Sunday, June 30, 2013

1961 Ford Trader 75 bus

 

Gross weight is 11.3 tons, tare weight is 7.8 tons, a 5.4 litre diesel engine.  After bus use it was later used as a motor caravan.

According to Wallace Trickett: "One of my first school runs with Blue Bus Services (I was both mechanic and driver) at Masterton in 1981 was to Mauriceville about 35 km to the north east. I was given instructions and basically told the school children would let me know the stops etc. It was a very hot afternoon. Note the sliding windows in the bodywork same as in the photo.

So all the windows were open, I dropped the last child off and was returning to the depot on a narrow country lane when a milk tanker approached from the opposite direction. I pulled in as far as I could, but small rear vision mirrors were set to watch duals and skirt so could not see the top of the bodyside.

I heard a bit of scraping going on as I brushed against some foliage. I carried on into town and parked up at the pumps: as I was getting out of my seat, the manager appeared and scratching his head looked at the left hand side of the bus.

There protruding out from a window about seven rows back was a tree branch about 9 feet long complete with small branch off shoots.  I had driven about 25 km like that and fortunately it being empty had not impaled a child sitting in the seat!"

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