FAMILY AFFAIR

This month, as is perhaps appropriate for our Christmas issue, we’ve chosen for our main cover feature a lorry which is much more than a well-restored piece of transport nostalgia; it’s a family heirloom, a reminder of a much-loved and missed father and grandfather. It’s also a lorry which has been owned by the family since it was three years old and which will never be going anywhere else.

Dodge 500 tipper VTC941H was new in 1970, and supplied by Clitheroe-based dealership TGB (owned by the Harper family, who also owned Primrose Third Axle Co., TGB were also Guy and latterly ERF dealers) to Clifford Ames Haulage where it was immediately allocated to driver Ivor Thomas.

It was used on quarry work, principally from Tarmac Roadstone’s Bankfield Quarry and delivered stone across Lancashire and Yorkshire with, wherever possible, coal or coke as a return load. The latter, of course, explain the wood plank ‘greedy boards’ on top of the aluminium tipper body; coal and coke weigh less than road-making stone, so more by volume can