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HALLFORD VEHICLESTHE ORIGINS OF PRODUCTIONEverard Hesketh introduced a new product to the growing firm of J & E Halls in 1906; motor vehicles, a new and exciting industry. Private motoring was still a novelty, more so in Britain than in France and Germany. In Britain motor manufacture and motoring as amenity and sport were held back by a regulation requiring the 'horseless carriage' to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag to warn drivers of horse-drawn vehicles of the alarming addition to the hazards of the road. By the time the restriction was abolished in 1896 France and Germany were well ahead in design and sales. Alexander Marcet, refrigeration engineer and a director of Halls until 1910, had become one of the car-owning elite in 1900 when he bought a belt-driven Benz. He did not live to see his company become a motor manufacturer, but died in 1903 at the age of forty-four. |
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COMMERCIAL VEHICLESHalls were not interested in the private motorist, but chose the commercial sector as the more promising market. In 1906 they acquired a licence to manufacture chassis for buses, lorries and other heavy motor vehicles from the Swiss firm of Adolph Saurer, makers of internal combustion engines since 1888 but producers of commercial vehicles only since 1903. Halls called their vehicles 'Hallford', after the company's telegraphic address. By 1907 they had three or four prototypes one of which, a three-tonner, took part in the Royal Automobile Club's Commercial Motor Trials, gaining a gold medal (the highest award in its class) and a special diploma. With such an accolade progress was swift. Halls built a motor workshop north of their main works on a site of many acres which had once been the orchard and market gardens from which John Hall senior supplied his stall at Covent Garden. By 1911 the company had replaced the Saurer patents with an engine of its own design and was producing a variety of models up to five tons' capacity.
The Hallford was a rugged but very adaptable vehicle. Public transport operators put a bus body onto the chassis and some of these buses appeared on the London streets under the Tillings banner. Another user fitted his Hallford lorry with hard slatted wooden seats and put a canvas cover over all to form a passenger char-a-banc which no doubt made up in utility what it must have lacked in comfort. But the vehicle was essentially a lorry. The leading brewers equipped whole transport fleets with Hallfords, which were also bought by haulage contractors, the London County Council and other local government departments, and by export agents for shipment to buyers in Australia and South-East Asia. |
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WAR PRODUCTION 1914-18Before the war, also, the War Office introduced a system of subsidies for privately owned commercial vehicles which conformed to certain regulations and had passed a number of rigorous road tests, the idea being that the vehicles would be at the government's disposal for war purposes. As it happened, war broke out before the scheme had become fully operational and Halls were obliged to produce lorries of all kinds at great speed and in quantity to satisfy the urgent demand for war transport from Britain and her allies. From 1914 to 1918 Hallford lorries carried the products of British munition factories to the Channel ports and ploughed through Flanders mud to feed the guns and tanks. There was another, coincidental, connection between Hallford and tank warfare. Halls' chief commercial vehicle designer had been C.W.Wilson, inventor of the epicyclic gearbox and other important contributions to motor technology. He was also one of the inventors of the tank. Links: Back to Everard Hesketh > Halls escalators & lifts > Hallford village Next topic: Sir Hiram Maxim
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