Heritage Commercials

On a fairly recent trip to the Hemswell Antique Centre near Gainsborough, Lincs, on leaving the first building my wife and I had looked around, we were amazed to see quite a number of immaculately prepared commercials lined up around the car park. So

Webb’s of Wychbold held their annual classic Car Show on Sunday 25th August, now in its 24th year. It’s a superb family day out seeing around 300 exhibitors proudly displaying their classics, as usual with this event it includes some very nice commer

We all have memories but Alan Dean’s seem to be more vivid than most. True, he’s just on OAP status so he has been around a bit longer than some. But Alan’s recollections also include the thoughts and reminiscing of many others of the Dean family – o

It is always interesting to have a nosy at what others are up to. Oversized load moves are very often unwitnessed by rival operators and vehicle enthusiasts – current or heritage – or the general public for that matter. Contracts may take place far f

The weather couldn’t have been much more different between the rainy Saturday and the sunny Sunday, but nothing was going to put off all the exhibitors and visitors to the British Motor Museum at Gaydon for ‘The Big One’ earlier in the year. The muse

Things are looking up in Aberdeenshire with the recent completion of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route. Originally announced in 2003, the last section of the long-awaited by-pass finally opened in 2019, at an overall cost of over £1 billion. Star

In the history of commercial vehicle transport, few individuals in the UK have had such a dramatic effect on the industry as Edwin Richard Foden. Having built Foden into a major company, he then resigned from the board in 1932 to form ERF. Edwin Fode

There is no way it is going to win any truck beauty contest prizes, but it does have something, a ‘je ne sais quoi’ which can be incredibly endearing. The boxy shape is about as utilitarian as a designer could make it, if, that is, a designer was eve

W illiam Henry Roberts was born in Shre(SHROO)wsbury on 19th July 1940, as one of two children to Billy and Katie Roberts a family with a combined history in Farnworth and the midlands. Young Billy had a fondness for animals, and was a lucky lad in t

What a difference a few years makes. Back in ’67 when Jim Parkinson first walked into the Kearsley (Manchester) branch of Pickfords Heavy Haulage he had no idea what the heck he was getting into. But three years later – as a certified, fully trained

However, later that same year discussions were held with the management of Humber Ltd and it was agreed that the assets and goodwill of the company be bought by Centaur Company Ltd, a subsidiary of Humber Ltd. Following the acquisition, the Centaur n

The new Seddon Atkinson combine served notice in 1975 with the introduction of the cab range, to be manufactured by Motor Panels in Coventry. This was well received from the outset, being both robust and roomy and the new 400 series heavy tractor sol

I read in the latest Heritage Commercials magazine that you would like to do a feature on the AEC Mammoth Major that Gary Newman sent in some images of. I look forward to that. In the meantime, I thought that you might like to see a picture that I to

In our final look at the 46 years which Jim Parkinson spent involved in the world of heavy haulage, our man goes back to the time he was promoted to head up Pickfords’ Glasgow operation. When the depot went through a financial downturn in ‘88, the bu