ex BOC Rotherham, Leyland 680 PP & The Foden 12 speed box, This was a great bit of gear I did lots of long distance work , In fact more than local tipper stuff, I took Spratts from North Shields To Hull Grimsby & Frazerbrough, Top paid jobs, Regards Larry.Hi Larry,MET547G was Rotherham registered but actually spent its working life at Teesport,i know this because i drove it!!
noisy bugger as well it was,if i can upload the photo i will,taken on Teesdock Road
Thank you “joeshell”, I bought this motor from Jimmy Monte who had a breakers yard at Fencehouses, He used to get quite a lot of Fodens from BOC, The ICI & Various other firms , I give him £12.000. for it , I stripped the BOC Gear stuff off, Painted it & went out to work with it , I was a cracking bit of gear IMO I went as far as Cardiff, London, Birmingham,Frazerbrough, Glasgow. Manchester, Liverpool, Plus, It was a nice motor to drive its 12 speed Foden Box was as smooths as a babies bum when changing gear, It was also good on fuel 10 mpg running at 32 Tonne Gross with a 22 tonne payload on my C/F Tipper trailer, I also did some quarry work locally for a builders merchant which paid decent money, Plus I did work out of Moot Law Quarry which was run by North Tyne Road Stone , Who paid weekly after the first months work, So that was great a cheque every week coming in, I never made a fortune running a few motors as a family concern but I did OK, & Its my birthday on the 24th of July, Bloody hell Im getting old, , Im just having a Glenmorangie Single Malt in a pint glass, 
, Regards Larry.
Bewick:
gingerfold:
Bewick:
Ste46:
0A small family firm in Derbyshire, working the local gravel pits and limestone quarries. Loved it (at the time!)
Steve
That Trader looks to have an Albion D/D back end, or are my eyes deceiving me ? Great idea though all the same ! Cheers Bewick.
I’ve enlarged the photo, and the hubs are very similar to Albion hubs but I don’t think that they are. Would it be a County conversion, and if so whose axles did they use?
Albion of course !
We had two of 'em - County conversions, IIRC. Tony (Rastone) will know when he sees this because he supplied both of them new.
Steve
grumpy old man:
#1 Ford 4D…Harrisons of Dewsbury, 1959
#2 Commer TS3…Fred Chappell, Batley, 1961.
#3 New Atki 8 wheeler…Fred Chappell, Batley
#4 New Atki artic…Fred Chappell, Batley
Then moved on to fuel tankers, ERF, Foden, AEC etc.And enjoyed every minute of my working life. Never smashed one up, never injured anybody.
Fred was a good man, he gave a few of us young uns a start in life and I’ll be forever grateful to him.Of course, I ‘exchanged paint’ occasionally, lost a mirror here and there
It’s bad form to quote one of your own messages but I completely forgot one of the best vehicles I ever drove:-
#3 should be my brand new AEC Marshall (5177 WY)
Fred knew I had a liking for AEC’s and the old bugga kept 5177 sat in the yard for two weeks before he said…“take the AEC Brian”
Happy days.
Forgot this one, sorry.
I was a freshly minted squaddie, straight out of (2 years) training.
The regiment had gone to Ireland but I was too young at 17 1/2
We were tasked to move these suckas around every so often but none of us had a HGV licence.
Get on with it, they said. Happy days
We were pulling away in 3rd thinking it was 1st. Man, how fast are these gonna be in top gear!!
Getting used to the air brakes, seeing wagons do a dead stop from 20 mph, squaddie driver smashed up against the windscreen, never got old ;D
The first I drove (aged 20 and living in Somerset) was a '75 TK860 horsebox whose owner used it to move anything and everything (when it wasn’t on duty shifting his father-in-law’s nags about the place), up to and including farm equipment, woodpiles and loads of 40lb blocks of cheese (don’t ask). Apart from the Armstrong steering and the 4-sp box (that felt like trying to get a stick to move in 3 foot of semi-dried concrete - a typical TK then) the thing that struck me was how slow it was - it made the VW LT35 vans I’d been driving feel small, agile and very quick. It also had brakes… apparently.
My first truck and trip solo other than round the yard which was an earner was this old Matador wrecker based at the BRS Irthlingborough repair centre,i went to the M1 and towed a parcels Leyland Comet with clutch problems into Northampton depot.
Dig
I don’t have a picture of my first truck, but I worked for these…
I first drove a Bedford for Carryfast, then a brand new Leyland Roadrunner in the same livery as above.
my first truck, good as gold bought in 75 so getting on a bit by then, I kept it for another 8 years, I did have a bump but it stayed the right way up,
hotel magnum:
my first truck, good as gold bought in 75 so getting on a bit by then, I kept it for another 8 years, I did have a bump but it stayed the right way up,
Nice photo, Its even got Zanneties fitted, They were good in their day but they never caught on, 
, Regards Larry.
a real good bonus maker when on stockpiling chip. Had my class 1 but had to start at bottom on class3 (was a plant operator with them),when needed a bit extra money on a class 2 then made my way up to low loader on class 1 after iirc 5yrs twas the way things were done ,I could have left and went straight on to artics but I decieded to stick where I was and get some experience
First pic is the 1st brand new motor I drove, previously it was a W reg Clydesdale, no pic.
Second Pic is the 1st Artic after passing my class 1, originally passed my class 3 at 18 yr old with the RTITB young drivers scheme.
Third pic, 1st motor I bought as an O/D, I think Charles Russell of Cheltenham own her now?
Fourth pic is the first motor I ever bought, I was 18 at the time and she was previously owned by the company in the first pic. Cheer’s Pete
First lorry I drove was a Thames 4D flatbed for Corrals on bagged coal deliveries, that was during the bad winter of 1962, I turned up at the yard, aged 18, looking for a job as a mate but they were short of drivers (the roads were snow and ice covered), I said I could drive and the manager took my licence to the local police station and they informed him OK but only up to 3 tons unladen, the Fords were 2ton 19cwt 2qtrs u/w so that was it I had ajob. The first HGV at 21 was a bonneted Bedford 6 cu yard tipper, happy days but no money, I think 4/7d an hour in 1965. The money had improved by the time I retired.
Working for a public works contractor in North London, aged 18 as a labourer but had a licence, was in the yard one morning when the boss came out in the yard shouting and raving about a loaded lorry parked in the yard, a petrol engine O type Bedford, he turned to me and said take that lorry to so and so place, I said I cant drive a lorry he said by the time you get to where your going you’ll be an expert… The start of
the next 50 years on the road, driving most types and makes of lorries, only thing that has been said before, never drove a truck in my life, driven many dozens of lorries and enjoyed every moment of it…
Ossie
