Foden EKA wrecker

It is certainly not ‘one small step for man’ to get into this cab as it towers over us and it takes a fit chap to leap up and down from the re-styled S10 Mark 3 workplace; it does take a bit of mastering, a couple of steps to the right of the front wheel, which takes you up to mezzanine level and a further shuffle across the bodywork to swing into the cab. Once in the seat, it was good to see the Foden name embossed across the passenger side of the windscreen tray, but sad to remember that the great family name behind this fine Britishbuiltlorry was no longer British at the time, but a part of the giant American PACCAR empire. History will record that the Foden wrecker would be one of the last wagons to carry the Foden name and it is a fitting beast to carry the Union flag.

Ken Jackson is the man who works in this six-wheeler day after day, as first call recovery driver picking up and fixing the breakdowns from emergency calls all over Northumberland, including those from the Military which is based at the nearby Otterburn Training Camp. The company, G. K. Jackson Recovery, has been a rescue specialist since 1964 and is located just north of Morpeth in Northumberland at Priestgate, on the busy A1 arterial road to Berwick and Scotland. The current Jackson family’s ancestors were in vehicle maintenance, in the town centre, back in the days when the first motor cars hit the roads. They run a variety of recovery tractors from their biggest, the Fodeneightwheeler, which we highlighted last year in, to lightweight car recovery trucks, but today, for your perusal, it is the turn of the first response vehicle sent out for the bigger commercialvehicle breakdowns, the ex-military Foden S106 EKA-wrecker, C 910 JGR.