The typewritten note on this page details the movements of one family, customers of Archer Cowley & Co, over a period of 43 years from 1919 to 1962, the movements being listed as:
"1919: to Canada;
1922: from Canada;
1923: from Oxford to St Ives, Cornwall…it took three vast containers three days to get there by steam engine!
1936: from St Ives to Bristol;
1941: from Bristol to Oxford where you stored our belongings for nine years;
1950: from storehouse to Woodstock Road;
1962: from Woodstock Road to Blenheim Drive;
You stored W.Whitnall’s for the 10 years he was in Germany in the army! “
I am not quite clear whether ‘Whitnall’ is the family name of this customer. Presumably so. Perhaps an army man. Who served in Germany during WW2 during the entire 1940s? The saga of the moves is just one (of many I believe) typical instance of customer loyalty and satisfaction so far as Archer Cowley & Co is concerned.
The vans shown date from 1950 and 1951 includinng a Dennis 1100 cubic feet capacity ‘Duramin’ body, of 3 tons unladen weight; and a trailer of identical capacity, and a diesel-engined van of 1450 cubic feet capacity.
‘Early ‘50s technology’, you might say. But probably in effect an enormous step or leap forward in terms of road-transport of furniture, not least by the adoption of lightweight body materials such as aluminium, coupled with the design feature of the ‘cab-over-engine’ concept whereby the length of the vehicle available for load-carrying is increased by postioning the driver and his assistant alongside instead of behind the engine. And the diesel engine was better adaped for the heavy-duty tasks of long-distance road-haulage, than the petrol engines of former years.