Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter

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John Corah. Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter

THE WRITING’S. ON THE TRUCK

Contents

Introduction

The Birth of My Signwriting Business

A Lucky Break

The Ups and Downs

Moving On

And Finally

Copyright

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The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter

John Corah

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However, this career did not last long as promotion up the ladder was always going to be difficult with no qualifications and I therefore gave up any ideas of making a living using art. After a complete rethink, I embarked on a sales career, joining a Lancashire textile manufacturer as ‘their man’ in the south-west. Horrockses of Preston originally put me in the West End of London before a retirement left a vacancy for me to cover the area from Penzance to Bristol, including the Channel Isles. Good job, well paid and a new company car every year but five years later the company was taken over and I was made redundant.

Besides art, one of my other interests has been restoring vintage lorries, an interest that started as a result of a summer job driving a Ford Thames for Pollards Frozen food in Newton Abbot while at art college. This gained me grandfather rights HGV Class 3 driving licence and in 1971 I did the London to Brighton Run in a newly acquired 1932 Albion bought with a friend of mine, Brian Beard. The following year, my sales rep job finished so I took my class 1 artic licence and decided to give lorry driving a go. I began with an agricultural merchant, delivering farm machinery with a TK Bedford. I then moved on to an artic for Feniton Haulage, driving a Mark 1 Atkinson with a 180 Cummins engine on round timber and straw. In 1975, I was taken on as a holiday relief driver by Brian Harris (then trading as Harris & Miners) after a brief spell as an HGV driving instructor. My first lorry on that firm was an A.E.C. Mandator and so began a few years of long-distance driving between Devon and Scotland. Although ERF was the mainstay of his fleet, I drove a variety of other British-made lorries, including Foden, Leyland, Albion, Big J Guy and Seddon. During my years with Brian Harris I never had a foreign lorry; he wouldn’t have them in the yard! You can find out more about Brian and his company in my earlier book From Moorlands to Highlands, now in its third edition.

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