Anyone else like old lorries?

[enioldjoe]

Lovely old bikes

[absolutely]

slideways said:

i prefer old bikes

I prefer old cars but I'll keep that quiet round here!

[Vipers]

Went from a bike to an HGV3 in the Navy, (which gave me a car licence), then qualified in HGV1 before I left, the initial HGV3 was in a Bedford RL, but the best one I ever drove must be the AEC Merurcy

[slideways]

i fell in love with one old bike untill she got pregnant

[ZR1cliff]

Love old lorries, mainly fairground. One of my interests aswell as making models of them

[360 detailing]

Anyone remember the legendary thread from just over a year ago??

The fine gent Andy who was selling his jag and had a few pics of the wife etc posing with it ( Amongst a few more pics, websites etc that came up after the Ph massive done some digging? )

Anyway, he liked trucks:-

http://www.familylambert.net/andy/

[RetroWheels]

Evocative stuff, takes me back to the early eighties.

Fairgrounds on the outskirts of Manchester...

The smell of fried Onions and Diesel.. Waltzers, Mad Dog 20/20, Old Fodens, Gardner 6LX.

Plastic Moccasins,White Socks,Joy Division,Dirty birds and getting ttted by Gypo's.

Great Days ..

[tomTVR]

Try going to Kenya, they dont have any modern trucks, they are all the sort we were using 50 years ago.


Lots like this, but bigger.


For some reason those big old diesel engines driving down the road sound simply stunning

[Stamp]

/\/\/\ Looks like an old Thames Trader we used to have as a grain cart on the farm.
I loved it, but we ended uo cutting the body off and making a trailer and scrapping the cab. It had become dangerous with no brakes. Shame, I would have loved it now to restore.
I remember Dad was a never one st spend out on batteries, so for the harvest it was towed out and left idleing all day and driven back in the evening.

[woodnut67]

I used to love Massey Ferguson's, John Deere's, David Brown's etc, etc but I don't now..........















I'm an ex-tractor fan......

[BruceV8]

Vipers said:

Went from a bike to an HGV3 in the Navy, (which gave me a car licence), then qualified in HGV1 before I left, the initial HGV3 was in a Bedford RL, but the best one I ever drove must be the AEC Merurcy

I learnt to drive in a HGV too. The day after I passed my test, they gave me a metro to drive and I kept hitting all three pedals at once. When I got to my first working unit in 1988 (before I joined my current trade) they still had these:



AEC Militant Mk 1, dating from the late 40s and early 50s. 11 litre engine in the cab, with just a metal cover between you and it, loud and hot; 6 gears - all crash; No power ANYTHING - sometimes took two people to get one round a tight roundabout; Top speed 32 mph; but could slog its way through anything. I never once saw one get stuck off road. Lovely!

They were replaced by these, Bedford 14 tonners (relating to the payload, not the gross vehicle weight). They were a revelation to us at the time but would probably be considered classics now:



And of course we had the workhorse of the army, the Bedford MJ 4 tonner:



Everyone loved to hate the old Bedfords but I developed a real soft spot for them, driving one most days between the ages of 17 and 21 (as well as Land Rovers, which I also love). In the early 90s the army began to supplant the Bedfords with Leyland DAFs which were faster and more comfortable, but nowhere near as rugged. Funnily enough the DAFs are now being sold off and the Bedfords remain in service.

[tankerman24]

BruceV8 said:

While trawling through my photos for the War pics thread I came across this pic:



which is my old boss dealing with a big dodgy bomb on a truck in Northern Ireland in 1980. However, my first thought was: "Oooh nice ERF B Series and Leyland Marathon".

Anyone else share this sad interest I have in old lorries?

Whats in the tank ? its a Suttons 20' iso tank isnt it? what was he carrying? strange place to have the manlid open !

[falcemob]

tankerman24 said:

BruceV8 said:

While trawling through my photos for the War pics thread I came across this pic:



which is my old boss dealing with a big dodgy bomb on a truck in Northern Ireland in 1980. However, my first thought was: "Oooh nice ERF B Series and Leyland Marathon".

Anyone else share this sad interest I have in old lorries?

Whats in the tank ? its a Suttons 20' iso tank isnt it? what was he carrying? strange place to have the manlid open !

Re-read the OP, is anywhere a strange place to be dealing with a bomb?

[BruceV8]

tankerman24 said:

BruceV8 said:

While trawling through my photos for the War pics thread I came across this pic:



which is my old boss dealing with a big dodgy bomb on a truck in Northern Ireland in 1980. However, my first thought was: "Oooh nice ERF B Series and Leyland Marathon".

Anyone else share this sad interest I have in old lorries?

Whats in the tank ? its a Suttons 20' iso tank isnt it? what was he carrying? strange place to have the manlid open !

Don't know tbh, but you can see UN labels on the front of the tank, so it must have been some hazardous substance. Never really paid much attention to the trailer before, but its quite odd actually. Looks like a stepframe plant trailer with the tank plonked on top. And the tractor has a full sleeper cab, which must have been a rarity in 1980.

[tankerman24]

I used to drive these things in the nineties, its a swan neck trailer with a 20' container tank, horrible things as most of them had no baffles (treacle was the worst thing I carried as up to full weight only half filled the tank) when you stopped you felt sea sick with it slopping about,
Like I said the photo shows them looking in the top whih is a strange place to do it parked there lol, would be interested if you could find out what was going on

[spaximus]

Olf said:

BruceV8 said:

Olf said:

I've got a thing for old Scammels.

Edited by Olf on Saturday 1st November 22:17

Is that a Pioneer? I quite fancy a Crusader recovery truck. Plus thats about the most manly name for any vehicle ever - Scammell Crusader. (Or is it Thorneycroft Nubian?)

It's an explorer.

I used to drive one of those as a recovery truck in Rotherham. Fuel consumption was almost gallons per mile. Funniest moment was when Hoghway recovery went to get a bin lorry that was stuck in a field with one of their new wreckers, it got stuck and so did the six wheeled transcontinental sent to get the now two stuck trucks. I went with the Scammell and with the tank winch pulled then all out at once, lots of embarresed faces when you bear in mind they had probably £100k of tackle and ours was about £3k. It was also used to crush car shells, you could get all the axles at huge angles.

[falcemob]

BruceV8 said:

tankerman24 said:

BruceV8 said:

While trawling through my photos for the War pics thread I came across this pic:


which is my old boss dealing with a big dodgy bomb on a truck in Northern Ireland in 1980. However, my first thought was: "Oooh nice ERF B Series and Leyland Marathon".

Anyone else share this sad interest I have in old lorries?

Whats in the tank ? its a Suttons 20' iso tank isnt it? what was he carrying? strange place to have the manlid open !

Don't know tbh, but you can see UN labels on the front of the tank, so it must have been some hazardous substance. Never really paid much attention to the trailer before, but its quite odd actually. Looks like a stepframe plant trailer with the tank plonked on top. And the tractor has a full sleeper cab, which must have been a rarity in 1980.

1980 wasn't the dark ages you know. We did have ADR regs, or the equivalent, back then and had to carry UN labels for anything hazardous. The trailer is a normal step frame trailer for carrying a standard 20ft ISO container, that one just has a tank in it. Probably a step frame to keep the CoG or height low as container tanks can get pretty unstable at times.
Sleeper cabs were not that rare in the eighties, they started being introduced in the seventies, we had the some of the first Volvo F88s with sleepers in 1971 and they came as an optional non sleeper cab. Most European trucks had sleepers back then. The ERF's and Marathons both had sleeper versions although the Marathon one was not so common but I did drive one for a while in the mid eighties.

Edited by falcemob on Sunday 2nd November 11:39

[BruceV8]

tankerman24 said:

I used to drive these things in the nineties, its a swan neck trailer with a 20' container tank, horrible things as most of them had no baffles (treacle was the worst thing I carried as up to full weight only half filled the tank) when you stopped you felt sea sick with it slopping about,
Like I said the photo shows them looking in the top whih is a strange place to do it parked there lol, would be interested if you could find out what was going on

IIRC both lorries were hijacked and abandoned on a bridge near the border crossing from Northern Ireland into the Republic - in effect stopping all Belfast to Dublin traffic. The tanker had a device placed on it somewhere - probably inside the tank. This was at a time and place when the IRA were particularly cunning so it took some time to clear. In situations like this where there is one bomb there is often another and I think that was indeed the case here. If memory serves there was another command initiated device buried alongside the tankers. It had been placed before the lorries were stolen and they were really there to lure the security forces onto the bigger buried device. I'll check on Monday. I should state that I had nothing to do with this task - I was 10 years old at the time!

[ZR1cliff]

Some more snaps of Fairground Fodens that I took. Foden along with ERF, AEC and other British lorries have a long history among fairground lorries, sadly IIRC, British lorry builders are all no more

[Baby Huey]

www.vintagecommercialvehicle.freeserve.co.uk

Excellent photo archive here.