The History of Ruddington Depot
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Under the Hammer
Far and wide
In the early days of the sales soon after the war when vehicles, especially commercial vehicles, were hard to come by, the auctions at Ruddington Depot allowed both private buyers and dealers, to pick up real bargains:
“…there was a shortage of motor vehicles of any sort. You could not get cars, or lorries, or land rovers …we had the Standard Vanguard and the Standard Vanguard Van and the Humber Pullman, Willis Jeeps, Bedford Vans, Ford Consuls, Ford Anglia’s, Ford Poplars and all of these sold extremely well in the sales. There was a lot of demand.” (Robert Hanson)
Jack Bagguley was on hand to assist one new owner:
“There was this eight seater staff car that was put away at night and pulled out for four days, so everybody could see it. A chap, an ex Army bloke, came down from Cornwall in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. He offered £3,000 for it, but it had to go through the sale and he got it for £1,500. It was towed out to the road, then me and Ron Cooke towed it down to the garage on Loughborough Road. They put a new battery in it, checked the water and oil and it started. The chauffeur drove it back to Cornwall.”
Not only did they come from all over the UK, but a significant number came from abroad and Robert Hanson claims that sometimes foreign dealers and international events could be responsible for pushing the prices up:
“We found that if there was trouble, say, somewhere in Africa, there would be an increase in demand for 4-wheel-drive vehicles and particularly Bedford 4-wheel-drive trucks. The foreigners would flock over here and there would be a sudden increase in the price of those vehicles. So the foreign buyers did make a difference because they knew they could come and get 100 or 200 vehicles, only at Ruddington.
One particular Maltese gentleman whom Jack Abbott remembers as being known by the colourful nickname of “King Charles” was a regular foreign buyer at the sales. Nevertheless, export licences on certain items of heavy equipment were strictly limited:
“…caterpillar tractors had quite severe restrictions on where they could be sold. For instance they could not be sold to Arab countries or Israel because of the problems in the Middle East.”(Robert Hanson)
Many foreign buyers had to store the vehicles they bought locally until arrangements could be made to ship them abroad. This could take some time and very large numbers could accumulate around the Depot boundary, as Bernard Slack explained:
“The farmers on Asher Lane and round the perimeter road charged so much per day for parking all these vehicles that were going to the war-torn spots of the world. There were lines and lines of them, hundreds of them. They were dragged straight off the south park and onto the farmers land to wait, sometimes for weeks or months.”
Whoever bought them, some of the vehicles sold at the auctions at Ruddington went on to have lively futures. One American Jeep made in 1942 had come through the war relatively unscathed and was sold in the Ruddington auction of 4th June 1959. It was later bought by an enthusiast and in 1994 it journeyed to an commemoration reunion at Arnhem in Holland and since has been hired out to film and television companies. Another, after being initially sold as surplus in 1965, found its way to Victoria, Australia, where it still resides.
Jack Abbott recalls that: “they even sold a bus that was in the shooting in London (IRA)” and even more interestingly, Robert Hanson tells that:
“One day I came to the office and the police were outside. I said, “Is it a parking problem?” They said, “It’s a lot more serious than that. We want to know who bought Lot No. ….” I said, “You could have rung me up about that”. They said, “Have you not read the paper?” I said, “You mean the train robbery?” “Yes” they said, “the vehicles used in that robbery came from Ruddington. We want to know who bought them.”
Later on, the two cars that had been used in the Great Train Robbery came back to Ruddington to be re-auctioned and they “had an unusual value due to their notoriety. It gave them a special ambience with their history.” (Robert Hanson)
The Story > Chapter 7 > Section 7.03