With many of the lorry restorations that we feature in Classic & Vintage Commercials, the owner’s inspiration and/or enthusiasm for lorries and road haulage comes from childhood cab rides with a lorry-driving father. In the case of 54 year old Phil Marshall, whose 1966 TS3-engined Commer Maxiload is the subject of this month’s cover story the inspiration, though still parental, was slightly different.
Back in the 1970s, Phil’s mother was a lorry driver and drove a series of Maxiload cattle floats for a firm based near Bressingham in Norfolk. On occasions, she collected a four to seven year old Phil from school in one of the lorries. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, resulted in a certain amount of playground kudos. Later, Mum moved on to drive an LAD cabbed Albion Chieftain on sugar beet and pea harvest work.
On leaving school Phil did not initially go into lorries. Rather he joined a local architectural practice as an office junior: “I was always quite good at technical drawing.” However after 18 months he knew office work wasn’t for him, so he bought a van and started doing local transport work. This was successful, and in due course became two vans and a second driver. Then, when he turned 21 he financed his own HGV training and after passing his test (on a 1982plus, on Mondays when containers were slack after the weekend, an Eastron tilt. By 1996 however he wanted something that didn’t involve nights out so started driving concrete mixers; initially a Dodge 13tonner, and then a Leyland Constructor and finally a nearly-new Renault. This lasted a couple of years after which Phil returned to G & G for a short time as a driver-mechanic, before, in March 1999 setting up the local car and light commercial repair business he still runs today, and which in 2024 celebrates its 25th anniversary.
