‘SUPER CREW’. SUPER RESULT!
Unlike the launch of the then new ‘T-Types’, which helped Shelvoke & Drewry build-up an unassailable seventy to eighty percent of the UK refuse collection vehicle market (the actual figure depended on who was telling the story!), the launch of the new P-Series proved to be less of an epoch-defining moment, than should have been the case.
There were a number of factors which contributed to that;- firstly the late seventies were a time of intense political division, with ‘Privatisation’ hanging over Council fleet management like the Sword of Damocles. This certainly blunted sales of expensive new purpose-built refuse collectors, but a combination of widespread labour unrest and economic turbulence, mixed-in with high interest rates didn’t help either.
That said, the P-Series was a big advance over the former N-Series. But production delays caused by the ‘newness’ of the design and the upheaval of building an all-steel cab, all took time to settle down. Unfortunately ‘time’ wasn’t on Shelvoke & Drewry’s side, as the increasingly unwieldy management structure at both company and Butterfield Harvey Group level was draining-away financial resources as fast as
