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 and Ernest Smith  launched ‘Auto Speed Recovery’ in Hull. By any standards it was small, with a few thousand 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’ would be in double figures!

During 1970, Ernest Smith along with, Jeffery Pittock and Bob Slicer, 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 Club of Rugby, another visionary company, albeit one with a chequered and at times complicated existence!

Formed in 1972 it had some considerable success to start with, but it suffered from lack of funding and it 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 blame the failure on him using Red Rovers money to try and save Car Recovery Services Club of London).

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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