Virtual GALLERY

January 2025. Welcome to ROADSIDE - Updates of, and Features about our friends and comrades..Write your text here...

..above is a detail taken from the intro page of our previous website 2000-2024 Gallery section –

“The Man of Kent” Painted in Flashe Vinyl. Framed in Rosewood. It shows an ERF, driven by a Dear Old Pal, Alan Ord, who passed away in June 2022. Seen heading up Linton Hill, in Kent, bound for Barrow in Furness. He was on for British Railways, B.R.S. Sittingbourne, G.G.Tomkinsons, and for Classic Long-Distance Haulier and fellow Star of the Road, the Late Great Chris Mumford, of Marden Kent, who very sadly passed away in December 2024. Chris and his brother Rod were the very best employers - They treated you like a Mate. Pretty unique I’d say.

Virtual GALLERY

April 2025. THE SEED HAD BEEN SOWN by Robin Masters

B.R.S.As a young lad I always had an interest in the Great Western Railway and BRS lorries, particularly eight wheelers. Fuelled by the Ian Allan spotter’s books that fascination has stayed with me all my life. Therefore, it was no surprise that, way before I left school, all I wanted to do was to drive lorries.

Early Days- In my early teens, I landed a Saturday and school holiday job working in the yard of J.M. Stokes Ltd. in Evesham. They distributed fresh fruit and veg. in the Vale. Indeed, they had farms and depots in all the main growing areas of the country and also a pitch in Covent Garden. My job was to help unload incoming produce in the mornings, and in the afternoons to help load the company lorries that were destined for journeys later on that evening and night. Occasionally I was sent out with a driver to load at one of the company's farms, and in the summer months, when the loads were particularly big, I was sent on journey work - usually doing several drops on the way down to Plymouth and into Cornwall. A trip to the Capital to help out with a multi drop load round the London markets wasn't unknown. I was loving the job, and the Transport Manager told me there would be a job for me when the time came for me to leave school, so that really set me up and I couldn't wait to start driving. The J.M. Stokes lorry fleet was 100% Bedford and comprised of S types, J types, A types, an O type and a few of the new TKs that had not long been introduced. They were mostly 8 tonners but for three quite new 5-tonners that caught my eye., which were just under 3-Ton ULW which I could drive once I’d passed my driving test, which I did in January 1964.

Within a few weeks I was regularly driving one of the 5-ton TKs, reg. no. 667 KNP. Initially I was doing Bristol Market runs but gradually progressed to West Country work as well as London and even Glasgow Markets occasionally. I couldn’t get enough of all this though my Mother wasn’t too happy about her seventeen year old son driving day and night all over the country. I was doing very much the same as the older drivers with the bigger loads. There was one particular marathon job where we’d unload the empties and start loading the fine Cornish Greens we got that was a combined job to Cornwall and Covent Garden. When the Cornish Broccoli and Spring Greens season was in full swing we’d take a load of MT crates from the Empties Department down to the Penzance area, a full day’s work. After getting across the seats for the night the next morning the agent would meet us and take us to perhaps three farms in the Marazion area. Hopefully, we would be loaded by about 4 o'clock in the afternoon then it was time to make a start on the long drive to London. The Cornish crop had a great reputation for quality and to move the produce to market at its peak, by road and rail, required good organisation. Roamers from around the country would easily find a backload. Local hauliers, farmers running on "F" licences and short wheelbase tippers, more used to carrying china clay, would all join the procession of vehicles to Exeter, where some would turn north and the rest head for the A303 and the capital. It was a long hard drive, and then to unload amongst the chaos of Covent Garden, was the hammer blow!

It was a great feeling to see an empty lorry, and the prospect of an easy ride home. All the same, Evesham was reached in the afternoon feeling like - "a worn-out dishcloth!”

Marshall's of Evesham

I stayed with J.M.Stokes until I became 21 when I could legally drive bigger lorries. I tried a couple of local hauliers. before joining Marshalls where I enjoyed the best years of my working life. The photo of me with my Marshalls ERF was taken when I was "in my prime" and with my favourite working lorry. I spent about twelve years at Marshalls, we covered the country, from north to south and from east to west, and my ERF Gardner 240 never let me down. It would not hold a candle to the massive power outputs of modern lorries, but in its day, in the early seventies, the 240 coupled to a Fuller gearbox was a great combination.

Fitted in the chassis of an A series ERF gave the driver the edge over many other vehicles …… (drivers of Cummins powered lorries would probably dispute that!)