Truck and Driver
article reproduced with acknowledgement to Truck and Driver publication, issued October 2020
Archie Johnstone took his first steps as an owner-driver with a Leyland Constructor. Now established as one of the premier tipper operators in Scotland, this truck was built in tribute to how it all began.
This period perfect Leyland Constructor is a replica of the truck which got Archie Johnstone up and running as an owner driver. Today his company A Johnstone Haulage is one of the best-known eight-wheeler fleets in Scotland, with state-of-the-art premises in Bathgate including offices, a truck wash, garage and DVSA test lane.
His story goes further back than the Leyland though, with Archie starting oft work as an apprentice mechanic at the Vauxhall-Bedford-Opel dealership, Watson of Airdrie.
“Apprentices were placed into various places by the Scottish training provider LAGTA” recalls Archie, “and it was pretty much luck of the draw I’d have preferred trucks but I got cars.”
He got a taste of working on light commercials, but mostly he cut his teeth on Chevettes and Cavaliers. “They were great things to work on back in those days, you could have a Mk1 Astra clutch done in 20 minutes!”
With his time served, Archie moved and gained more experience at different garages before starting with Ashfield Recovery, where he spent three and a half years doing a mix of both light and heavy recovery.
Hauling in stricken or stranded trucks always struck a chord with Archie that he’d like to be out on the road, and he always liked tippers. “A friend’s dad drove one for a company in Airdrie called John Elliot and I remember that well” he says.
“I heard of a job coming up as an eight-wheeler tipper driver with a haulier called John Cunningham. I had an ERF E-series 325 with Eaton twin splitter box and we used to run loads of blaes from the local shale bings to road building projects“
Archie then moved back into the recovery sector with Collier Breakdown where he became the recovery manager and completed his Operator’s CPC. It was otten memorable, “That was an interesting job as we had a contract to remove illegally parked vehicles as per police instruction, so it could be fun when the owners turned up to dispute it.”
Operator GPG
With CPC in hand, he thought about putting his own truck on the road, and the natural choice was a tipper. He approached a company called Fin Cairn about subcontracting to them. “They had 12 registered subbies, and at that time there was more work for six-wheeler tippers, so I bought a truck from them” he says.
It was a Leyland Constructor which had originally been built as a concrete mixer chassis and converted to a tipper. “It wasn’t quite right for a tipper, the rear overhang was too much. I changed it for a second Constructor which was much better.” He employed a driver while still working at Collier for six months.
The summer holidays rolled round, Archie found himself out driving the tipper and decided just to have a crack at it full time. The subbing for Fin Cairn lasted ten months then the company was wound up. “It was touch and go as to whether I’d be able to
hold onto the truck”, but there was new work available from Duntilland Quarry, then owned by John Fyte Ltd. “I got a call from someone who’d heard I was looking for work, so I went up there and was able to keep going” he recalls. The E-reg Constructor required regular reconstructing, and every weekend was spent underneath it completing running repairs from his base in Caldercruix, but it kept on going.
He even insulated the Wilcox body to enable it to carry asphalt. He was able to invest in a second lorry for his brother to drive, and this truck was a real oddball; a Ford Cargo with a Magirus-Deutz air-cooled engine!
He took a step up when the Leyland was replaced with a Scania 93, which Archie has fond memories of. “That was a great truck, it had the range-change and splitter box. It was a really well built thing.” An ERF E-series 325 followed, and then came his first new truck, a 1994 Seddon Atkinson Strato 6×4, the model based on the Iveco Eurotech but fitted with the Shotts-built Cummins L10 325 engine. It was supplied by Central Motors of Airdrie. He had the honour of hauling the nine millionth tonne of aggregate from Duntilland too. At that point, six-wheelers tended to be more popular than the eight-wheelers we see today. “At the time the eights were considered less efficient; you had an extra pair of tyres and brakes to factor in, they used more fuel and were more expensive to run. They tended to be used more on dry work rather than tar too. At one point I had five 6x4s and just one 8×4.” The Seddon Atkinson performed well, and could pull strongly thanks to high gearing, but the British manufacturer couldn’t keep up with the offerings from Scania; the 93P did so well it was joined by a 113 8×4 and the Swedish marque has made up the bulk of the Johnstone fleet since the mid 1990s. Various other trucks have come and gone over the years including a pair of Foden Alphas, a batch of Mercedes-Benz Arocs, Daf CFs and two very well-liked Renaults including a Premium Lander that was the company’s 20th anniversary truck back in 2011.
Anniversary
Archie likes to mark occasions with a special truck, and the 25th anniversary one is still in service with long-serving driver Willie Ferrie, it’s a G450 and you’d be hard pressed to tell it’s spent its life running in and out of quarries and on tar work, it’s still in superb condition. The company has tended to standardise on the G-cab sleeper and 410 engine in recent years, and while most of the fleet is still manual, is also now moving to spec the Opticruise gearbox. “I prefer a manual myself, but a lot of younger drivers have never seen one” says Archie, “the earlier Scania autos weren’t the best, but to be fair they’ve really got the new ones sorted now.” The two latest trucks to join the fleet are a pair of next-gen XTs but they’re unfortunately out based on a job at the moment so weren’t there on the day of the shoot. There’s also a sole MAN TGS in the fleet which is being evaluated and one Daf XF artic bulker. While most of the trucks are plain white these days because that’s what aggregate companies seem to like, the traditional Johnstone livery is aircraft blue with a silver band. But in the start, his Leyland Constructor was plain red. Archie thought for some time about buying a classic, and a Leyland Constructor was high on the list as it was his first truck, but Constructors aren’t exactly commonplace. He found this one by chance. “I’d been to see a couple but they were major restoration jobs. Then I spotted this one for sale in Ireland on the Patterson Truck Sales website and it was really tidy.”
It was a curious spec too, with a mere 70,000km on the clock the truck was fitted with a demountable flatbed body that could probably have been used to shift plant. What other types of body — if any — that were fitted to it are unknown. It could have run a tipper box as hydraulics were present.
This period perfect Leyland Constructor is a replica of the truck which got Archie Johnstone up and running as an owner driver. Today his company A Johnstone Haulage is one of the best-known eight-wheeler fleets in Scotland, with state-of-the-art premises in Bathgate including offices, a truck wash, garage and DVSA test lane.
His story goes further back than the Leyland though, with Archie starting oft work as an apprentice mechanic at the Vauxhall-Bedford-Opel dealership, Watson of Airdrie.
“Apprentices were placed into various places by the Scottish training provider LAGTA” recalls Archie, “and it was pretty much luck of the draw I’d have preferred trucks but I got cars.”
He got a taste of working on light commercials, but mostly he cut his teeth on Chevettes and Cavaliers. “They were great things to work on back in those days, you could have a Mk1 Astra clutch done in 20 minutes!”
With his time served, Archie moved and gained more experience at different garages before starting with Ashfield Recovery, where he spent three and a half years doing a mix of both light and heavy recovery.
Hauling in stricken or stranded trucks always struck a chord with Archie that he’d like to be out on the road, and he always liked tippers. “A friend’s dad drove one for a company in Airdrie called John Elliot and I remember that well” he says.
“I heard of a job coming up as an eight-wheeler tipper driver with a haulier called John Cunningham. I had an ERF E-series 325 with Eaton twin splitter box and we used to run loads of blaes from the local shale bings to road building projects“
Archie then moved back into the recovery sector with Collier Breakdown where he became the recovery manager and completed his Operator’s CPC. It was otten memorable, “That was an interesting job as we had a contract to remove illegally parked vehicles as per police instruction, so it could be fun when the owners turned up to dispute it.”
Nostalgia trip
In any case, there wasn’t going to be any other Constructors in this condition coming up any time soon, so the following week Archie went out to see it, bought it, drove it to the ferry and then home. “It had apparently spent nearly all its life in the Hull area” he explains, “It was a great experience driving it home, the 25 miles to the boat and then that haul up out of Cairnryan, it brought back so many memories.”
Finished in dark blue, the truck looked great, and Archie thought hard about what to do. “I did think about putting a recovery body on it and then it could be used for work, but then I thought NO, I’m not turning it into a work project and decided to replicate my original tipper.” And when he says replicate, he really means it. He spoke to Aliweld of Newcastle about a tipper body and they said they would still be able to build one to original 1980s specification. A further bonus was the period Drum tipping gear which was sourced as unused ex-display stock. It was taken to the Tip-Ex exhibition one year and never fitted to a vehicle. Clearly, it was destined for something special. The red paint was applied by Mark Donaldson.
The interior is factory fresh and has needed no work, and other than routine maintenance that’s been needed, beyond that is the odd valve and solenoid. The truck has enjoyed a number of runs; it was on the Ayrshire Road Run this year too, which took place albeit at a reduced level due to Covid.
Test drive
It’s a surprisingly refined and comfortable truck to drive too. Archie kindly offered to let me drive it, even with warnings that there may be some crunching. He took the truck out first to demonstrate the Spicer ten-speed gearbox.
The first thing to notice is that it’s not as noisy as you’d expect; the engine noise isn’t excessive, there’s no rattling or clonking and the suspension is surprisingly forgiving even though there’s only a “show load” under the traditional tarpaulin cover. The power steering is light as is the gear shift. Getting up through the gears is simple, you can feel the revs climb, while the rev counter works perfectly — and you can skip the clutch altogether at times, or double-declutch. The splitter is activated by flicking the lever switch then pressing the clutch pedal. The downshifts proved harder, attempting to go there when the speed is too high, even with a blip of the throttle and it’ll grind (well, Archie could do it, I couldn’t!). The trick is to let it slow that bit more and feel for the gear lever being ready to move. A morning of minor crunching and I’d have it sussed. Archie said that too by the way — honest.
It’s a wonderful, rare piece of 1980s nostalgia; the level of detail and originality is outstanding. Leyland had a solid product with the Constructor and it was miles ahead of the old Buffalo and Bison it replaced. T&D
