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Bill Aldridge traces the progress of the British telephone service through a survey of vehicles it has used, from a 1926 Albion 30cwt lorry transporting engineers’ handcarts to Outreach’s DAF 45 10-ton cable laying unit.

Covering the 20 years following railway nationalization in 1948, this account of BR-owned vehicles covers topics including the Express Parcel Service, wagon-load traffic and operations during the Suez crisis.

At its peak in the early 1960s, the Co-operative movement used around 35,000 vehicles. Here, Aldridge outlines the Co-op’s history and surveys the variety of its fleet, from mobile butchers’ vans to milk tankers.

In the 1930s, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway needed to mechanize their delivery service: the solution, the Karrier Motors’ Mechanical Horse, was an important advance in road haulage – the forerunner of the articulated lorry, albeit with three wheels.