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Old 26-11-08, 19:07
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David_Hayward (RIP) David_Hayward (RIP) is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The New Forest, England
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Default Clark

A very good pal works for Clark and I have dialogued with him and a colleague of his about the wartime products. There are photos of a Ross Carrier tug, as well as a Clark Carloader Forlkift and a four-wheeled Clark Clarkat Aircraft Tug for use on Aircraft Carriers produced by the Clark Equipment Company, Clark Tructractor Division, of Buchanan, Michigan and acquired by the Ministry of Supply in our new book. Pearsons of Liverpool handled them and prepared them for the Ministry. I can imagine that the Clark tug could have been ordered by the M of War Transport, but through the MofS.

The guy I contacted was Joe Swelnis.

Brian at the REME Museumm commented a while back:

Quote:
You have come up with a poser there because, when the Record Cards were distributed from Chilwell originally, they covered A, B and C vehicles whereas forklifts and things of that ilk were for the most part in a different category. Certainly after the War they were listed as Mechanical Handling Equipment (MHE) and only later some which might be driven on public roads were given standard Army type registrations. As far as I know they remained in the MHE category though rough terrain cranes and forklifts may have been categorised as C Vehicles. I am not sure if this MHE category was in use during the War.

The best bet is to try both the RE Museum which has the C Vehicle cards and the RLC Museum just in case something is tangled up with the B Vehcle cards. If there were equivalent cards for MHE I have never heard what happened to them.

Although it may not affect what you are doing, I know some of this equipment was shipped to the Middle East, probably direct from the USA, because cranes were stripped from a batch of Hysters and fitted to AEC Matadors to convert them to recovery vehicles. What became of the industrial crane chassis I know not but they would have made viable industrial tractors to pull trailers around a depot or base workshop. I know that batches of WD numbers were allocated to overseas Theatres for them to use on vehicles acquired locally or direct from the USA or Canada but I do not know how they numbered MHE received direct.

On another tack I have in my collection a US Army QM Corps catalogue of industrial cranes and forklifts etc similar to the Ord Corps TM 9-2800 for A and B vehicles. It might prove useful if you have any pictures of industrial equipment still unidentified.
If that is the case, I can further imagine that Clark tugs were sent to the Mid-East and then issued to the RAAF....and then sold. In due course they were shipped to Australasia.
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