Innholdsfortegnelse for Volume 14 i Vintage Roadscene Archive

Long-term readers of Vintage Roadscene will remember the occasional articles about Grimsby and its transport scene over the years, which were based on material sent to us by Ray Newcomb. Here we have made use of those pictures and memories, plus a whole lot more, which Ray has unearthed and sent, concentrating on the history of what was once the biggest and best-known of the Grimsby-based transport fleets and its predecessors. Ray and his friends and colleagues, ex-drivers and transport professionals, have for many years got together regularly at their ‘Wednesday Club’, when they have been able, to look back at the way things were. Before interrupted by the recent changes caused by the Covid pandemic these meetings, no doubt, involves a fair amount of drinking tea and phrases like:…

The eldest of the six McVeigh brothers was J J (John James) born in 1903. Working in Workington, Cumberland in the 1920s, he joined the well-known public works company, Sir Lindsay Parkinson, which had won a contract to build a new pier and extension at the local docks. The firm retained John McVeigh’s services at the end of the contract and he moved to many parts of the country, as a foreman pile driver on the company’s many contracts. In the 1930s, Sir Lindsay Parkinson, secured the contract to build the Grimsby No 3 Fish Dock along with the Humber Street Bridge. This work was finished in 1934. As John McVeigh had settled happily in Grimsby, he did not wish to travel further and decided to leave the company. Looking…

The two biggest transport companies in Grimsby – indeed, two of the biggest in the country – were combined in 1970 when Humber Warehousing Ltd bought McVeigh Transport Ltd, including Ross Garages Ltd, for about £1 million. The Ross Group Ltd, which sold McVeigh, had become part of the Imperial Tobacco Group, which wanted to dispose of its transport interests and concentrate on food. Humber Warehousing was part of Associated Fisheries, at the time running 279 vehicles and 700 trailers, many of them on frozen food work. The McVeigh fleet, including Allens Transport and Mid Lancs Tansport, had 230 vehicles operating from 12 depots across the country. Integration was intended to increase profits, while reducing the capital employed, notably by disposing of some property assets, although expansion soon saw additional…

In 1960, McVeigh Transport took over the old-established Cusick of Oldham, as the company was known, although by this time, the company’s head office had moved down the road to Manchester, as reported in ‘Scenes Past’ in Vintage Roadscene, June 2012. Samuel Cusick Ltd started its transport operations in the inter-war years, based at a depot at Spencer Street in Hollinwood, Oldham. The company grew rapidly, introducing many new vehicles into the fleet, mainly Maudslay and AEC lorries, supplied by the local agent, Oswald Tillotson of Burnley. Over the years, various other haulage companies were taken over and other depots were opened in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Poole and Bristol. However, this large and successful transport company was one of many to be swallowed up during nationalisation in the late…

McVeigh Transport set up its own HGV driver training school, the services of which were advertised and available to all potential lorry drivers. No doubt the most promising trainees would be offered a job with the company after passing their tests… The driving school was continued after Humber McVeigh was formed, with a number of Ford D Series vehicles used, carrying the company’s livery and the special ‘HGV L’ signs, including UEE 207/8J and TJV 923J, seen here.…

It makes sense that the Humber Warehousing Group included a coachbuilding company, Link Refrigeration Co Ltd, which was able to build and repair the many containers and refrigerated bodies the company used on its various contacts with its frozen foods customers in particular. Link’s first premises were in Granville Street, with offices on the upper floor, just 200 yards from Humber’s yard and the ‘Honest Lawyer’ pub. The pictures show a new Leyland Comet with a fridge trailer on four-in-line suspension, plus a rear view of the interior, a British Oxygen Company (BOC) installation on the front of a trailer body, an insulated conversion of an Austin J4 van – note the ‘Link’ badge – and a trailer being letters for the McCain ‘Microchips’ contract.…

Central to the story of the Humber Warehousing and Humber McVeigh companies is Geoff Hallam, who was Managing Director of both the transport companies and on the board of their Associated Fisheries parent organisation. Geoff Hallam died in December 2015 at the age of 87 after a career spanning more than 60 years in the transport industry. He worked on farms and in hospitals in his youth after World War II, and as a traffic clerk with Forman Bros of Branston, Lincolnshire, whose company we looked at in Vintage Roadscene around 2014, before joining farmer Arthur Lockwood in 1948, who was moving into storage in a big way, first at Ingham, near Lincoln, then Killingholme, near Grimsby. First known as Ingham Agricultural Services, the Humber Warehousing name was used by…

The Danish Bacon story goes back to 1847, when the first six canvas packs of green salted sides of pork, known as ‘bales of bacon’ were imported from Jutland to the Port of London. These achieved a very good price and the lucrative Danish bacon and butter trade was under way. Danish bacon sides were always imported into the UK four sides to a bale, wrapped in hessian, still considered the cheapest and best method. The trade increased steadily, with much use being made of rail transport. The national rail strike at Whitsun 1955 started the move away from rail as the preferred carrier, with the bacon and butter movements through Grimsby being awarded to McVeigh Transport, based at the port. Much of the work had to be sub-contracted, because…