| One of the rarest makes in the service vehicle fleet was Karrier. The Huddersfield-based company supplied 2 lorries and 7 tram breakdown tenders in the early 1930s. Taken over by the Rootes group as early as 1934, production was moved to the Luton factory of Commer, though the Karrier name remained in use. The early London Transport Karrier service vehicles had all gone by the end of 1952, but a couple more arrived in the 1960s. Two of the Bantam model were delivered in 1964, and finally there was a single Gamecock lorry in 1966. The Bantam and Gamecock models were intended primarily for municipal or special-purpose roles and featured smaller wheels than normal (13 inch on the Bantam and 16 inch on the Gamecock). Shown here is the sole Gamecock lorry 1404KG at Chiswick Works on 18th October 1973. The low floor height and tail-lift are apparent, both features suggesting that the lorry was used for items such as bus batteries. Bantam lorry 1303KB was officially listed as being a battery lorry, though it is not known if it also had a tail-lift. 1404KG was not withdrawn until early 1981, shortly after the delivery of low-floor Bedford TL battery lorry 2277B. The Karrier has a green cab roof to its otherwise grey livery. The final point to note is about the fleetnumber suffixes. The early Karrier lorries were given the suffix K, but the 1960s ones were either KB (for the Bantams) or KG (for the Gamecock). London Transport had initially assigned different suffix letters to different models (such as N, P and Q being for AEC Monarch, Matador and Mercury respectively), but it later became standard for the suffix just to indicate the make. KB and KG represent the only instance of the suffix letters being used to show both the make and the model. |
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Photo ID: |
6769 |
| Photo date: |
18/10/1973 |
Size: |
Regular |
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| Date added: |
01/06/2021 |
