Mercury Truck & Tractor Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Industrial Vehicles
- Airfield Ground support equipment
| Industry |
|
|---|---|
| Founded | 1935 |
| Successor | Dennis Brothers |
| Headquarters | , |
The Mercury Truck & Tractor Company was based in Gloucester, England and manufactured small industrial vehicles for use primarily within factories carrying loads or hauling trailers, road vehicles for moving rail trucks in yards, and vehicles for airfields for towing munitions trolleys or baggage trolleys. In later years they produced increasingly powerful aircraft tugs.
The company started making trucks and tractors in 1935,[1] and in July that year the War Department placed an order with them for 'power-driven trucks'.[2] The original company address was Northgate House, 19 London Road, Gloucester, around 1957 the address changed to The Quay, Gloucester. In addition to load carriers, they produced small tug (tractor) units for towing trailer-borne loads on flat surfaces, such as yards, factories, and airfields. Many of these vehicles are readily identified by the company name on the top of the radiator and the lettering M.T. & T. Co on the sides of the radiator, but a few have the 'Mertrak' name instead.
The company exhibited at the first Mechanical Handling Exhibition (1948) and many subsequent exhibitions.
The company and the related companies (Mercury Airfield Equipment Ltd and Mercury Snow Control Ltd) were absorbed into the Dennis Group in 1964. The managing director of all 3 Mercury companies, R.T. Barnfield, was given a place on the board at Dennis Bros. and two Dennis directors were appointed to the Mercury boards.[3] In the reporting of the takeover, it was stated "The Mercury Group does not manufacture in Gloucester, although it has trading associations with another company in the city", it was also mentioned that "Mercury sell a considerable amount of Canadian snow clearing equipment under licence".[4]
In 1972 Dennis was acquired by Hestair Group, which sold Mercury Truck and Tractor and Mercury Airfield Equipment to Marshalls (Halifax). Marshalls combined the Mercury operations with their Reliance Trucks business to form Reliance-Mercury, a successful company with a management buyout in 1987, followed by an acquisition by Powersafe Industries Ltd in 1990. When Powersafe failed in 1992, Reliance-Mercury were bought by Trinity Holdings, who in 1995 bought Douglas Equipment of Cheltenham. These two companies were merged, and the Reliance Mercury name was dropped a few years later.
