Truck Shite

[Dyslexic Viking]

2 minutes ago, warch said:

British people were a bit suspicious of foreign vehicles in the 70s, so people who bought vehicles from overseas were generally regarded as mavericks. They were generally regarded as sub par too, so French cars were considered to be hard to work on, Japanese cars shoddily built (the irony!), Italian cars were rotboxes (again...)

This sort of thinking persisted well into the 1980s as well. My mum bought a rhd Opel Kadett as a grey import in 1984 (basically a Mk2 Astra). One day, shortly after buying it she came out of a meeting to find an older gentleman standing next to it spluttering with rage;

'Bloody German cars! I didn't fight in the war so people could go and buy bloody German cars!'

 

 

It's a strange thing about German vehicles because Norway had equally bad experiences with the Germans during the war and perhaps even more so since we were invaded and they stayed here for 5 years. But I have never heard of anything like that in Norway ever against German goods and cars, and German cars sold well in the 50s and were bestsellers in the 60s, when people still remembered the war well. 

So can one say that people in the UK are a bit strange?

[danthecapriman]

5 minutes ago, warch said:

British people were a bit suspicious of foreign vehicles in the 70s, so people who bought vehicles from overseas were generally regarded as mavericks. They were generally regarded as sub par too, so French cars were considered to be hard to work on, Japanese cars shoddily built (the irony!), Italian cars were rotboxes (again...)

This sort of thinking persisted well into the 1980s as well. My mum bought a rhd Opel Kadett as a grey import in 1984 (basically a Mk2 Astra). One day, shortly after buying it she came out of a meeting to find an older gentleman standing next to it spluttering with rage;

'Bloody German cars! I didn't fight in the war so people could go and buy bloody German cars!'

 

 

That buying foreign mentality was definitely a big part of it. But it was a hangover from WW2 which at that time was still recent history. 
Buying the products of what were ‘the enemy’ was a big no no. German and especially Japanese were definitely not a good look back then. Part of it being of course what those two nations did to people in WW2 and the buyers of cars etc were the generation that suffered from it and saw it with their own eyes. 
I know my grandad was a WW2 veteran and he did not take kindly to the German or Japanese products. It’s understandable in a way.

[Metal Guru]

3 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

It's a strange thing about German vehicles because Norway had equally bad experiences with the Germans during the war and perhaps even more so since we were invaded and they stayed here for 5 years. But I have never heard of anything like that in Norway ever against German goods and cars, and German cars sold well in the 50s and were bestsellers in the 60s, when people still remembered the war well. 

So can one say that people in the UK are a bit strange?

There were loads of Beetles around in the 60s, never heard anyone castigated for having one. Similarly bubble cars and even Messerschmidts ( people mainly laughed).

 

[Dyslexic Viking]

The only British truck brand that sold well in Norway was Bedford. And from what I've read, price and high payload were the main selling points, and over time were mostly bought by fleets. I have read that in fleets with better trucks such as Scania and Volvo, the Bedfords were mostly reserved for the new drivers who were at the bottom of the ranks.

Norwegian Bedfords

 

Jarlsberg Miniralvann truck fleet

 

Mustad Margarinfabrikk 1968

 

Both pictures below are from Oslo Renholdsverk's fleet and among the Bedfords there are still several US trucks.

[quicksilver]

21 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

That buying foreign mentality was definitely a big part of it. But it was a hangover from WW2 which at that time was still recent history. 
Buying the products of what were ‘the enemy’ was a big no no. German and especially Japanese were definitely not a good look back then. Part of it being of course what those two nations did to people in WW2 and the buyers of cars etc were the generation that suffered from it and saw it with their own eyes. 
I know my grandad was a WW2 veteran and he did not take kindly to the German or Japanese products. It’s understandable in a way.

My late grandad was an interesting case. He was a Polish refugee who survived the concentration camps so he could be forgiven for hating all things German, but in 1966 when memories of the war were still fairly fresh he bought a brand new VW Beetle. He was obviously prepared to overlook its origins and the negative comments and appreciate it on its own merits as a decent car, and it served him well for 15 years.

[warch]

21 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

So can one say that people in the UK are a bit strange?

Definitely.

I've linked an article about the changing landscape of the 1970s commercial marketplace El ecade of change In the 1970s, European truck manufacturers | 7th March 2013 | The Commercial Motor Archive

 

[willswitchengage]

On 20/08/2025 at 06:05, Cavcraft said:

Looks a bit Volvo-ish to me. Take it they're not in bed with Iv*co any longer, as you think it'd make more sense to have a badge engineered S-way?

Nope. I don't believe Ford and IVECO have been related since ~2000. Ford Turkey is a completely independent company and they've done a terrific job imho in a very competitive market.

[EyesWeldedShut]

8 minutes ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

The only British truck brand that sold well in Norway was Bedford. 

Having owned/broken/repaired a 1970 (petrol) TK**, a later (diesel) TK and then a 1989 (AWD badged) TL all I can say is that the earlier comments regarding how the UK dropped the ball 100% applied to Bedford.
The late (AWD) TLs came with a better engine, five speed gearbox but, underneath, were still the 1950's design (drum brakes all round, noisy and so on) BUT they had a chassis made out of old railway lines and a very basic (thus easily worked on) mechanicals. Parts compatibility across the years too.
This meant they were great for the UK armed forces and off the beaten track places like Kenya, Borneo and, err, Norway.
Meanwhile there's the Ford Cargo and other suchlike modern stuff arriving on the market but, Bedford? Still making the equivalent of the Ford D Series.

**this one was a right laugh. Hydraulic foundation brakes (no air). Handbrake was a drum brake on the propshaft (like the Series Land Rovers). Flat out it could get up to 45 mph (phorrrr!) - an emergency stop involved standing up on the brake pedal, pulling down on the steering wheel for extra leverage. And praying.

[danthecapriman]

Another thing that was definitely true of the UK was that over here we could buy products of our own manufacturers. Until the 80’s really the UK was a big manufacturer of all sorts of things. People here had always bought British because we could, and most of the things people needed were made here. Literally everything from fabric, clothing, paint and chemicals, timber, building materials, right through cars, trucks, trains, ships, heavy manufacturing for a massive range of items etc etc it was all made here and all sold for export too. 
There was a pride in buying our own products. 
Germany and France were the same. They did much the same making things and selling them for export, but also in their home markets the overwhelming majority of cars or trucks (as an example) were from their own manufacturers. Many countries also incentivised buying their own stuff. French utilities and government bodies for example were expected to be procuring a very high percentage of domestically produced vehicles. Much the same in the UK.

The biggest changes came about in the 80’s though I think. That seems to have been the decade where things turned and suddenly there were an awful lot more foreign vehicles around. I guess by then people here had become fed up with all the political and managerial incompetence within British companies and the militant unions had done their part on the opposite side too. Constantly warring sides inside industry is only ever going to drive down the quality and eventually everything will collapse. There was a consumer will get fed up of buying crap that falls apart and look elsewhere. 
If the foreign companies aren’t suffering the same issues and their products are good, reliable and well made then that’s what people start buying instead. 
We were our own worst enemy in many cases and for the most part only have ourselves to blame for the decline of our manufacturing industry. In many cases it destroyed communities too where the factories closed down and the workers laid off many never got new jobs afterwards. Obviously if your a trained vehicle builder and there’s no more car factories around what do you do!? Part of that is also that the skills those people had don’t get passed on to the next generation either so coming back from it in future becomes harder. 
The same thing happened with the mining industry in the UK. Government and management were at war with the unions and eventually something had to give. Unfortunately it meant the real losers were the miners themselves who all lost their jobs and the community they lived in became filled with unemployed miners. Obviously this goes into politics and social issues too!

The only thing this country really does now is financial bollocks and making cups of coffee (for foreign owned companies!). 
It’s sad really what’s happened here but like I said, it’s mostly our own fault.

 

[danthecapriman]

2 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Having owned/broken/repaired a 1970 (petrol) TK**, a later (diesel) TK and then a 1989 (AWD badged) TL all I can say is that the earlier comments regarding how the UK dropped the ball 100% applied to Bedford.
The late (AWD) TLs came with a better engine, five speed gearbox but, underneath, were still the 1950's design (drum brakes all round, noisy and so on) BUT they had a chassis made out of old railway lines and a very basic (thus easily worked on) mechanicals. Parts compatibility across the years too.
This meant they were great for the UK armed forces and off the beaten track places like Kenya, Borneo and, err, Norway.
Meanwhile there's the Ford Cargo and other suchlike modern stuff arriving on the market but, Bedford? Still making the equivalent of the Ford D Series.

**this one was a right laugh. Hydraulic foundation brakes (no air). Handbrake was a drum brake on the propshaft (like the Series Land Rovers). Flat out it could get up to 45 mph (phorrrr!) - an emergency stop involved standing up on the brake pedal, pulling down on the steering wheel for extra leverage. And praying.

Don’t forget the unkillable Bedford TJ. Used heavily here in the UK but also incredibly successful and still popular now in places like India and Pakistan because it was so durable and easy to keep going.

Despite what the politicians and press would have everyone believe, we did build some absolutely brilliant stuff. It’s just a shame we never capitalised on it or built on it.

[Dyslexic Viking]

Now will one of Norway's most legendary trucks finally be restored. A 1947 Mack 6x4 known as Ormen Lange named after a large Viking ship. This was Norway's largest truck for a long time and was massive compared to the typical smaller Norwegian trucks at the time. It had a total weight of 24 tons and a payload of 16 tons and with trailers over 40 tons total weight, it had 6x4 and a 200hp Hercules engine if the source is correct. It transported fuel among other things to military airports and oil and had 2 trailers.

 

Present time

 

And for comparison this White was a typical Norwegian fuel tanker at the time which shows how massive Ormen Lange was.

[500tops]

Spotted at the Honiton Hill Rally last weekend 

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, 500tops said:

Spotted at the Honiton Hill Rally last weekend 

South Western Electricity Board. I wonder if it’s actually one of their old trucks or just painted up like one?

Love the Leyland Clydesdale chassis cab too. Looks like a restoration in progress.

[Metal Guru]

8 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

Another thing that was definitely true of the UK was that over here we could buy products of our own manufacturers. Until the 80’s really the UK was a big manufacturer of all sorts of things. People here had always bought British because we could, and most of the things people needed were made here. Literally everything from fabric, clothing, paint and chemicals, timber, building materials, right through cars, trucks, trains, ships, heavy manufacturing for a massive range of items etc etc it was all made here and all sold for export too. 
There was a pride in buying our own products. 
Germany and France were the same. They did much the same making things and selling them for export, but also in their home markets the overwhelming majority of cars or trucks (as an example) were from their own manufacturers. Many countries also incentivised buying their own stuff. French utilities and government bodies for example were expected to be procuring a very high percentage of domestically produced vehicles. Much the same in the UK.

The biggest changes came about in the 80’s though I think. That seems to have been the decade where things turned and suddenly there were an awful lot more foreign vehicles around. I guess by then people here had become fed up with all the political and managerial incompetence within British companies and the militant unions had done their part on the opposite side too. Constantly warring sides inside industry is only ever going to drive down the quality and eventually everything will collapse. There was a consumer will get fed up of buying crap that falls apart and look elsewhere. 
If the foreign companies aren’t suffering the same issues and their products are good, reliable and well made then that’s what people start buying instead. 
We were our own worst enemy in many cases and for the most part only have ourselves to blame for the decline of our manufacturing industry. In many cases it destroyed communities too where the factories closed down and the workers laid off many never got new jobs afterwards. Obviously if your a trained vehicle builder and there’s no more car factories around what do you do!? Part of that is also that the skills those people had don’t get passed on to the next generation either so coming back from it in future becomes harder. 
The same thing happened with the mining industry in the UK. Government and management were at war with the unions and eventually something had to give. Unfortunately it meant the real losers were the miners themselves who all lost their jobs and the community they lived in became filled with unemployed miners. Obviously this goes into politics and social issues too!

The only thing this country really does now is financial bollocks and making cups of coffee (for foreign owned companies!). 
It’s sad really what’s happened here but like I said, it’s mostly our own fault.

 

Japanese cars got established for being reliable whereas most European cars of that era weren’t. They were mostly ugly and were even worse rust buckets than all but Italian cars (although TBF all 60s and 70s cars were rust buckets).

Mining in the UK peaked in 1903 and only lasted as long as it did due to two world wars and British Rail using steam until 1965. Thatcher and Scargill might have finished it off, but it was dying long before they came along.

[danthecapriman]

5 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

Japanese cars got established for being reliable whereas most European cars of that era weren’t. They were mostly ugly and were even worse rust buckets than all but Italian cars (although TBF all 60s and 70s cars were rust buckets).

Mining in the UK peaked in 1903 and only lasted as long as it did due to two world wars and British Rail using steam until 1965. Thatcher and Scargill might have finished it off, but it was dying long before they came along.

1968 was the end of steam on BR, although it had massively reduced in use well before then with all the new diesels coming into use. Many of those didn’t have long lives either as they were essentially first generation diesel locomotives that were found to be unsuitable and/or unreliable. In 1968 diesel locomotive withdrawals actually outnumbered steam locomotive withdrawals! 
Don’t forget also, coal mining was massively supplying power generation. That’s primarily where most UK mined coal went after around the 60’s. British Rail ran merry-go-round trains from the coal fields to power stations multiple times every day. 
It often gets forgotten or ignored, but it was actually under the Labour government in the 70’s that most coal mines were shut down. Thatcher just hammered in the final nails. 
Id imagine most coal usage was for power generation after the advent and mass introduction of gas and electricity to homes. Even most industry would have been using those, apart from older heavy industries.

 

When I was in school I had a DT teacher who told us a story from when he was in his previous job in some industry where they were ordering parts from a UK manufacturer and they always received them with something like a 5% faulty parts in each shipment. Eventually they switched to a Japanese supplier for the same thing and during the negotiations for the orders it came up about an allowance of X% faulty parts straight out of the box. Apparently the Japanese guy from the company involved said they don’t know why any of the parts would be allowed to be faulty from the box and that they work to a 100% reliable shipment!    
The irony with Japanese and German dominance of the motor industry is that it was the Brits who actually played a huge part in that at the start after WW2. It was a British Army guy who got Volkswagen up and running properly again to get Germany moving after being devastated. And of course Austin were a big part at the beginning of the Japanese motor industry. Funny how things change! They must look at the UK and laugh. How could a country that once did all that become effectively nothing!? We’ve allowed everything to disappear.

[Metal Guru]

39 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

1968 was the end of steam on BR, although it had massively reduced in use well before then with all the new diesels coming into use. Many of those didn’t have long lives either as they were essentially first generation diesel locomotives that were found to be unsuitable and/or unreliable. In 1968 diesel locomotive withdrawals actually outnumbered steam locomotive withdrawals! 
Don’t forget also, coal mining was massively supplying power generation. That’s primarily where most UK mined coal went after around the 60’s. British Rail ran merry-go-round trains from the coal fields to power stations multiple times every day. 
It often gets forgotten or ignored, but it was actually under the Labour government in the 70’s that most coal mines were shut down. Thatcher just hammered in the final nails. 
Id imagine most coal usage was for power generation after the advent and mass introduction of gas and electricity to homes. Even most industry would have been using those, apart from older heavy industries.

 

When I was in school I had a DT teacher who told us a story from when he was in his previous job in some industry where they were ordering parts from a UK manufacturer and they always received them with something like a 5% faulty parts in each shipment. Eventually they switched to a Japanese supplier for the same thing and during the negotiations for the orders it came up about an allowance of X% faulty parts straight out of the box. Apparently the Japanese guy from the company involved said they don’t know why any of the parts would be allowed to be faulty from the box and that they work to a 100% reliable shipment!    
The irony with Japanese and German dominance of the motor industry is that it was the Brits who actually played a huge part in that at the start after WW2. It was a British Army guy who got Volkswagen up and running properly again to get Germany moving after being devastated. And of course Austin were a big part at the beginning of the Japanese motor industry. Funny how things change! They must look at the UK and laugh. How could a country that once did all that become effectively nothing!? We’ve allowed everything to disappear.

Coal was also used for making gas before North Sea gas was connected in the 70s. That would have been a significant loss of business for the NCB too.

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Metal Guru said:

Coal was also used for making gas before North Sea gas was connected in the 70s. That would have been a significant loss of business for the NCB too.

I’ve noticed since moving here to the Forest of Dean there’s lots of old coal mines and stone quarries. The stone quarries are still running, but most of the coal mines are long closed, but there’s a handful of tiny mines still operating. You can walk out in the forest and just find them in random places. The coal they bring out seems to be in very small quantities so it can’t be very profitable? No idea what it’s actually used for either?

Getting it out of the forest must be a bit of a job too, most are accessible by tiny dirt tracks or lightly laid gravel tracks so any big heavy trucks probably won’t go there. I’ve never seen any of it be picked up!

[500tops]

[willswitchengage]

On 28/08/2025 at 19:02, danthecapriman said:

Another

Another reason I speculate behind the demise of the UK truck manufacturing industry is that it was fragmented and making the wrong products. We effectively made stuff for the UK market only, which was mainly small trucks, very little was exported, and we had dozens of competing manufacturers. Meanwhile on the continent there was one huge market for larger, more powerful vehicles dominated by fewer players - who largely have not changed in almost fifty years. The European manufacturers slowly infiltrated the UK with a better product, whereas we couldn't really export anything with our minnows making what nobody wanted. It's largely the same story with cars, buses and to an extent trains too.

[willswitchengage]

[quicksilver]

2 hours ago, 500tops said:

 

Late registration madness! The 1960s TK design on a G-prefix looks so wrong but Wikipedia suggests AWD carried on making them exclusively for military use until 1994 so presumably this is one of those.

[Snipes]

5 hours ago, willswitchengage said:

Another reason I speculate behind the demise of the UK truck manufacturing industry is that it was fragmented and making the wrong products. We effectively made stuff for the UK market only, which was mainly small trucks, very little was exported, and we had dozens of competing manufacturers. Meanwhile on the continent there was one huge market for larger, more powerful vehicles dominated by fewer players - who largely have not changed in almost fifty years. The European manufacturers slowly infiltrated the UK with a better product, whereas we couldn't really export anything with our minnows making what nobody wanted. It's largely the same story with cars, buses and to an extent trains too.

With the Chinese, Indonesian, Mexico etc mega factories churning hundreds of thousands of vehicles and paying employees very little it all felt (with hindsight) very inevitable.

[willswitchengage]

10 hours ago, Snipes said:

With the Chinese, Indonesian, Mexico etc mega factories churning hundreds of thousands of vehicles and paying employees very little it all felt (with hindsight) very inevitable.

Only recently though have these started making European market cars in any decent numbers and the only imported trucks in Europe have been the averagely successful Mitsi/Isuzu things.

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, willswitchengage said:

Only recently though have these started making European market cars in any decent numbers and the only imported trucks in Europe have been the averagely successful Mitsi/Isuzu things.

Didn’t Hino have a stab at UK market imports at one bit? Are they still available?

I do vaguely recall seeing a few Hino’s (tippers I think), and likewise those 90’s Pegaso trucks over here but in minuscule numbers. Presumably they were a testing the water exercise that didn’t work out.

Nissan make some mid sized trucks which you do see on the continent but they never seem to have been available here.

[R Lutz]

31 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

Didn’t Hino have a stab at UK market imports at one bit? Are they still available?

You're going back to the late '80s, early '90s there. They were based out of North Yorkshire from memory and had gone by the mid '90s.

[EyesWeldedShut]

4 minutes ago, R Lutz said:

You're going back to the late '80s, early '90s there. They were based out of North Yorkshire from memory and had gone by the mid '90s.

Weren't they imported to Ireland as knock down kits then shipped over the Irish Sea? A fair few of the bigger construction companies down London way ran them for a couple of years then they all seemed to vanish overnight...

[edit] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/the-truck-of-the-irish-1349163.html

[R Lutz]

I knew the field engineer for Harris/Hino trucks at the time. He did an insane mileage to keep customers happy. Not sure what happened to it, but I'm sure it was based out of Catterick? Long time ago, so I maybe wrong. 

[CreepingJesus]

Way, way back in this thread, I did have a pic of a rarer than rare (I think I/we somehow established there were only two in the country) Hino tractor unit, which a West Lothian garage were using as a trailer shifter. They were indeed built from CKD kits, by Harris in Eire, but I'm pretty sure the main English service agent was Pelican Engineering in Leeds. The success they had came from not playing the corporate game, same as Scania did up to a point, appealing to owner operators and small private fleets instead; that wasn't the way our market was destined to remain, so they just got squeezed out in the end.

But then, they had a strong home market to work on, and as they've done technical and development deals with Scania, Cummins and Bosch (off the top of my head) over the years, Hino clearly weren't insular. Could a major tie-up with one of our ailing small manufacturers have been done? We'll never know.

[danthecapriman]

46 minutes ago, CreepingJesus said:

Way, way back in this thread, I did have a pic of a rarer than rare (I think I/we somehow established there were only two in the country) Hino tractor unit, which a West Lothian garage were using as a trailer shifter. They were indeed built from CKD kits, by Harris in Eire, but I'm pretty sure the main English service agent was Pelican Engineering in Leeds. The success they had came from not playing the corporate game, same as Scania did up to a point, appealing to owner operators and small private fleets instead; that wasn't the way our market was destined to remain, so they just got squeezed out in the end.

But then, they had a strong home market to work on, and as they've done technical and development deals with Scania, Cummins and Bosch (off the top of my head) over the years, Hino clearly weren't insular. Could a major tie-up with one of our ailing small manufacturers have been done? We'll never know.

From what I gather Hino’s were/are excellent trucks. Reliable and robust. 
They seem popular in remote places and get used in jungle type environments a lot for earth moving and logging, which must say a lot! 
It’s a pity they were squeezed out of the UK.

It must be quite difficult for newcomers to get a good foot hold in the UK market nowadays as everything is on lease deals rather than bought. So if your not going to/arent able to fight your way into the big lease deals your probably not going to last long. 
When I was at SSE we stopped buying vehicles back around 2008/9ish and went for leases instead. Literally everything from vans right through to artics came through Rygor commercials via a lease company. The only variation were the lease times - 7 years for vans and I think 10 years for trucks. But that kind of thing seems the norm now for every company.

[CreepingJesus]

Yeah, that's the long and short of what I'm meaning by 'playing the corporate game'. Probably the simplest example, where the process had reached some peak of optimisation, would be the deal Scania did with Eddie's Go-Karts/Jenkinsons (bearing in mind that Alan Jenkinson is/was a director of ESL); thousand units over five years, the first ones going out as the last ones came in. All fairly similar spec, all contract maintained, so all good sellers on the used market, mostly through Scania dealers. Good bit of business for all of them, but it distorts the used market, and makes small operators less likely to buy a new unit for the long run, when they can buy a good used one where they know what they're getting. 

The only real winners are the financiers, who get profits at several levels. And as that has to operate from the very highest management levels, small manufacturers just don't have the clout to compete; Scania bit the bullet, Hino shrugged their shoulders and headed home. I'd have to do some investigating, but I think you're right; Hino kept their reputation for tough, simple equipment (albeit within the limitations of enviro regs) by holding onto their strengths, where Scania tried to play with the sharks, and got eaten by a bigger shark.