‘PURPOSE BUILT’ FOR SPECIALIST APPLICATIONS
It doesn’t take much working out does it? The founders of Shelvoke & Drewry were… Harry Shelvoke and James Drewry. But what is less well known is the reason (or reasons) why they decided to breakaway from their then-employer, Lacre Lorries, to form their own company. It was a brave move, so why, just a few years later, did James Drewry leave the company he co-founded? A company that arguably was created on the back of his design expertise?
Quite what the original market for the Freighter was, still isn’t as clear-cut as previous articles on the history of the company suggest. Judging by the number of early chassis photographed in the company archives – and backed-up by James Drewry’s original ‘artist’s impression’ – the Freighter was seen as a compact urban distribution vehicle, not just as a ‘dustcart’. Either way, it’s main competition at the time would most likely have been the horse and cart, rather than another motor vehicle.
AUTOMATICALLY BETTER
In an urban delivery context, we’ve all heard the stories of the milkman/coalman/baker’s ‘vanner’ horse that would automatically walk-on to the next alleyway all by itself, allowing the tradesman to deliver to various back doors (or stop-off for a crafty cuppa with a friendly housewife, perhaps?), then come out to the kerbside further down the street where the trusty horse would be waiting. What James Drewry clearly understood was that existing motor vehicles were difficult to drive on stop-start delivery work, likely to be unreliable (because manual transmissions could be abused) and tended to be rather large in relation to their limited carrying capacity. The latter being just as important in the congested streets then, as it is today.
His solution? Turn the power unit round to an east-west transverse position (while still driving the rear wheels) to save space, then provide a semi-automatic three-speed gearbox with what Riley Motors would call ‘a traffic clutch’ – in other words, a semi-automatic, epicyclic three-speed gearbox with a centrifugal clutch, which would behave just like a horse. Let the reins out (in other words, take your foot off ‘the gas pedal’) and the Freighter would come to a gentle halt without stalling.
Comparison with the horse might also go some way to explain why the new SD Freighter didn’t have an item of equipment that was already considered pretty essential on any road-going vehicle this side of a tramcar – a steering wheel. True, many late Victorian and Edwardian internal combustion-engined contraptions had featured tiller steering in the past, but the Freighter dared to be different. It featured a left-hand handle with ‘segmented’ notches for the gear selection and a handle under the driver’s right elbow to take care of the steering. Even jumping on a Freighter today, it’s amazing how easy it is to master the controls.
GOING IT ALONE
As the specification of the SD Freighter was unique and quite unlike anything else on the road at the time, it follows
