This is taken from an 1880s Archer & Co letterhead and shows a furniture lift van en-route via the railway.
I paste below text from an online source about early containerisation:
"A Brief History of Containerisation on Britain's Railways
The Early Days
The origins of containerisation on Britain's Railways can be traced right back to their very beginning - although the idea took more than 100 years to catch on!
In the 1830s the Liverpool & Manchester Railway used "simple rectangular boxes, four to a waggon, ...to convey coal from the Lancashire collieries to Liverpool, where they were transferred to horse-drawn carts by crane" But although there were some advantages, in particular the reduced handling of the cargo, the idea does not appear to have caught on. Even so, by the early 1900s the London & North Western, Lancashire & Yorkshire, and Midland Railway companies were carrying 'box coal' on flat wagons, the coal being destined for use by steamboats.
The original Great Central Railway also played a part in the story of containerisation, being one of only three companies which provided special wagons for the conveyance of 'fish tanks'. The GCR carried considerable fish traffic and the 'fish tanks' were designed to ensure that the fish reached its destination as fresh as possible. As such, the wagons were classified as passenger stock. The other two companies were the Midland and the Great Northern; the latter referred to its containers as 'cod boxes' and some of them lasted into the 1930s.
By the late 19th Century the closed container was with us. Resembling a wooden box van body, but with end doors, these were initially known as 'lift vans' and were privately owned by several furniture removal firms. They were carried both on railway wagons and on flat road trailers drawn by horses or steam tractors.”
So, when James Archer adopted his own lift vans at least as early as the 1880s, he was in the forefront of modernisation of furniture moving, joining only “several” other firms doing likewise. This was little more than 20 years since he began the business in 1857, and was before he took on Mark (‘Mack’) Cowley, as partner (date to be determined. WGRA’s ‘history envelope’ says Cowley joined in 1876, but his name is not on these ‘letterhead’ dcouments in the mid-1880s, so perhaps he became a partner/co-director later).
It appears from the above illustration and all the associated information, that ‘lift vans’ had their own wheels (for horse-drawn motion) only for short-distance movement and all the major transport of them was performed either by rail or flat road-truck. Usually both:
(i) from the collection house to the railway station or yard on a roadgoing flat truck;
(ii) from the railway station or yard on a railway flat truck - as shown in the above illustration;
(iii) from the destination railway station or yard on a roadgoing flat truck to the delivery house.
And it has also emerged from Archer & Co documentation that one or more of the company’s removals men who carried out the necessary work at the collection house might or might not travel with the furniture (presumably in a suitable carriage, but that may be an unwarranted assumption (please would someone in form me if they know), and delivery at the destination would be carried out by them or by local men arrranged by the firm.(pba.10.7.15).