"Sure as the sunrise", that's what they say about the Albion....
That's the refrain to a very pretty Mark Knopfler song called "Border Reiver," a cut my favorite Internet radio station has in heavy rotation these days. The first time I heard it, I very quickly figured out that it was a truck driver's tribute to his truck, but there was much more that I didn't understand. What's an "Albion?" What's a "Reiver"? What border is he talking about? What's up with the sunrise reference?
After a little research, I learned that the particular vehicle in this touching ballad is a three-axle Albion Reiver commercial lorry (truck) built in Scotland. Climb up in the cab here with me for a little "border run" through the fascinating story of Albion trucks and the men who drove them.
Albion Motors of Glasgow was Scotland's largest, most famous, and most successful manufacturer of motor vehicles. The firm got its start building "dogcart" automobiles with 8-horsepower engines and big spoked wagon wheels. Albion built its first lorry in 1909, and its first bus in 1914. By 1915 it had ceased building automobiles to concentrate on commercial vehicles, including the iconic double-decker buses usually associated with London but found all over the UK.
Albion was acquired by Leyland Motors in 1951, and thereby ended up as part of the ill-fated British Leyland mashup. Under BL, Albion trucks gradually evolved into badge-engineered junior Leylands, and the brand name was phased out entirely in 1980.
The Leyland truck division was spun off from BL in 1987 and merged into Dutch truck-builder DAF. In 1993, DAF went bankrupt, and the Albion facility in Glasgow was bought by its managers and reconstituted as an independent company. It was then acquired by American Axle & Manufacturing in 1998.
...my Scotstoun lassie, on the border run....
Albion's plant is located in Scotstoun, on the west side of Glasgow, which is the home of the Clyde shipyards and other heavy industry. The Scotstoun plant ceased doing final assembly of complete vehicles in 1972, but is still in operation today making chassis, drivetrain, and suspension parts for commercial vehicles.
Three hundred thousand on the clock and plenty more to go....
Albions quickly earned a reputation for ruggedness and reliability reflected in the company's long-running advertising slogan, "Sure as the sunrise." The distinctive Albion "rising sun" name badge echoed the theme. Even Albions built under British Leyland (whose passenger cars were far from the greatest when it came to build quality and reliability) were pretty much unkillable.
Most Albion buses had names beginning with the letter "V," such as "Valkyrie," "Viking," "Victor," "Valiant," and "Venturer." The trucks were given names from Scottish history and culture which were evocative of strength and dependability, such as "Caledonian," "Chieftain," "Clydesdale," "Claymore," and "Reiver."
The American equivalent of "Reiver" as a name for a truck would probably be something like "Outlaw" or "Bandit." The "border reivers" for which the truck is named lived in the "Debatable Lands" between England and Scotland from the 13th to the 16th centuries. England and Scotland were separate kingdoms during this time (they weren't formally merged until 1706), often at war or at least in conflict. During the reiver era, neither kingdom had consistent control of its border territory--they didn't call 'em "Debatable Lands" for nothing!
The reiver clans supplemented their income from farming by mounting armed cattle-rustling raids on each other, and on pretty much anyone else within convenient commuting distance. When raiding and plundering, the reivers had no particular concern for whether the folks being raided and plundered were technically subjects of their monarch or the other one, as long as they were from a different clan. Imagine a multi-party version of the Hatfield-McCoy feud conducted by the Riders of Rohan, and you'll have a good idea of the reiver lifestyle.
Border reivers are looked upon today in much the same way as pop culture now views pirates like Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. They were "bad guys," to be sure, but they were also colorful characters worthy of admiration for their skill at raiding (reivers made excellent light cavalry on those rare occasions you could get them to go along with the government) and their determination to live as free men.
I'm just a thiever ... stealing time .... in the "Border Reiver"
The song is Mark Knopfler's tribute to the truckers who gave him rides when he was a young man hitch-hiking from Glasgow to London. Among them were drivers for Robson's Border Transport Ltd., which hauled freight from Glasgow through the "Debatable Lands" to England and back again with a fleet of red and cream Albion Reivers. Robson's had a long-standing tradition of giving its trucks names starting with "Border" ("Border Scot," "Border Patriot," and so on), and one of their Albion Reivers in service in the late 1960s carried the name "Border Reiver."
The song is written in the voice of a long-distance truck driver "knocking out a living wage" behind the wheel. Like the border reivers of the middle ages, the driver wants to be left alone by the national government ("The Ministry don't worry me, my paperwork's all right"), but instead of stealing cattle, he's only "stealing time"--driving faster than the posted limit.
She's not too cold in winter but she cooks me in the heat ... I'm a six-foot driver but you can't adjust the seat ....
The "coach-built" style of cab with the large vertical radiator, such as you see on "Border Monarch" and on the dark blue truck directly above, was used until 1958, when it was replaced with the "LAD" cab found on the other trucks pictured here. As one gentleman who drove both versions described it:
I have rode in the coach built Albions. The LAD was a leap forward although not a lot of room. The gearstick was not good as you could bang your elbow on the back of the cab. ... Noise level in the LAD cab OUTRAGEROUS. ...
From about 1969 on to the end of production, Albions (and their Leyland cousins) used a more modern, squared-off "ergonomic" cab designed by Giovanni Michelotti's studio. These were much warmer and more comfortable, with excellent outward visibility. The "ergo" was definitely a better place for the driver to live and work, though perhaps a bit lacking in personality compared to the older styles.
While there was considerable improvement in driver comfort with each new cab design, the machinery underneath was almost unchanged over the entire production run. Like most medium and heavy commercial trucks, the Albions used solid axles on leaf springs. A Reiver could be configured as either a "6x4" with both rear axles powered or a "6x2" with only the middle axle powered. In the 6x4, there was a transfer case from which there were two driveshafts, one to each axle. Overall, this drive system worked pretty well, though you had to be careful that all eight tires on the rear end matched in diameter and pressure.
The transmission was a five- or six-speed manual. (The later "ergo cab" models had an added planetary gear overdrive which made them effectively twelve-speed transmissions.) At around the same time as the changeover to the LAD cab, Albion went from a "crashbox"--an unsynchronized manual which required double-clutching to shift--to a fully synchronous transmission. Even so, many drivers still referred to the newer transmissions as "crashes."
An Albion Reiver could be ordered with a gasoline or diesel engine. The diesels were the most common, either four- or six-cylinder inline four-stroke motors. The four-cylinder engines had an output in the 90-95 HP range.
The Leyland O.370 pictured at right is fairly typical of the straight-six diesels used. It had a 6.0-liter (370 cubic inch) displacement and produced 110 net horsepower at 2400 RPM. The later O.400 6.54L engine was slightly more powerful, at 125 horsepower.
In a vehicle that could weigh as much as 15 to 20 tons fully loaded, this did not make for neck-snapping acceleration. While no truck this size is built for quick 0-60 times, an Albion would be considered underpowered by North American truck standards. A truck the size of the Reiver built by an American manufacturer would have had something around 200 horsepower, and an engine with a much better specific output. For example, the three-cylinder version of the Detroit Diesel Series 71 engine used in GM trucks and buses had the same horsepower as the six-cylinder O.370, while the six-cylinder 6-71 was almost twice as powerful as the Leyland.
The engine, chassis length, wheelbase, body (truck bed), and 6x2 or 6x4 driveline could all be specified by the customer. This meant that there were dozens of possible configurations for an Albion Reiver, and each variation seems to have been given its own model number. A Reiver's maximum rated payload ranged from 13 to as much as 18 tons, depending on the type of bed and the chassis length.
After the 1968 Transport Act increased the legal limits on gross vehicle weight, the Albions were at a competitive disadvantage compared to newer designs which could haul more. Whatever the Reiver may have lacked in power or sophistication, though, it more than made up for in personality. An Albion Reiver was an honest working-man's kind of truck, beloved by those who drove them for a living. She might be a little slow, a little uncomfortable, and a little behind the technological curve, but your "Scotstoun lassie" would never let you down.
If you want to see an Albion in the metal, you'll have to go to Great Britain or one of the Commonwealth countries where they put the steering wheel on the right and drive on the left. As far as I know, they were never built with left-hand drive and no attempt was made to market them in North America. If you're in the British isles, though, finding a live Albion won't be all that hard. A few may still be at work in odd places, but many more are "in preservation," as they like to put it.
One of the interesting things I learned in the course of writing this post is just how big a deal restored commercial vehicles are in the UK. There are several museums devoted to buses or commercial trucks. The Historic Commercial Vehicle Society was formed in 1958, and now has over 4,000 members who own a total of over 7,500 trucks and buses--and HCVS isn't the only organization of its kind in Britain!
The HCVS puts on a number of vintage truck and bus rallies every year. These events are not just cruise-ins or static displays; the high point of the day occurs when the HCVS members form up a convoy and take their vehicles on a long-distance "run" on the public roads. This TV news segment on the 2009 Bournemouth to Bath Run gives a little taste of what these events are like.
If you look on YouTube, there are dozens of videos of this and similar events, at which you can see Albions and other old British trucks (Fodens, Austins, Leylands, Bedfords, Scammels, and the occasional rare bird like a Rutland or Thornycroft), meticulously restored and painted in their original color schemes, often with elaborate lettering and pinstriping. It's almost goes without saying that the members of the HCVS and like organizations are Car Lust's kind of people.
I've never been to Scotland, but I have some distant relatives in the Glasgow area that I'd like to go visit someday. I don't know how I'll get around when I get there, but a part of me wishes it were still possible to flag down a Robson's driver and hitch a ride. Seeing the border country from the cab of an Albion would be a wonderful experience, I'm sure.
Sure as the sunrise, you might say.
--Cookie the Dog's Owner
I must first of all thank the retired drivers and other truck fans who inhabit the "Old-Time Lorries" forum at TruckNet UK for their help in researching this article. The forum moderator and several of the members took pity on the poor Yank with all the dumb questions and generously shared their knowledge and first-hand recollections. "Rikki-UK" (the forum moderator), "3300John," "Trev_H," "Gardner 128" (who sent me some very helpful scans of old reference books), "Suttons Tony," "Bewick," "beaver 680," "Frankydobo," and "grumpy old man," thank you all for your help. "Beaver 680," whose real name is Tony, built the lovely scale model of the "Border Reiver" and very graciously provided the photo and permission to use it.
The restored two-tone blue Reiver is owned by Tyson Burridge. The exterior and interior photos are by Bob Tuck, and come from the Biglorryblog at TruckNet UK. Biglorryblog is kind of what Car Lust would be if it was exclusively about trucks and Chris Hafner lived in Blackburn, Lancashire instead of Seattle. If you have any interest in big commercial trucks, or just enjoy lively writing and dry wit, I highly recommend it.
The photos of the "Scotstoun Lass," the royal blue and red '55 (photographed by Gyles Carpenter), the LAD-cabbed coal truck (photographed by Dave Gothard), and the "group photo" of trucks participating in the John Lane Memorial Run in Scotland this past September come from the extensive photo galleries at Classic Commercial Motor Vehicles. CCMV is also well worth a visit: if it's a truck or a bus, and it ran anywhere in Great Britain or one of the Commonwealth countries, they've got a picture of it. Several, probably.