British Dumper

[Johnson Dumper]

Cochrane "Power Barrow"

[XS650]

New one on me.
Thanks for posting.
Looks like it would get stuck very easily on soft ground.

Anyone for a full list of British dumper makers ?
Craig

[XS650]

The strange Barford SD06 , although it had nice tinwork specification was antideluvian. Two wheel drive ( by rear wheels ) front steer, hand start, gravity tip , manual everything with no options dumper introduced about 1980 I think as no date on brochure.
Maybe they thought this would sell on price but the market had moved on to 4wd pivot steer hydraulic tip as a standard by this time.
Health and Safety was also coming on strong by then and they did not like hand start or manual tip and rightly so IMHO.
Can only think British Leyland involvement may have been a factor ( Marina drive axle) at least the brochure seems to be very nicely put together, no pictures of muddy sites !
Craig

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[essexpete]

Interesting Craig. I love the antideluvian comment. On having a looks the Wikipedia page for Aveling Barford suggests that the company was swallowed into BLMC in 1967. That company managed to take several well respected but behind the times companies and combine them with companies in an even poorer position and drag the whole lot into the mire. I wonder if the senior BLMC management team had anything to do with bringing such an odd machine to market either by allowing a wrong turn, as it were or severely constraining development budgets.

[Yewman]

At the time when this machine was produced, probably 1978/79, Aveling Barford had started a substantial Export drive, with a whole new Export Sales and Marketing department.
Overseas 3rd world territories preferred simple machines they could fix on the side of the road, so this machine may have been aimed at Export. Sadly Leyland closed the Belton factory around 1980, so we'll never know if it would have been a success.
The smallsite dumpers went to Stothert and Pitt, and they didn't produce a front wheel steer machine.

As far as Wikipedia goes, Essexpete, it was written by someone who never worked at Aveling Barford and quite a lot of it is wrong. They just guessed to fill in gaps in knowledge. A-B was never part of the thompson group. I was there through all the changes

[essexpete]

At the time when this machine was produced, probably 1978/79, Aveling Barford had started a substantial Export drive, with a whole new Export Sales and Marketing department.
Overseas 3rd world territories preferred simple machines they could fix on the side of the road, so this machine may have been aimed at Export. Sadly Leyland closed the Belton factory around 1980, so we'll never know if it would have been a success.
The smallsite dumpers went to Stothert and Pitt, and they didn't produce a front wheel steer machine.

As far as Wikipedia goes, Essexpete, it was written by someone who never worked at Aveling Barford and quite a lot of it is wrong. They just guessed to fill in gaps in knowledge. A-B was never part of the thompson group. I was there through all the changes

Thanks for the proper input. Wikipedia is like that. It is only a good as the input. There is a sort of machinery pedia and that is terrible from what little I have seen. I assume the input from BLMC would not have been positive?

[Whitlock 505]

If I could thicken the plot even further the SD06 I have has a Stothert & Pitt sticker on the skip, I can’t find any info about them producing one either and was so lucky that Craig xs650 has an Aveling Barford brochure so that is the livery that I will be restoring it to in honour of an extinct British marque

Ian

[Yewman]

The Leyland set up was incredibly top heavy. Initially in 1968, when the takeover actually happened, things went on as before, with a new M.D.
A bit later any small profit made by Aveling Barford went to be swallowed up in the huge Longbridge deficit. A-B was starved of cash for development.
The early 1970's were good, but later on as yet another Construction recession loomed, a large investment in the company was not reflected in increased sales.
In 1978 the same year as the money was spent, massive redundancies were announced, and the newly formed Export Sales wing was disbanded, and partly absorbed into the old Sales team. There were still 4 boards of Directors going up the tree to the Leyland Board. Lots of Jags about!
Leyland became desperate to sell Aveling Barford, or shut it like so many smaller companies, Scammell, Thorneycroft, Guy, AEC etc.
Eventually it was virtually given away to a Malaysian Rubber Tycoon, who eventually started stripping assets, even robbing the pension fund, but that was recovered.
After the company went into receivership,in 1988 it was bought by Duncan Wordsworth who ran a slimmed down version to include Sanderson Teleporters and others from the old Invicta works. He folded in 2010, and the good news is that one of his companies, Fruehauf Trailers occupies the site, and is doing very well .
So there you have a much shortened version of events!!

[XS650]

Interesting.What a shambles British Industry was at that time, and the number of UK plant manufacturers who disappeared in the 80s is amazing.

Craig

[XS650]

One I have not heard of the Husky T15 dumper from 83 by Arrow who I have heard of .
Apparently there was also a 4x4 .