British Road Services (BRS) – Nostalgia Central

British Road Services (BRS) was established in 1948 as the road transport company formed by the nationalisation of Britain’s road haulage industry, under the British Transport Commission (BTC), as a result of the Transport Act 1947 (part of the nationalisation agenda of Attlee’s Labour Government, which also saw the advent of British Rail).

The BTC had the power to acquire any company whose business was primarily long-distance haulage (with certain exceptions).

Whilst some operators were happy to sell, others fought the acquisitions, and considerable antipathy was built up towards BRS in some areas.

From 1948 to 1952, BRS acquired 3,766 undertakings with 80,212 staff, 41,265 vehicles and 1,000 depots. As a result, most lorries making journies of 40 or more miles throughout the 1950s were operated by BRS.

The standard livery colour for general haulage vehicles was road haulage red (also known as Ayres red), parcels green, Pickfords blue and tippers grey. The tarpaulins used to cover loads were green.

Over the years, BRS operated vehicles ranging from horse-drawn vans (in the immediate post-war years) through to large articulated lorries. Possibly the most familiar was the eight-wheel flat bed on Leyland Octopus, Bristol or AEC Mammoth chassis.

Privatisation and deregulation followed the 1953 Transport Act, although a slimmed-down BRS continued to operate as a state-owned company and remained larger than any private firm even after the culling of denationalisation.

From 1963, the company was administered by the Transport Holding Company and had four main operating areas: British Road Services, BRS Parcels, Pickfords and Containerway & Roadferry.

On 1 January 1969, it was renamed the National Freight Corporation. In 1980, the assets of the National Freight Corporation were transferred to the National Freight Company.

The company was sold to its employees as the National Freight Consortium in 1982 (one of the first privatisations of state-owned industry), and the new company subsequently became NFC plc.

BRS Parcels was rebranded as Roadline and was sold in a management buy-out as Lynx Express in 1997.

NFC disposed of Pickfords in 1999 to Allied Van Lines.