Fire Engines Photos

Merryweather were very late to realize that most fire appliance business in the UK entailed building bodies on commercial truck chassis like Bedford, Commer-Karrier, Dodge and Ford - rather than premium chassis like AEC and ERF, not to mention Dennis. When they got around to offering a Ford D series, they had Reliant build a custom tilting crew cab, using fibreglass for the rear floor, doors and roof. Although it was nice to have a full tilting cab, and it looked very good, it was not in practice a great benefit compared to other firms' "split tilt" designs, such as Carmichael, CFA and especially HCB-Angus.

I have no idea why two different pain colours were used, though!

Added by Rob Johnson on 05 November 2021.

Just been reading when Shelvoke and Drewry wanted Merryweather to build a fire appliance on their new SPV range of chassis cabs. The Merryweather directors would not let SD have their name on it anywhere! SD went elsewhere to CFE and sold a lot to London Fire Brigade and others.

Added by CraigW on 07 November 2021.

S&D started into the fire appliance business to poke Dennis in the eye, because Dennis was eating their lunch in the municipal refuse bin wagon business. That’s why they wanted to collaborate with Merryweather, who were arguably the only “other” premium UK fire appliance manufacturer at the time. But as you mention Merryweather did not want to associate their proud name with a bin wagon firm! Their success with London was based on the fact that their offering looked pretty much identical to Dennis and ERF on paper, but their quality control with an underdeveloped chassis was a problem.

They got two large orders from LFB, based on bargain basement pricing, but this tactic set the stage for a pricing posture which guaranteed that their fire appliance business in general could never be profitable and it folded after only a few years.

Because of numerous teething troubles they also failed to get much in the way of repeat or referral orders, so sales growth was a very uphill struggle.

The brand new chassis and cab cost a fortune to develop, were under engineered, and had to be priced under the competition to attract sales - all mistakes which the much more successful earlier effort by ERF managed to avoid.

Added by Rob Johnson on 08 November 2021.

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