Cheffins Auctions in Cambridge appear to be a good place to find a vintage Bedford to buy. They brought another ‘Big Bedford’ to market in April 2022, with the auction sale of a 1954 Bedford ‘S’ type dropside petrol lorry, finished in the blue and red livery of P. G. Culham of Colchester, complete with a set of greedy boards. The Bedford had been used for general haulage but came with sugar beet top sides to service one particular client.
While on the subject of vegetable haulage, Ken Thomas, the well-known Wisbech haulier, established back in 1948, also rescued a Bedford dropside which the company now rallies in the colours of his fleet; 3234 NG comes in green over black paintwork reminiscent of a livery from the 1950s. Corgi® honoured him by producing a model of it including a sack load cargo as model 19401.
Iconic is probably one of the most overused words in this genre but if you were to think of a Bedford S type artic, we certainly would recall the Big Bedford in its Shell-Mex tanker guise. In 2016, the most superb example of this machine hit the rally scene, after an eight-yearsad dilapidated tanker body and chassis was located elsewhere and the work began to bring the two together while a search for the correct 4.9 litre engine and transmission started.
