At the Retro Truck Show in Gaydon in September, my eyes were naturally drawn to a restored Leyland DAF 95.350 FT sleeper cabbed tractor. Despite ‘only’ dating from 1987, examples of early 95 series – the original look of the Cabtec cab DAFs – are actually relatively few and far between in the UK.
It belonged to Steve Holes, who also owned the smart 3300ATi dating from 1986 parked alongside it. We got chatting and he told me about his collection of classic DAFs plus the fact he also operates two top of the range, all bells and whistles XG+530s.
We exchanged numbers and I arranged to come and see both his modern trucks for our sister title Trucking, but also his fine collection of classics for Heritage Commercials. And when I sold the idea to DAF, it was happy to provide a professional photographer to shoot the trucks.
Steve is based in a little village near Hook, which itself is only a few miles away from Basingstoke. An initial date, which suited Steve, the photographer and me, was agreed but was soon kicked into touch once the weather
