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    Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter
    Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter
    Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter
    Ebook206 pages1 hour

    Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter

    By John Corah

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    About this ebook

    The Writing's on the Truck is a pictorial look at the traditional art of signwriting on commercial vehicles, by renowned signwriter John Corah. John began signwriting in 1982 working for Brian Harris Transport Ltd. Brian's well-turned out trucks were regularly seen on the roads between the Southwest and the North of Scotland and with this excellent showcase for his skills, John quickly built up a large customer base. Since then, he has written on ERFs, Leylands, Guys, Fodens, Atkinsons, Albions and AECs to name but a few and he is responsible for the distinctive livery of a number of traditional family run haulage companies. In some cases he worked on the vehicles when brand new and then again when restored some 20-30 years later! Sadly many of the once familiar and iconic companies have disappeared over the years and today computer generated vinyl lettering has almost completely taken over the art and few modern fleets are signwritten.The Writing's on the Truck includes 210 fully captioned and previously unpublished photos of the vehicles he worked on, many of which will be remembered by transport fans UK-wide. The book tells the story of the development of John's business, the methods he uses to create particular effects and numerous anecdotes from his working life. It will be of interest to anyone involved with road haulage and the preservation of classic trucks.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOld Pond Books
    Release dateAug 18, 2017
    ISBN9781912158300
    Writing's on the Truck, The: The Tales and Photographs of a Traditional Signwriter
    Author

    John Corah

    Before starting his signwriting business John Corah spent a period of time in the 1970s driving for Brian Harris Transport, the history of which he wrote about in From Moorlands to Highlands, which is also published by Old Pond and now in its 3rd edition. He is now a semi-retired signwriter and article writer. He is also very much involved in the preservation of classic lorries and owns three of them himself, giving him considerable empathy towards his job of signwriting restored classic lorries for their owners.

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      Book preview

      Writing's on the Truck, The - John Corah

      Introduction

      As a signwriter, I have always had an interest in, and based a substantial part of my working life around, art. One of my other passions is vehicles, particularly historic commercial vehicles. I consider myself lucky to have forged a career that has combined the two.

      This books aims to take a look at my signwriting of commercial vehicles, combining photographs new and old with four chapters detailing a little about myself and how I came to be a signwriter.

      Having finished school with a couple of GCE ‘A’ Levels, one being art, I enrolled at the Plymouth School of Art and Architecture in 1964 to study architecture, heeding the advice of the school careers master. Art and design were substantial elements of the course but maths played an even bigger part. I struggled to make buildings stand up as that demanded a mathematical aptitude that I lacked. They never fell down because I never got that far. After two years, I dropped out and joined Lloyds Bank in its High Street premises in Exeter. The job involved designing the interiors of banks, either new ones or those being refurbished, for which maths played a very small part but art and design was at the fore.

      However, this career did not last long as promotion up the ladder was always going to be difficult with no qualifications and I therefore gave up any ideas of making a living using art. After a complete rethink, I embarked on a sales career, joining a Lancashire textile manufacturer as ‘their man’ in the south-west. Horrockses of Preston originally put me in the West End of London before a retirement left a vacancy for me to cover the area from Penzance to Bristol, including the Channel Isles. Good job, well paid and a new company car every year but five years later the company was taken over and I was made redundant.

      Besides art, one of my other interests has been restoring vintage lorries, an interest that started as a result of a summer job driving a Ford Thames for Pollards Frozen food in Newton Abbot while at art college. This gained me grandfather rights HGV Class 3 driving licence and in 1971 I did the London to Brighton Run in a newly acquired 1932 Albion bought with a friend of mine, Brian Beard. The following year, my sales rep job finished so I took my class 1 artic licence and decided to give lorry driving a go. I began with an agricultural merchant, delivering farm machinery with a TK Bedford. I then moved on to an artic for Feniton Haulage, driving a Mark 1 Atkinson with a 180 Cummins engine on round timber and straw. In 1975, I was taken on as a holiday relief driver by Brian Harris (then trading as Harris & Miners) after a brief spell as an HGV driving instructor. My first lorry on that firm was an A.E.C. Mandator and so began a few years of long-distance driving between Devon and Scotland. Although ERF was the mainstay of his fleet, I drove a variety of other British-made lorries, including Foden, Leyland, Albion, Big J Guy and Seddon. During my years with Brian Harris I never had a foreign lorry; he wouldn’t have them in the yard! You can find out more about Brian and his company in my earlier book From Moorlands to Highlands, now in its third edition.

      After a brief spell back as a sales rep, this time for a Manchester textile producer, I once again found myself unemployed as that company ceased trading in 1982 and it is in that year that my signwriting story began.

      Chapter 1

      The Birth of My Signwriting Business

      Have you ever wondered that a decision you have made might not be the most sensible in your life? I made such a decision in 1982 that certainly was not sensible and was a considerable risk. However, I needed to earn a living so had to come up with something and thought my artistic background might just pay off. I had already tried my hand at signwriting as an amateur, having signwritten the headboard of the 1932 Albion and way back when still at school I did a sign for a pub as a practical project towards ‘A’ level art. I thought: ‘This is what I will do: I will start my own signwriting business.’ My wife was pregnant with our first child, we had a mortgage, I had no income and, rather than go back to a secure, paid occupation, I started a business with not a single customer!

      In my favour I had a determination to make a go of it and the support of my wife, Jenny. A bit of a flair for art would also certainly help. Like playing a musical instrument, art requires some natural talent. There was a driver for Brian Harris who could not read a note of music but sit him in front of a piano and he would entertain a pub full of people all evening: Peter Rees. Whilst my talents did not lie in music, I was able to draw and paint. However, I never did a course or an apprenticeship for signwriting at art college so had no formal qualifications. I had to teach myself, then sell myself. I bought a book on the subject, now long out of print, and started practising and sourcing the proper paints and materials. I made a toolbox for all I needed, which I still use to this day. With practice came speed, essential to a signwriter especially when involved with lorries. I then printed dozens of fliers promoting myself as a signwriter of pub signs, shop fronts and commercial vehicles and slowly the jobs started to come in. So, equipped with materials, transport and a studio at the bottom of the garden, ‘JC Signs’ evolved.

      I am, therefore, self-taught. I use sable signwriting brushes and One Shot enamel sign paint, which I have obtained from Wrights of Lymm all these years. A Mahl stick, which is the little stick with a bit of cloth bound on one end that is used to rest the writing hand on, a device invented by a chap called Mahl, was also essential, or so my instruction book informed. That’s something else I made at the start and still have in my box. A collection of chinagraph pencils, a chalk line, rulers and tape measures, lining brushes and books of gold leaf make up the tools for the trade. Applying gold leaf is something I learned to do and to this day I use it to keep various honours boards for clubs and local authorities up to date. The gold leaf used for signwriting comes in three inch squares on a fine carrying paper that is transferred on to the work previously written in gold size, a coloured varnish to which the transfer leaf sticks. It is a time-consuming job, and therefore expensive, and the books of gold leaf also cost a lot. Another form of gold leaf is loose leaf, which is used on weather vanes and ornamental iron work. If the job is outside, best not do it on a windy day or it all blows away!

      This book is concentrating on vehicle signwriting but I have covered all aspects of this traditional craft over the last few decades and for many years I did a lot of work for breweries. Double-sided pictorial hanging signs have been covered in other publications so I will not dwell on that; suffice to say it probably took up

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