The Change Begins

The roots of today’s recovery industry can be traced back to the late sixties. In many areas it was not Garages that operated small fleets of recovery vehicles, but coachworks. The reason was simple, they needed to find work! This was often achieved by monitoring the police radio network, listening for accident reports. Once the location was heard, it would be a race to be the first vehicle on the scene.

There soon developed a certain camaraderie between the recovery vehicle drivers themselves and later the companies. For the first time operatives became Drivers (rather than Mechanics that also did breakdowns). Most were self employed and stayed out of the workshop.

Some of the Garages (including some of them long established ones), were also starting to view breakdown recovery as something very different from their normal work. Accident recovery had always required special skills, but as vehicles got faster and more fragile (Chassis became integral to the body), recovery become more difficult. This was especially true for commercial vehicles, which not only had got heavier, but had started to become more sophisticated.

Many garages were agents for the two ‘clubs’ (AA and RAC), but for most the majority of their work came from their own customers and people who found them in the phone book. Some garages also started to use the services of local ‘recovery only’ companies (usually owner drivers) and found it was cheaper than doing it themselves.
 

Then in 1969 Dennis Thrustle launched ‘Car Recovery Club’ in Hull. By any standards it was small, with just a few hundred local members and to start with, the cover cost just ten bob! (or in today's money 50p). It did however gave other people ideas and within a short while, the number of so called ‘breakdown clubs’ reached around 40 organisations nationwide.

These early service only provided recovery after a major breakdown or accident, and recovery was only back to the members home area (home or his local garage) Often this meant a recovery vehicle went OUT to collect the vehicle which could add to the journey time

Clearly there was a need for recovery "clubs" to become national and accept members from anywhere on the British Mainland. This meant then garages were contracted close to the point of breakdown or accident speeding up collection time. Often recoveries involved driver and passengers as well as the vehicle.

During 1970, Robert (Bob) Slicer, along with Ernest Smith and Jeffery Pittock  formed National Breakdown Recovery Club, operating out of a Fish and Chip shop in Bradford. Initially the service only covered their members for a 50 mile radius around Bradford, but this soon become nationwide.

This was achieved by recruiting recovery operators, to work as their agents. This agents were selected from the best recovery operators and garages. Inspections of the equipment and facilities was regularly carried out, by NBRC's base inspectors.  The now very rare reflective stick-on logo pictured on the left, soon became a symbol of pride to many a recovery operator.

The key difference to the schemes operated by The RAC and The AA, was that NBRC members, were not covered for reparable breakdowns, but if your vehicle could not be fixed, you would be recovered home for free. NBRC also covered you if you had an RTA (Road Traffic Accident), something virtually unheard of at the time.

Although NBRC are remembered as the people who ‘got it right’ in the United Kingdom, mention must also be made of Maurice Clarke’s Red Rover Recovery Club of Rugby, another visionary company, albeit one with a chequered and at times complicated existence!

Among Red Rovers developments was a 90 minute guarantee, refunding a members annual fee if it took longer than 90 mins to reach a stranded member. Only on odd occasions did their recovery network fail to achieve their aim, and no member ever claimed under the guarantee.

Formed in 1972 Red Rovers had some considerable success to start with, but it suffered from lack of funding and eventually failed. It was re launched as Red Rovers Motorists Association in 1984 but sadly collapsed again (In a interview published in Vehicle Recovery in the spring of 1986 Maurice blamed the failure on him using Red Rovers money to try and save Car Recovery Service Club of London) which it had undertaken jointly with Autohome of Northampton. Later the Red Rovers Membership was acquired by Autohome.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) took an interest in these new organisations and deemed them to be insurance contracts. As such they required them to be underwritten by an existing insurance company or become registered as their own Insurance Company under special financial conditions. One organisation Autohome Insurance Ltd of Northampton took this latter route, other closed down, and a few were able to secure insurance underwriting. This led membership fees to rise to cover the extra costs but provided greater protection for members.

The DTI's view was taken by comparing recovery clubs to insurance with an (uncontested) High Court legal case - Department of Trade and Industry v St Christopher Motorists' Association Ltd [1974]. No case was ever brought against a recovery organisation to prove this point, clearly heavy legal costs and potential negative publicity inhibited organisations from trying to argue the case.

One underwriter Equity Motor Policies at Lloyds who briefly underwrote the Red Rovers scheme started its own recovery organisation which still operates today Autonational Recovery
 

At this point a brief mention should also be made of events in Northern Europe. In 1906 Sophus Falck had started Falcks Redningskorps (Falck Rescue) in Denmark. Sophus did not initially see it as a profit making business, offering instead to "Act when People or Animals are in Danger of Life. To help no matter if payment is possible or not." 

Before long Falck had established both fire and ambulance services, to complement the roadside rescue.

Then in the late forties a Norwegian called Arne Andresen, spent some time in Denmark studying Falck's methods. He returned to Norway and with the Falcks families full blessing, set up Falken Redningskorps. Initially this only offered roadside assistance, but like its sister company in Denmark, it also expanded in to ambulance services and other support / security industries.

However, the Norwegian auto repair garage's own association AVL saw this as a threat to their livelihood and in turn set up a rival organisation called Viking Redningstjeneste during 1956. The two organisations would become bitter rivals.
 

Continue . . .

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