Curly tail-lifts ?
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Having scooped the bulk of the British market for tail-lifts John Ratcliff and sister Jean are hellbent to exploit the European market where they already have a decent foothold. Next year the company hopes to export 50 per cent of its output, and this is encouraging, whichever drum you feel like beating.
At their recent Open Days to the trade the Ratcliff team played host to over a hundred visitors, many of them very well known people in the transport and licensed because it was too high, too long and had the driver's cab on the wrong side.
Mr Schwyn, defeated, has now abandoned his idea of a twostorey home on wheels and the bus is back in Yorkshire. Perhaps if Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, Mr Schwyn's bus might have been built with all those low continental bridges in mind. Then again that singular British institution the double-decker might not have been invented at all.
distribution world. I didn't spot any agricultural hauliers, but Jean Ratcliff has even undertaken research into the life-style of pigs—ail in the cause of tail-lifts. It appears pigs can die of fright, or something, when entering a crowded ramp into an animal transporter. Think of the gratitude in piggeries, worldwide, when all pigs are equal enough to enter a lorry via a tail-lift!