It was a Bedford engineer who initially approached the Ministry of Supply on the 23rd of December, in the winter of 1938, suggesting that a four-wheel drive cargo truck may be an asset in the forthcoming conflict. After quite some delay, the Ministry finally responded to the company a week after the War had started in the following September suggesting development may be a good idea. This turned into an urgent operational requirement, design work starting immediately, with the first prototype QL1 rollingofftheproductionlineinrecordbreaking time on the first day of February 1940; QL2 and 3 quickly followed. They were put through a gruelling 10,000 mile testing regime, maintaining them to a whisker away from destruction, culminating in a total nuts-and-bolts strip-down.
Utilising the standard six-cylinder Bedford overhead-valve 3519cc petrol engine, QL2 was given the Army census number L4182772 and QL3 was the next digit along. They were accepted by the military procurement team as being a reliable, tough truck which hopefully would go on to be a major asset in the backbone of the transport support structure. They were certainly right! The Bedfords went on to prove themselves indispensable – 52,247 trucks via 90 different contracts!
Many QLs were pulled out of the chassis assembly lines to be the subject of extensive experiments and were ‘fiddled with’ in every way possible to utilise this commercial lorry’s potential.
QLB became a Bofors gun tractor, QLT was a long-wheelbase troop carrier, while QLW had a tipper body with a winch added (these were actually QLB chassis modified later in the War). One can get terribly academic about
