Avivid memory from my childhood was watching an elderly six-wheel Scammell tipper lumbering up a dusty road. Its Gardner throbbed and rumbled as it climbed the steep incline on the site of Port Talbot steel works. Scammell’s chain driven 4x2 tippers had become a familiar sight on the biggest jobs since the late 1920s.
After creating some 3000 specialist vehicles during the Second World War, legendary designer Oliver North’s last great assignments before he retired in 1948 were the 6x6 Explorer and the four-wheel-drive Mountaineer. The latter was soon listed as a ten-ton capacity dump-truck at a time when ordinary road going four wheelers were limited
