Truck Shite

[5speedracer]

Looks like UK's best truck magazine, Truck & Driver, has apparently stopped publication with no prior warning. Apparently the parent company was sold and T&D was surplus to requirements. That just leaves Trucking now and it could really do with some creative input, to put it mildly!

Fuckers now owe me money for 6 months of my subscription and now have a dead Email address.

[Christine]

Another of my old mans ..brand  new Transhit,  just painted . 

 

Must have been a profitable year 1990 ! A  new  lorry and a Transit !  

 

[quicksilver]

I knew a few of these existed but had never seen one before now. UK-registered Ford F-Max.

All LHD private imports although Ford have announced that official RHD imports are set to begin in 2028.

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[martc]

^^^^^ and that, boys and girls, is how little lorries are made.

[catsinthewelder]

How the fuck did that ^ happen?  WW2 bomb?  Scrapyard that really doesn't care?

[Dick Cheeseburger]

This local '34 ERF has just been driven under its own power for the first time in several years. It's been left to deteriorate for way too many years, but a local group are now looking to fund some recommissioning. 

From a few years back:

This Commer Cob Leyland Comet is now looking very sorry for itself and is my favourite of the two. 

[AnthonyG]

On 24/02/2026 at 15:03, quicksilver said:

I knew a few of these existed but had never seen one before now. UK-registered Ford F-Max.

I initially guessed South African but produced in Turkey by Ford Otosan, who must assemble most of the Transits sold in Europe as well. 

All we need is a Turkish or Indian firm to resurrect Bedford and we’ll have all the big names from the 1960s back!

[Vantman]

1 hour ago, Dick Cheeseburger said:

This local '34 ERF has just been driven under its own power for the first time in several years. It's been left to deteriorate for way too many years, but a local group are now looking to fund some recommissioning. 

From a few years back:

This Commer Cob is now looking very sorry for itself and is my favourite of the two. 

That looks like a Leyland Comet,not a Commer Cob!

[willswitchengage]

On 24/02/2026 at 15:03, quicksilver said:

I knew a few of these existed but had never seen one before now. UK-registered Ford F-Max.

All LHD private imports although Ford have announced that official RHD imports are set to begin in 2028.

So what's going on here? It even has beam bender stickers! And a missing wingmirror trim.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

1 hour ago, Vantman said:

That looks like a Leyland Comet,not a Commer Cob!

I stand corrected! I've no idea where I got the idea of a Commer Cob from, but clearly they're a world apart from one another 😆

[worldofceri]

1 hour ago, willswitchengage said:

So what's going on here? It even has beam bender stickers!

Presumably there’s no such thing as rhd headlights  for these so beam benders would be required for the MoT/SVA/whatever it needs for UK registration?

[martc]

14 hours ago, willswitchengage said:

So what's going on here? It even has beam bender stickers! And a missing wingmirror trim.

Being LHD I wonder if the right hand mirror has been twatted against a wall or an on coming vehicle due to the driver being on the wrong side, and far away?

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[5speedracer]

Oh FFS! One at a time as we can't react with both a smile and a laugh for one post.

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[danthecapriman]

Went out this morning to Merthyr Tydfil to pick up some plastic trims for a bathroom. Had a nice little surprise on the A40 when this beast came the opposite way,

Not my pic obviously and I didn’t have my camera anyway but put a smile on my face seeing that! It’s a really lovely truck.

[aotb]

It seems to camp out in Monmouth, I’ve seen it a couple of times parked up. 

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, aotb said:

It seems to camp out in Monmouth, I’ve seen it a couple of times parked up. 

Interesting. I live not far from Monmouth so I’ll have to keep an eye out for it. 
It’s really nicely kept though. When I spotted it earlier it stood out a mile off. Whoever’s truck it is looks after it well.

[Matty]

Cheers for this @The Old Bloke Next Door. My Uncle did a lot of business to and fro with John Killingbeck when he was garage foreman at Whitbreads Shadsworth depot (Blackburn). Ive just sent him this image, will make his day id imagine

[Spottedlaurel]

Random 50p purchase of this magazine at the autojumble last weekend, I thought the Bedfords may be of interest:

Working in a basket over the live lane of the opposite carriageway looks a little 'exciting'.

Good to see they use a pot to make their tea! Mr Palmer looks like just the sort of chap who would be the District Commercial Engineer.

They look like a removal van body, but would the chassis be something heavier duty to carry the lifting mechanism?

They were a bit more sparing with the use of cones back then.

Of the pair of them JHA 417L made it to 1995, but there's no record of 418L (nor the Cortina if I read the plate correctly as YYE 273L).

One to recreate at 1/43 scale @danthecapriman?

[danthecapriman]

1 hour ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Random 50p purchase of this magazine at the autojumble last weekend, I thought the Bedfords may be of interest:

Working in a basket over the live lane of the opposite carriageway looks a little 'exciting'.

Good to see they use a pot to make their tea! Mr Palmer looks like just the sort of chap who would be the District Commercial Engineer.

They look like a removal van body, but would the chassis be something heavier duty to carry the lifting mechanism?

They were a bit more sparing with the use of cones back then.

Of the pair of them JHA 417L made it to 1995, but there's no record of 418L (nor the Cortina if I read the plate correctly as YYE 273L).

One to recreate at 1/43 scale @danthecapriman?

Never seen those before!

Interesting trucks. I’d imagine the body is basically a removal van design altered to suit that particular role, but I’m pretty sure the chassis will be of a much more substantial type than the ones used under removal vans purely to take the crane. Interesting too that there’s no sign of any outrigger supports, something that I’d imagine would definitely not be allowed today. Likewise working directly over a live lane like that.

With regards to the cones…

I had to do a course to get a qualification in this at SSE as I worked on and around highways a lot. It is, as you’d expect in this country, mind numbingly anal in its details and the course is as boring as it sounds! 
But NRASWA (New Roads And Street Works Act) is basically the rule book and didn’t come in until 91 and this governs the placing of things like cones, signage entrances to work sites, vehicle parking etc etc. now there’s set figures on how cones get set out even down to measurements between them (!) before it was just done according to what the local council decided they wanted. 
I can’t remember details now but it also but it also covers things like safety clearances between live lanes and work areas etc and I’d be pretty sure that working over a live lane like that would be outlawed! It’s one of those things like when you drive down the motorway and see miles of cones blocking a whole lane but nobody working there… the lane is closed and coned off to provide a safety buffer to the work crews who are probably only doing something on the shoulder or verge. 
Believe it or not, it even goes as far as if you went outside your house and put a couple of cones on the side of the road to stop people parking there (if your expecting a delivery or something) and didn’t have a NRASWA certificate, you could be fined for doing it!   
Told you it was bad!!😆

The Bedfords are definitely a cool subject for a model though. Any more photos of them anywhere?

 

[Spottedlaurel]

14 minutes ago, danthecapriman said:

The Bedfords are definitely a cool subject for a model though. Any more photos of them anywhere?

Sadly just what was on the cover and the two-page article inside.

I wonder if there is an outrigger on the RH side, visible just ahead of the rear wheel? However I can't immediately see anything on the LH side on that shot of the pair of them in use.

[danthecapriman]

27 minutes ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Sadly just what was on the cover and the two-page article inside.

I wonder if there is an outrigger on the RH side, visible just ahead of the rear wheel? However I can't immediately see anything on the LH side on that shot of the pair of them in use.

There must’ve been something. I can’t imagine a vehicle like that wouldn’t have even if it is a big heavy truck.

Usually the crane and outriggers are built up onto another frame then mounted onto the chassis of the truck with holes through the bodywork for the outriggers to fit through. Once it’s set up and the outriggers down the vehicle chassis doesn’t really hold the weight or any of the stress from the crane being out. It’s all on the cranes frame and down on the outriggers. The vehicles chassis really just carries it all. Without outriggers, aside from the risk of tipping it over, that’s an awful lot of twisting forces through the chassis.

Makes me wonder if SEB had anything like those. I know they definitely used Commer Walkthru/Dodge 50 cherry picker vans and some Bedford CF/Ford Transit smaller vans but I’ve never seen anything like that with any other electric board.

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[Matty]

On 19/03/2026 at 15:44, Matty said:

Cheers for this @The Old Bloke Next Door. My Uncle did a lot of business to and fro with John Killingbeck when he was garage foreman at Whitbreads Shadsworth depot (Blackburn). Ive just sent him this image, will make his day id imagine

@The Old Bloke Next Door. His reply was "nice but i remember it. It had a gardner boat anchor in it." He was a cummins man 🤣

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

[CreepingJesus]

On 20/03/2026 at 07:23, Spottedlaurel said:

Random 50p purchase of this magazine at the autojumble last weekend, I thought the Bedfords may be of interest:

Working in a basket over the live lane of the opposite carriageway looks a little 'exciting'.

Good to see they use a pot to make their tea! Mr Palmer looks like just the sort of chap who would be the District Commercial Engineer.

They look like a removal van body, but would the chassis be something heavier duty to carry the lifting mechanism?

They were a bit more sparing with the use of cones back then.

Of the pair of them JHA 417L made it to 1995, but there's no record of 418L (nor the Cortina if I read the plate correctly as YYE 273L).

One to recreate at 1/43 scale @danthecapriman?

No, they'd be regular Bedford TK chassis; there's no real need for anything heavier duty, because the subframe of the hoist spreads loads out quite a way. Even if there's any doubt, landing legs usually sort it out, as you see on HIABs, although I don't see any on these it wouldn't be unexpected if they had some. They're interesting things though! I reckon Mr Palmer took the old tower wagon concept a stage further, and given that Marsden's were in Warrington, it probably made to-and-fro over the project more manageable. He wasn't far off the mark, despite them looking a bit of an evolutionary dead-end, but I bet the crews appreciated the thought. Work space and facilities in one walk-through package? Excellent!

I have a feeling he probably enquired about bus chassis, and there'd be no reason not to - maybe cost and availability took him to Marsden's - because the one thing both have in common is keeping the CofG reasonably low, which is possibly a reason for their existence, and why they don't seem to have landing legs. Maybe he intended them to be more mobile, but as the article says, the traffs were keeping them under control, so they couldn't just hop between jobs. Hence they became an evolutionary dead-end. There was no advantage in not choosing an off-the-shelf product.