The History of Commer Connections

My interest in Commers stems from sitting alongside my father as he drove Mk III TS3 powered Commers for Lachie Griffen of Governor’s Bay Transport on Banks Peninsula in the South Island of New Zealand. To find out more about Lachie, click here

My father had operated a one man transport operation in Timaru, a town in the South Island of New Zealand, in the 1930s, first with a late 1920s 4 cyl Chev and then with a Ford AA which still survives in a beautifully restored state in Timaru.

After war service in the islands,  he was the Timaru based driver for a firm called Rollinson Bros, who were based in a small rural town out of Timaru. His work was mainly freight with Austin K4s and Lodestars and various model Internationals, all grossly overloaded. He used to tell me of the Austins needing a valve grind at 20 000 miles and rings and bearings at 60 000. The Internationals were pretty thirsty doing anything from 2 1/2 to 4 mpg depending on the load and where they were being used. But petrol was cheap so no one was too worried.

With the post-war baby boom, there was a desperate need for teachers and at the age of 35, my father decided to change career to teaching and took his family to Lyttelton, the port town for Christchurch - the largest city in the South Island, while he trained to be a teacher.

Eventually, they settled in Governor’s Bay, across the road from the Griffen family, and with similar experiences, Lachie and dad became firm friends with Dad helping Lachie out with casual driving work on weekends and school holidays as well as undertaking many longer trips.

I was an ‘after-thought’ baby and it was natural I spent a lot of time with my father in truck cabs, in the Commers and in a Leyland Comet 75 mentioned in Lachie’s story. Dad used to talk about the amazing engine in the Commers, telling me it was 2-stroke, horizontally opposed, etc and its instant power was great for the hilly going they were in. I didn’t understand much of what he was talking about, but his enthusiasm for the Commer and TS3 was easy to see, even to a small child. All I knew was that it sounded so different to any other truck. It was years later before I understood what all the technical stuff he mentioned was all about.

We shifted to Christchurch when I was 7 but I never lost my interest in trucks. Teaching was the last thing on my mind, but through circumstances, ended up following my father into a teaching career, even teaching at the same school as him at one stage. Due to my childhood memories of how great country life was, I have spent most of my time teaching in rural areas, and grabbed every opportunity to drive anything - harvesters, tractors, school buses and the odd truck. It was a great thrill when he joined me for a couple of trips in various school buses while I was doing some part time driving. I think he was pretty chuffed to see me behind the wheel!

Years later, while filling in some time in Christchurch, I wandered into a magazine shop and there discovered ‘Heritage Commercials’ - an English magazine dedicated to the trucks of my childhood. What made it even more special was the fact it had an article on the TS3.

I had some pictures of my father’s trucks including this one, which I sent to the magazine with what I could remember of the story.

Unfortunately, my memory from childhood was a little hazy but most of the details were correct. Lachie got a request to shift some sheep from Purau Bay in Lyttelton Harbour down to Haldon Arm Station some 200 miles south. The load wasn’t enough for two truck and trailer units and too much for one truck and trailer - so the sollution - weld a Ringfeder onto the back of the first 16’ 6” trailer and put the single axle on behind! All illegal but no one worried about it in those days. With the Dogbox or Crow’s Nest over the top of the cab, it has been estimated that there would have to be between 20 - 24 ton on this 7 ton truck. It was a slow trip down but somewhat faster coming home!

After the photo was published, Leif-Erik Pedersen of Norway got in touch, looking for parts for his ’58 Commer. This was very timely as we were about to head away on a long North Island holiday, going right around the island. Along the way, I pleased my family no end by wandering into truck wrecking yards and other strange places to ask about old Commer parts. As a result, I met many interesting people, like Noel Galloway but didn’t find the parts I was after, although I collected up a lot of contacts.

When I got back home, I started asking around locally, contacting people I thought might be able to help. Still no parts, but this gave me more South Island contacts and I passed on to them, all the North Island ones I knew of. I talked to many people in both islands and came to realize, I was the connection between a group of keen Commer enthusiasts in both islands who, in many cases, didn’t know of each other. In the early hours of one sleepless night, the germ of an idea came to mind - a Commer newsletter to share ideas, thoughts, stories, parts, etc.

I had the computing skills and the resources to do it, so after a few days work (when I should have been doing other things!), and with the grateful help of Lachie Griffen, who gave up an afternoon to share his amazing life story on tape with me, I sent out 40 copies of a 6 page newsletter. The reaction was very enthusiastic but I was worried about finding enough content to keep it going. Thanks to people like Mark Erskine and others who mentioned other people who would be interested, the numbers of readers increased dramatically. I had hoped to put out 3 newsletters a year but this has proved impractical - because I have a thing called a job that keep getting in the way, it is very difficult to get low volume colour copying done, and I think colour is vital in the newsletter, and lately, the website has consumed a lot of my spare time. Now the newsletter goes out to over 200 people in 11 countries.

With the newsletter going well, I began hunting the Internet to see what was around about Commers. I posted comments on some Commer and old truck discussion forums, and from that, I started to get a lot of contacts by email from people who had found my email address and who were looking for more Commer info or parts. It became apparent that there were a lot of people out there looking on the internet for Commer stuff too, so it was a simple, if somewhat time consuming step to set up a Commer website.

www.commer.org.nz was registered and a contact in Auckland kindly hosts the website for nothing for me. The website launched in Nov 2005 and it has been amazingly rewarding to be contacted by some wonderful people from all around the planet - many who I now consider good friends. We have had our technical problems with the site and had a lot of issues earlier this year (for which I apologize).

For the technically minded, the website is created on my Mac laptop, often early in the morning or while watching ‘the box’. I initially used Dreamweaver, but as I haven’t got the latest version, there were ‘standards’ issues where some browsers (the programme you look at web pages with), couldn’t handle the buttons I spent hours / days / months creating and sorting out. Now I use a great (but not perfect) piece of Mac software called iWeb, which makes the job so easy.

As far as my own Commers, I have a late 40s Karrier Q Superpoise which is sitting dismantled in a friend’s paddock. A dead snail probably makes greater progress than I have made on this restoration but one day.... Maybe if I didn’t spend so much time on the website and answering emails??? And of course, what I wouldn’t give for some room and money for a TS3 powered Commer painted in Lachie’s Governor’s Bay Transport colours!

I hope you enjoy wandering around the site and as always, I will always be glad to hear from you and any feedback on the site.

Cheers

Howard Pettigrew
Rangiora
South Island
New Zealand