Professional Recovery 354

SPECIALFEATURE
Boniface Interstater number 1
in doing parts for commercial vehicles.
One of their major customers was
Scammell at Watford. I progressed from a
Dennis apprentice to doing subcontract
machining and some fabrication for
Scammell Trucks.
Scammell then had an opportunity to
build recovery vehicles for the British
Army. Back in those days the British Army
purchasing policy required a high UK
content. Scammell had the opportunity
to supply their Crusader chassis with
what then was a state-of-the-art piece of
equipment from Sweden installed on the
back of it, which incidentally in military
terms is called the ‘top hamper’.
The company in Sweden who were
making and developing this equipment
was EKA, what we call the under-lift that
we use today. The British Army had some
experience of this Swedish kit having used
it in Germany and this led to a tender
being released to supply similar equipment
for use by the regular army. Because of
the “buy British” policy, the Army just
couldn’t go and buy the equipment off the
Swedish company, through the connection
with Scammell, my father’s company
HEECO secured the manufacturing licence
to make the EKA recovery equipment for
that particular contract and effectively for
the UK market back in 1976.
So, as a young man, just having finished
my apprenticeship in specialist vehicles,
I was a natural choice to go to Sweden
and learn how to produce the under-lift
equipment that are now commonplace,
a product that we have developed over
the years since. 131 of the EKA designed
equipment was manufactured and
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installed on Scammell Crusader chassis
between 1976 and 79.
When the army contract ended, there
was talk of another contract for the army
on Foden vehicles. But at that time, Foden
had had some financial difficulties, so
consequently, the contract was delayed.
We had built up all this knowledge of
this new equipment and didn’t have an
outlet for it. We were then introduced
to a company based in Hertford called
Wreckers International, a company
owned by Bill Jackson at the time, run
by the Jackson family and managed by
Fred Noble, a relationship was formed
and equipment we produced was sold
by Wreckers. The first order went to C&S
Motors, which were then just based in
North London with a second going to
Arcade Motors.
Wreckers International had their
own range of products, they had been
Holmes’s distributor but by the time I
was involved they had developed their
own twin booms, the Dominator 20 and
30, they also had a model called the
Recoverer. I remember we had a demo
day back in 1980. Wreckers invited a
whole bunch of the recovery industry
up to Thetford to look at this equipment
being used. At HEECO we manufactured
the centre sections of the Dominator and
Recoverer for Wreckers as well as the
EKA under lift equipment from Sweden,
at the demo both the EKA and Wreckers
equipment was shown working, like the
displays that as Boniface we put on at
the Tow Show. We used equipment from
Tommy Ash and C and S Motors two
companies we still deal with today. There
Where is all started for
Boniface, the first buildings
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