SHORT BROTHERS PLANT HIRWAUN,ABERDARE

[ian white]

Hi John,
Thank you for this post.
I knew Vernon and Gabe Short and find this very interesting. Their sales business in South Wales was run from the Swansea and Newport depots. I bought a Ford 550 digger from them in about 1978, I also had Liner dumpers and mixers which they suplied.
I still have one of the 5/3.5 mixers in the yard, it has a Petters PAZ1 engine and dates from 1977. It is still in working order.
Fred

i have fond memmories of short bros, i worked for them , many years ago, out of swansea depot,john parry was my manager, what a top bloke he was, ex morris bros, lyn curtis was sales man

[MGI]

The 'Major' who ran the Barnsley depot for Short Bros was Mr Powell and his son was John Powell who was on the enormous Komatsu (at that time).

[Big dig]

I remember doing a job topsoil stripping & reinstatement a few years back up in Yorkshire, it was a 48" steel pipeline for Yorkshire Water, AMEC were the main contractors and we subbed the strip & replace off them. The job started right next to Selby golf club and we were the first company to start using any sort of regimental plant (the fencers only had a couple of tractors and trailors and a fence post basher) It was at the time of the miners strike and the plant hire compamies in the area were in a desperate position. We hired the D8 equivalent Komatsu which was a 455 or something similar, it weighed in at 55 tons with the blade. It was absolutely brand new, the tracks were still yellow and the manager of Short Bros Barnsley depot came out with the machine to give us the once over. He was a big bloke (not fat - just big) He was ramrod straight and very direct we started calling him the Major, he seemed ex military. Strange thing was, his son was driving the machine and he was just the opposite to his old man, covered from head to foot in tattoos, skin headed, huge boots with external steel toecaps and ear rings. his trousers finished about a foot off his ankles! We christened him 'Tokyo Joe' The fitter told us he was the 'hardest' bloke in Barnsley and used to fight pikeys for money! Having said that he was a good operator and when we moved on we took him with us (on our own Cat 245) We got the Komatsu for £15.00 an hour when the going rate had been double that prior to the strike! The job went all the way to the other side of Barnsley and we had to strip a mile a day! Trouble was we kept catching up with the fencers! We had two 360's with blades pulling the first section out, then we had three D6's pushing the spoil as far as they effectively could and then we had Tokyo Joe shoving the rest of the way, one of the D6 drivers was bald and we called him 'Harry the Haircut'. He was another driver we took with us when we moved to the next job (Oxford)) Another later addition to the squad was a diminutive guy who stayed with us for years, we called him 'Danger mouse' he was always on about the fights he got into (all 5'5'' of him). Fantastic crack on that job!

Hi MGI

Had the crack with Tokyo Joe today I read this thread when you put it up but was not 100% sure it was John,
I worked with him on Scrapers at VHE also went to the same school not seen him for about ten years
Was on a VHE site today in the snap cabin and in walked John and some other old skins best crack at breaktime they have had for years
Slasher needed a 16g to shift the muck and blaggard to get the boys back to work
regards

D

[MGI]

Small world, is that Tokyo Joe in the purple sweater? He doesn't look too bad after fighting all those gyppos!

I remember the first time I encountered him, he was on the 455 and it had only just fired up prior to starting work - he called me over and said "Wanning litson" I could not understand a word he said but I did realise there was something not right so I rang the Barnsley depot and repeated his words to the foreman fitter, he replied "which one" I said "which one what"? He said "which warning light is on" It was on this job that I first had a mobile phone, albeit fixed permanently in the land rover.

[Abbott]

Cracking to read all the Short Bro's and photos, I went into Port Talbot Steelworks for them in 2003 just when they sold out to Brambles. At that time we still had a lot of the old kit. I still regularly go on the old 71rb we have. a 1965 machine still goin strong. Under Harsco now but we still have an old Shorts 992 and 1405, and not long ago the last of the old Terex R35's went under the hot knife.

[matd32]

I worked for shorts for many years, they sold out to brambles, around ten years ago , they sold it to multi serv, who changed the name to their pearant company Harsco, now trading as Harsco metals, I left there around 2 years ago when they were called Harsco metals, but remember starting with shorts when they had 22rbs 38 rbs 71 rbs nck 1405's nck eigers nck 305's and 605's, I have some pics of ncks and some of multiserv cranes think they are rb's converted to electric