Hi Ben,
Here's far more than you really wanted to know-----
Leyland has been around for years and years in the transportation
business. I quote from Steam On the Road, by David B. Wise, Hamlin Press,
London, 1974
"Between 1899-1905, a handful of British manufacturers-Lifu, LEYLAND,
Straker-Squire, Thorneycroft--built steam buses, and some of these saw
limited service. Without exception they proved uneconomical...."
Leyland then got into steam lorries. "Nine years later (1884) a young
man from Leyland, Lancashire, produced a steam wagon of his own design, a
five tonner, built to carry coal from the local pits to Stanning's
Bleachworks at Leyland. It was not an outstanding success.... The
wagon's last journey was the fifteen-mile run from Leyland to Ormskir,
with William Sumner acting as a 'red flag boy' and general assistant in a
host of major troubles. The journey took from Friday morning to Monday
evening, and included a session in court answering a police summons for
leaving the wagon broken down and unattended the Saturday night. When
they returned to Leyland the wagon was put into immediate and permanent
retirement, and its engine was used to drive the local sawmill."
William Sumner went on to manufacture a comprehensive line of steam
lawnmowers, sometime after 1892, then branched into steam wagons again
about 1896. "Progress was-relatively-rapid; a new factory was opened in
1902, and by the end of the following year 39 steam wagons were in
service, including the first fleet of Leyland vehicles, operated by the
Road Carrying Conpany of Liverpool. In 1904, 33 Leylands were built by
the 160 employees of the company, and already London boroughs were
beginning to use these steamers and the similar Thornycroft for municipal
service. Chelsea and Wandsworth were building up fleets of Leylands with
interchangeable steet watering cart and tipping dust cart bodies. Even
though Leyland were to continue to produce their steam lorries for some
years to come, the writing was on the wall from the moment they
introduced the Pig, their first internal combustion engined wagon,
in1904. It was a failure, but the company persisted with the development
of petrol lorries, and by 1910, they were able to point out that as 'the
only builders of steam and petrol waggons, their advice was unbiassed."
To this point, all the text has been quoted verbatim, or more-or-less
paraphrased.
Leland produced lorries and autobusses steadily for the market in the
UK and Colonies, and at the time the motorcar industry had bled itself
white, was about the only manufacturer left who could logically absorb
the bleeding pieces of BMC, Rootes, etc, and that's how British Leyland
came to be.
Can't you just imagine all the chaps out there thinking up names for a
new lorry. Eureka!! I've got it!! Let's call it the PIG!! Makes one
think that Edsel was a far better choice.....
Bob
On Mon, 10 Nov 1997 19:42:22 -0500 Benjamin Ruset <bruset@monmouth.com>
writes:
>>politicians or lawyers, or deprecates British F&%*$^#ing Leyland.
>
>What exactly is the deal with Leyland? Where did the name come from?
>
>I remember in my dealings with writing a few papers on the Titanic
>that
>there was a ship near the site where it hit the iceberg - the
>Californian.
>And that ship was owned by the "Leyland Line" - is this BL in another
>incarnation, or is it like Japan, where everything is "Nippon" ???
>
>
>
>
>BEN RUSET - http://www.monmouth.com/~bruset
>78 MGB Roadster - 89 Mercury Cougar
>-------------------------------------------------
>"If you gaze for a long time into an abyss,
> the abyss gazes also into you." - F.W. Nietzsche
>
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