The Rodney Smith Years
"Smith's Coaches Portland"
This page will provide information and photographs from 1954 to today.
I guess its true that everybody is good at something, with me its taking things apart and putting them back together, from a early age I knew I would never be an academic, I hardly ever wrote and very rarely read, and if I did read it was only enough words to understand what was written never every word on the paper, much later in life, in fact only when I was a grown man in my forties, did I find out that I was dyslexic, I just knew reading and writing was not for me.
My school days were spent in the metal work or wood work class, making anything and everything, and at home I had my father's garage full of wonderful machines to play with, soon, even by the tender age of 9 or 10 I spent all my spare time helping Dad repair his taxis and coaches. By the time I was 12 years old I could sit on my Dad's lap and steer a coach down Verne Common Road (which was private in those days), and by 14 I could drive a car in the garage, up and down and three point turns the lot.
This is me cleaning OPR 260 12 seater mini bus
In fact I would go so far as to say I hated every minute of it, the teachers had no time to teach somebody who could not read and write properly and I found myself isolated from all the academic classes, I remember the english teacher asking me to leave the room because I could not spell a word and had complained that I should have looked the spelling up in a dictionary, have you tried to find a word when you have no idea if it starts with and e or i or for that matter any other letter? and even if you saw the word in front of your face still would not have a clue if it was right or wrong, the words only mean anything to me if they are in contexts.
I should say we did have a smashing sports teacher and I did enjoy cross country running and even made the captain of the South Dorset team for the school.
Aitcheson’s Garage. Shell Garage Victoria Square first day of work, I sold a gallon of petrol from the four star pump on the right, the price 12 shilings and sixpence.
As there were no street lights in those days on the beach road it was regular as clockwork that we would be called out to fatal crashes, on the Portland Beach Road, Easton Lane, and Portland Bill Road, but we were young and somehow managed to shake it off, the one thing we never did as a team is talk about it, it was just part of the job, cars kill and we had to pick up the pieces. There was the lighter side mind you, and boy did we have some fun - Driving top of the range sport cars, trying to find an annoying rattle laying in the boot while somebody else drove, and towing cars back from repair that had broken down.
One of the most satisfying things when you’re a mechanic is when a customer would bring a car in with a miss or smoking bad, maybe coughing and spluttering or even on the end of a rope as it would not go at all, and half an hour later drive of with a smile on his face all fixed, servicing and MOT work was ok, and we changed thousands of clutches, suspension, gear boxes, and brakes - the lot, but the engine that was the key, fix the engine and you got a real buzz, and the local matlow population at HMS Osprey gave us our buzz, every Saturday and Sunday they would troop in, you knew straight away they had been playing with the car, got a repair manual from the library and in ten minutes they thought they knew it all.
Cars would come in with spark plug leads the wrong way round or the slow running jet missing, they tried to adjust the points but forgot to refit the condenser, you could tell they had this “it was not me governor look on their face”, "Have we been repairing one's car sir?", "Who me no! I did wipe the rocker cover off!", "Well somebody fitted the wrong plugs sir! been like this long has it?". There was the odd one or two that would make us scratch our heads, I remember one guy turning up in a Ford Anglia missing like hell, swore he had not touched it but on examination I found no compression on one of the four cylinders, looking under the cover I found two tappet blocks completely missing, "Vanished into fresh air did they sir? Never mind; sure we can find you some more out back." Of course there were our own cars which we were always playing with trying to make them go further on a gallon of fuel or a bit faster up hill, I really can't be sure but from the age of 17 to 21 I must have had a dozen different ones at least. It really was a great start to my life,
During my apprenticeship I could often be found lying under a car with a welding torch.
Right next to the garage was the Portland air station, where the Navy helicopters flew from, and the staff provided us with a wide variety of vehicles to play with each day, sport cars, saloons cars, Navy vehicles fire engines, wide range of motorcycles, you name it! it came though or doors, and the fun we had was fantastic, a lot I have to say was due to the great bunch of chaps who worked there and of course a great boss if a bit eccentric.
Following my apprenticeship I really had only one place to go and that was to join my father in the coaching business, so as soon as I was 21, I applied for my PSV (public service vehicle driving licence) and coaching I went, and boy did I go coaching, every day somewhere different.
This is me in 1979 on tour in Scotland,
This is the Bedford I drove on the Scotland tour 1979 I remember it was so hot that day on the way down the M1 that one woman fainted.
Doing work like taking Navy teams to football matches in Portsmouth, Wrens to netball at Gosport, prisoners to Brixton and Wansworth, private hire to Longleat, school trips to Exeter. I did the lot, never refused a trip and never had a crash, well lets be fair if I hit a coach I was the one who had to repair it, so one learnt to be very careful behind the wheel, I started my driving career in GBU.
But the ultimate was when my Dad and I bought WFX from Bluebird coaches, Weymouth, she was a 53 seater Paxton with a mid engine, now that was some coach; quite, reliable, fast, smooth, you just felt at home behind the wheel, take her to London and back and you wanted to go again, I loved her. I don’t think any vehicle ever got the loving attention that she did anywhere in the country, washed and polished till she shone, my only drawback was I loved driving so much that even though I was a good mechanic, I sometimes felt that I was drawn between which was best driving a coach or repairing it.
Dad had run his business from the same premises that his father had years earlier kept his horses in, and although it was in a good position right in the middle of Easton Square (the centre of island life), it really became a millstone round our necks, this was due to modern day coaches being taller and longer than the ones Dad had had grown up with, and parking them out on the street presented all sorts of problems.
So if the company was to expand, and more for me meant better, we needed a new garage, so when Atchison’s garage in Victoria square, where I had served my apprenticeship came on the market we had to go for it , the deal worked out to perfection, Nigel Last bought the flat I lived in above the garage at Easton for himself, and the garage for his business (he ran a car repair business) I bought the house next to the show rooms in Victoria square (the red house),
Got an old coach need shot, then cut it up and hey presto a coach no more.
Well, it really was the garage shop and offices with the petrol pumps out front and a flat above that was used as a stock rooms, Dad bought the show rooms for the coaches and taxis, and Dave Milverton who owned Portland Plant and Commercial Services bought the garage behind, the old workshops that I had spent so long working in, now the show rooms where Achisons garage once sold Daff cars, used to be a sub station years ago for the national bus company. They used it to store doubledecker buses during the winter, along with one at Redlands, so the garage had high doors and was long enough and wide enough to park nine coaches in two rows of three, this reduced to seven when we built two pits for maintenance at the back, we did not have nine only five but the world was our oyster so to speak and in a few years we got close.
The fleet on a sunday morning after I had washed them one of my regular jobs
If you don't keep up with the times you go under, or at the very least become stagnant, I had no plans to do this but our avenues of income were expanded to their max, as there are only so many people living on Portland that need a taxi or coach. There was stiff opposition in Weymouth with Barry's Coaches, Blue Bird Coaches, Bere Regis, and Dorset Queen, we had picked up a few odd contracts there but were never going to make it big with so many companies competing, Dad's tours were going well and I had even ventured into France for a three day tour to Paris, but I knew from the start that there was no way I wanted to take the risk that continental travel had, so the decision was made that there were only two other opportunities: National Express and a Bus Service;
But which one should we try? Why not both!
We knew we had the stage carriage license, and many people had requested that we ran a bus service to Weymouth. However, National who had the monopoly were putting fares up on a regular basis, and we know they were using the vast profit made on this route, to cross-subsidise other routes, and therefore presumably the money for subsidised routes that they get from the local council for other things, so we thought one or two routes operating outside peak hours, i.e. between 10.00 am and 3.30 pm would not do anybody any harm.
Oh how wrong can one be. National went mad, complained to all who would listen, used every tactic they could to run us off the road, including buses parked in front, and buses parked behind our buses at all the bus stop. Wherever we went there was a bus waiting, it got so stupid that National bus drivers realising the lunacy of it all, and were telling passengers to use our services. I asked one once what he thought of it all, having driven from National for many years, “great I am on over-time all the dups' put on to combat you are we think its fantastic, never earned so much money doing so little in my life”, and when asked: “what about the competition we are making though do you think it's a good thing?” the response was, “Yes I do, it needs something to jolt National out of the dark ages”, and the locals who weren't fooled at all, refused to travel on National in their droves, so our loads were going up each day.
Now my father and I have never looked for trouble, and would always be fair in our dealing with all the local companies, even to the point that if a customer from another company asked us for a quote, we would check that we weren't stepping on any toes before giving that quote. But National’s reaction to our service really did wind us up, to the point that Dad and I agreed we would not roll over just because they said so. So we hunted around, found a transport specialist in Eric Stocker, and went to see him. Following a very short meeting it was agreed our license was in order we were doing what the people wanted after all. Fares had dropped from 90p each way to 60p and would have been 1.20p had we not started, so the public were happy to have us operate, and to be fair we had competition on private hire, and contract work, so why should there not be competition on stage carriage? And Eric agreed that if it came to a court case with the Traffic Commissioners he would be happy to represent us, and of course that's exactly what happened. When our licence came up for renewal the National objected (which is how things were done in those day's).
As a whole this did get blown out of all proportion by the press, they saw it as a David and Goliath battle, and spread it across all the papers and local TV, Dad was being interviewed ever other day, but with the public supporting us and the council supporting the National it did need to come to a head, so the date was set. We of course had done our homework, and mustered all the support from the local community we could, in fact we filled the Guildhall with our supporters, something the commissioner commented on more than once. We had our solicitor in Eric Stocker and did he turn out to be a bonus, as the National had employed a barrister from the city, and two transport specialists. However Eric Stockers reputation preceded him, and the National barrister later told me he knew he had lost the moment Eric walked in; praise indeed.
CFP 5T Bedford 53 seater Duple 500
The inquiry went like we thought really. They tried to make out that the loss of revenue would mean that they could not run any other service on Portland, something we were prepared for, and when we produced a new timetable and assured the commissioner and the public that we would replace any withdrawn service, with our own even better ones, that objection was withdrawn along with the borstals who had the same concern that they would lose their night service up the Grove. The commoners asked if anybody in the hall had any objections to Smith’s operating? Other than the representatives from The National Bus Company nobody said a word. “Well I think the case has been answered” and up went a hurray!
What happens if you run into a ditch you cant get out of, the driver was very lucky no damage was done, and the crane driver earnt himself a pint or two getting her back out
Then came the unexpected bit, having taken the National and us into a side room, and following discussions it was agreed with the National that we did have the right to operate, but he felt our licences should be updated to reflect modern times, as after all it was issued in 1936. So Dad asked me what our wish list would be: “10 return journeys a day” said I (jokingly) – “Done!” said the National, so the commissioner said , “I’ll have the licence drawn up next week”, I thought at the time how sweet it was to see the National capitulate for a change.
One of the Leyland Leopards on our service 53 seater Plaxton body
So there it was we had 10 return trips a day to arrange, buses to buy, and a service to run. I have to say there was a lot of satisfaction on our part, but we also knew the National would never stop trying to remove us from the road, as now we had 10 return trips we really would make a dent in their pockets, but what happened next really did surprise me. We could not find any sutable vehicles for sale or they were for sale but just not to us, This did at first present a dilemma for me as I needed to buy at least three buses quickly, but not just ordinary ones. We were very keen to get ones with coach seats as one of our biggest arguments with the National service was about the uncomfortable seating their buses have.
What to change the coulor start by rubbed down the whole bus
A number of failed enquires were made, then by pure luck I was told about a Scottish bus operator who had some bus/coaches for sale, and had no reason not to sell to us. So a deal was made. The funny thing was, thanks to the fact none were availablie in England, not only did I end up with a vehicle that suited our needs even better that anything I could have got in England, but we got it at half the price. We went on to buy three more buses from the same supplier, I even bought a double Decker and sold it to a guy in Germany who had been pestering me for years to get him one.
Painting it in filler primer
The service was a great success and ran right up till the last day of our companies operation. We did have the odd silly driver who took things personally, but generally we operated side by side, and we did agree to a small fare increase to appease the National, but even on our last day of operation it was still cheaper than the day we started. I do feel that our intervention into stage carriage was beneficial to the public of Portland who had supported us, as now they had more services operating and over a much longer day. And now with the new de-regulisation anybody can operate, so even the government came to agree with Smith's in the end.
And paint them blue easy, the first three ready for work
What to do on a rare day off well you dress like a majorette and go dancing in the Portland carnival, "all granddad had to do was lead some horses and drive a carriage" Left to right Me, Alan, Keith, Christopher, Martin.
Inside our last tour coach KNP 2 X this vehicle has an intresting history having been bought new for the Aston Villa football team and then in its second year the West Bromwich Albion football team. The best I managed was to carry the Portland Dolpins swimming team, note the TV coffee machines and toilet.
Providing national express would be a challenge as it was fairly long distance work, but you were paid by the mile not by the number of passengers, and as coach express was becoming more popular, I thought it worth the risk. Also the advantage was that if we sold our Volvo tour coach (VEN 2 X) which really was not paying its way following my fathers retirement and the
lack of tour work.
The two Express Duple body Volvo B58 chassis being made ready for service,
The mechanics were to be checked out first, then they rubbed down and painted, they turned out to be proper work horses, and even after Smiths closed, they still ran on although I later heard one was written of. That’s me on the left in the picture above, covered in oil just how I liked it. Can't remember the boy's name on the right, but I know he was one of the apprentices I trained, over my 35 years in the trade including my time with New Look looking after their HGV fleet, I trained or helped to train around a dozen apprentice mechanics, some of which went on to really good things, one even became the Foreman at Rolls Royce no less. Was that my training or his skill we will never know?!
I could get two express vehicles probably with Volvo or Leyland chassis. The feelers were put out and sure enough two sister ships, both duple, both 53 seaters, both with Volvo B58 chassis, were located and they came with double opening side doors, a big plus if you are a stage carriage operator - CAV 269V and CAV 268V.
She is based on a Volvo B10M chassis and on long distance probably one of the smoothest ever built, but I needed two, so below are the replacements built for express work
RLJ 292R a private hire coach used for over four years by us came from Blue Bird in Weymouth fitted with 500 Bedford engine a very nice vehicle to drive.
School minibus fleet left to right: Convent, School dinners, Westfield, Wyvern training centre.
The fleet backed up to the beach in Victoria Square Portland
That would have left me with school contracts, a bit of private hire and the buses less than 50% of the turnover, it was an opportunity not to be missed the day Dave walked in my office, and to top it all he even agreed to buy my house, which he later turned into flats. So I, with my young family, got to move out from a flood risk area.
I worked for them for on a self employed basses for three years while Pulpit Transport ran, then with the lose of the contract I became an employee, 18 years later I am still there, I managed to overcome my dyslexia by training to use a computer, I even went back to college and qualified as a teacher, and having done many online, home and college courses, including a number of factory specialist ones with Scania, Volvo, Wabco, Ministry of Transport, and obtaining the European ECDL in computing all with the aid of a computer (of which I can never be found far from) I furthered my career with New Look, and went on to become their Fleet Manager; a position I still hold to this day, and in 2001 I became a member of The SOE ( Society of Operations and the Society of Engineers) praise indeed, and unlike my school days words no longer confuse or scare me, well maybe not quite so much? " how do you spell knife again? its starts with a K" and when it busted is that brake or break?