Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i Classic & Vintage Commercials

From their formation in 1933, ERF Ltd gained a solid reputation as builders of well-engineered lorries, hand-built by British craftsmen. The opening pages of one of their 1968 brochures read: “ERF are proud of the fact that they have never introduced a completely new chassis design, for every new production model retains the best of the old one. In other words the vehicle you buy is a product of ERF’s many years of experience in heavy transportation and truck building”. At that time the Sandbach based manufacturer had been in business for 35 years and throughout that period one gentleman had been the driving force behind its engineering excellence and that was Ernest Sherratt. It was Sherratt who originally teamed up with Edwin Richard Foden, ER’s son Dennis and George…

We welcome photos of older lorries (15 years and older) that are still in ser vice for publication in this section. We can accept contributions by email – cvc.ed@kelsey.co.uk, or by post to The Editor, Classic & Vintage Commercials, PO Box 1243, SPALDING, PE11 9HE. Please provide as much (or as little) information about a vehicle as you are able and, before entering or taking photos on private property, please ensure that you have all the permissions that you need to be there, and to be taking photographs. CVC…

The Cumbria Easter Rally took place at Kirkby Stephen and surrounding area over the Easter bank holiday weekend and attracted a good selection of vehicles. This event has taken place for over 20 years now under different names, with vehicles situated at various locations in the area, and one of the highlights being a vintage bus service linking all the sites. Another highlight of the weekend is the Saturday Road run, which leads the vehicles across the high fells surrounding the town, and is rewarding to both drivers and spectators. Although commercial vehicle numbers were slightly down on previous years, there was an interesting selection of entrants to see, with some appearing on the rally field for the first time. It was great to see this event back, and it…

In November 1937, Morris Commercial Cars Ltd. introduced the LC (Light Commercial) 25/30cwt and bigger CV range, also known as Equi-load commercials, designed to distribute the load evenly by positioning the engine over the front axle. The CV model designations indicated the engine type, wheelbase and payload rating. The CV had a four-cylinder 3519cc sidevalve engine until 1949 when a long-stroke four-cylinder 3770cc unit was fitted, whilst the CVS (S for Six) had a six-cylinder 3485cc sidevalve. Wheelbases were 9ft 6ins, 10ft 6ins, 11ft 6ins or 13ft 6ins, rounded down to the nearest foot in the designation. Payloads were 30cwt, 40cwt, 3-4 tons or 4-5 tons. CV11/30 would thus be a four-cylinder model with an 11ft 6ins wheelbase and a 30cwt rating. Production of the CV range ended in 1949.…

One of the biggest issues facing pretty-much every sector of the vehicle preservation sector is a need to attract fresh blood. Look around almost every show, and it’s clear that by and large, ours is an aging hobby. Thankfully though, there are some new, younger enthusiasts coming through, and one such is Beverley-based Tommy Darley. Though only 25, Tommy is now on his fourth preserved lorry, and his 1997 ERF EC14 is a superb piece of kit. We’ll start, though, with a look at Tommy’s family background – lorries are basically in the blood and have always been around. His paternal grandfather was Eric Lovelock, a well-known lorry man around Hull who operated “a handful of wagons” on bulk and scrap haulage. He also ran a well-known Hull scrapyard for…

Whichever era you think of, there are plenty of real classics to look back on. As time moves on more and more lorries take on classic status. At one time most people would have dismissed the likes of ERF E-series and Leyland T45s as being too modern to be of any interest but lorries of the 1980s are now becoming the stuff of nostalgia as we move on in time. After all, 1980 is 42 years ago so vehicles from that period have long since disappeared from the scene. Here’s another chance to reminisce about old favourites from the past.…

STILL CARRYING ON! I have enclosed a photo of my 1996 Renault Premium Beavertail lorry that is still going strong moving tractors and diggers in Sussex. I have owned this vehicle for 17 years – since I was a mere 65! Also enclosed are photos of the same driver in 1958 and 2022 – still Carrying On aged 82! Chris Haines Thanks for that Chris – great to hear of a case where a lorry and its driver are Carrying On! Ed MEMORIES Grateful thanks for yet another first-class edition of the magazine, and I shall no doubt read the print off the pages for the next few days! I really support your decision to run the article about that wonderful man who converted the Bedford Green Goddess to a…

Back in the 1970s l drove a van for a local builder, and as I was also in charge of the wheelbarrow, l was in effect his transport manager. I could, though, see little future in this and after a chat with my Uncle Bert, I decided to go lorry driving, l telephoned Road Transport Industry Training Board, but was told that I needed to be unemployed for six months to qualify, and in any case could only get a Class lll HGV licence with them. So Uncle Bert lent me £212, and I went on a two-week course with Carlton School of Motoring of Sittingbourne. My instructor was a chap named Wally, and after a spot of reversing around cones at Sittingbourne greyhound track car park, I was out…

Following WW2, the Standard Motor Company adopted a single model policy, leading to the launch of the Standard Vanguard in 1947, named after the famous battleship and designed very much with export sales in mind. The beetle-back design of the Phase 1, by Walter Belgrove, was inspired by the 1942 Plymouth. The engine was a 2088cc four-cylinder OHV unit. Four-door estate car, and two-door 12cwt van and pick-up versions followed, based on the saloon, with panels supplied by Fisher & Ludlow and built by Mulliners. The grille and bumper design were changed in late 1951, with a bigger rear window on the saloons, known as the Phase 1A. The Phase 2 saloon of 1952 had a three-box design with a projecting boot, but the front end remained the same as…

If you have a News story, e-mail cvc.ed@kelsey.co.uk or write to The Editor, Classic and Vintage Commercials, PO Box 1243, Spalding PE11 9HE Though we don’t generally like to think of old vehicles in terms of investment, and the costs of storage, maintenance and so on frequently cancel-out any ‘appreciation’, we cannot ignore the fact that values of pretty-much all light commercial vehicles are on the up at the moment. We know of at least one commercial vehicle collector – achap who, we might add, has a pretty good track-record for judging things like this – who is quietly seeking out a few nice LCVs to pop into storage for a year or three… Several factors seem to be at play here. Firstly, the values of most classic cars have…

Over the years Ford have built their success largely on producing the vehicles that people want – and this applies as much to the commercial vehicles as the car side. Unlike some sections of the British industry, they didn’t prescribe what people should want or take their dealers word for what would sell – aslightly arrogant practice which was in part responsible for BMC’s demise. Rather, they took the trouble to go out and find out for themselves. When this worked – as in most cases it did – the vehicles involved sold well. Some even changed the course of motoring. In the UK, the Ford Cortina concept came about through talking to fleet managers and other bulk-buyers, and they soon discovered that while BMCs revolutionary new FWD setup was…

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before recently, the Gaydon lorry show is a bit like the commercial vehicle show equivalent to London’s Windmill Theatre. The ‘Windmill’ famously stayed open all through WW2. The Classic & Vintage Commercials Show at the British Motor Museum managed, by a combination of good planning, changes of date and new pre-booked admission only, to keep running throughout Covid with events happening in both 2020 and 2021. Understandably, these were somewhat scaled-down, but most people were delighted that Tom Caren and the team had pulled out all the stops to make something happen in years when little else did. This year’s show was back to normal in that visitors didn’t need to pre-book, though doing so is financially advantageous! Unfortunately, however, it seems that while…

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Avivid memory from my childhood was watching an elderly six-wheel Scammell tipper lumbering up a dusty road. Its Gardner throbbed and rumbled as it climbed the steep incline on the site of Port Talbot steel works. Scammell’s chain driven 4x2 tippers had become a familiar sight on the biggest jobs since the late 1920s. After creating some 3000 specialist vehicles during the Second World War, legendary designer Oliver North’s last great assignments before he retired in 1948 were the 6x6 Explorer and the four-wheel-drive Mountaineer. The latter was soon listed as a ten-ton capacity dump-truck at a time when ordinary road going four wheelers were limited to twelve tons gross weight. Like heavy haulage versions, they used a 14ft wheelbase, whilst 17 &19ft versions were built for oilfield and similar…