Below are a couple of photographs and a great account of working for The Walls Meat Company by Ken Charles...
Over to Ken....
"Hi
I worked for T. Walls Meat & Handy Foods (changed name to The Walls Meat Company) for 11 years from 1968 to 1979 on van
sales in Cheltenham
We had five vans parking at Walls Ice Cream
Factory and three in Worcester
I had some great memories .
I was taking £1,100 per week in sales of just
sausages and pies.
The company were slaughtering 40000 pigs a week
!!
We were supplied with a trilby hat, overalls,
ties, and shirts. We also had van boys who had blue and white striped
overalls. We were the envy of our competitors.
No refrigeration in the vans we used to get dry ice
from the ice cream cold store in the summer to put over the stock we had left
and the company supplied a blanket to go on top.
I have attached a couple of photos of the van we
had just had a new van with refrigeration the one where you can see the back of
the van was one without refrigeration
I also have a model of one of the first T Ford
sales vans yellow top blue bottom, advert Eat Well- Eat Walls
We used to in the early days have a conference
every year in London with an over night stay..
One funny story we used to have auditors who would
come and audit you stock some times over night .
The one auditor (I remember his name)left
his weighing scales and when we all came back at night he had a bit of the
scales in each hand and wanted to know who had run over it with the van
.
No one saw that.
I have many more great memories."
Thanks so much, Ken. :)
Please send us a picture of the "Eat Well - Eat Walls" van if possible !
3 comments:
Funnily enough I live in Cheltenham now but grew up in Hyde. I knew a girl who's Dad was a butcher at the Hyde factory. It was a gruesome place with all those carcasses, but I remember at least two trips around the factory, with school and some other organisation. When you arrived at the canteen at the end you were given pork pie, plus a bundle of sausages and a bundle of choc ices (remember the blue and silver paper?), which were packed in dry ice, so that you could take them home. Ann Stafford(now Bacon)
Makes me remember the running joke in school days 'Walls have ears..they also sell bacon' Sure there was also a local butcher who had a sign up in his shop which said 'Will customers refrain from standing with their backs too close to the bacon slicer as we are getting behind with our orders'...hope I've not made a pigs ear of these (very old) jokes!
Barry in Oz. I was a Walls van lad from 1961 to 1963 on the Bacon vans from Godley. Looking at the photo's the salesmens uniform had changed. In 1961-3 they were yellow with red collars and cuffs. I was on the Manchester city centre run.
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