I hope you’ll forgive me taking a break from my usual Thursday Americana blog so that we can to start celebrating regular GALPOT reader and contributor Steve Arnaudin’s Birthday a day early with a look at a 1961 Scammell Highwayman.
This particular vehicle is part of a fleet of vehicles used by John Carter and Sons to transport their steam fair around Britain.
So far as I can discern Carter & Sons operate 7 Scammells in their fleet of 15 vintage trucks.
“Why Not” is regularly tasked with pulling 40 tons of Steam Fair paraphernalia and with that weight can reach 40 mph, too slow to be seen on Britain’s motorway network which normally requires vehicles to be able to maintain a minimum speed of 50 mph.
A big clue as to why Steve might remember this type of vehicle is the number 6.
Highwayman were commonly used to pull Scammell low loading trailers which were built at the Scammell works at Moor Park just outside North London.
Joby Carter reckons that each of his trucks covers around 1000 miles per year some of them only need to be filled with diesel once a year !
One of the problems of running a fleet of vintage trucks is keeping the Gardiner diesel engines maintained this truck is 50 years old and the mechanic who has been looking after them should have retired some time ago.
In case your wondering why this truck might be of interest to our GALPOT birthday boy may I heartily recommend to you 42 mins 10 seconds of this linked surreal youtube clip for all to be revealed.
Happy Birthday and best wishes tomorrow Steve !
