DISTANCE DISTRIBUTION
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J&A Smith of Maddiston offered a complete UK transport storage and distribution service from a nationwide network of depots at the following locations: Alloa, Edinburgh, Elderslie, Glasgow, Grangemouth, Greenock, Inverness, Maddiston, Paisley, Perth, Port Glasgow, Birmingham, Doncaster, London, Manchester, Newton Le Willows, Newport, Gwent, Southampton, St Albans, Stockton and Wigan.
At the end of the 1950s, J&A Smith separated its haulage division from the warehousing side and formed Smith Storage Co. This arm
could offer facilities of 1million ft3 at
Camelon, where a disused factory was converted in 1955. A gas heated building was built at this site for the storage of aluminium, which had to be kept at a minimum
temperature of 32°. There was also 1million ft3 of storage at Paisley, 200,000ft3 at Greenock, 500,000ft3 at Port Glasgow and 300,000ft3 at Glasgow, plus another 10,000ft3 outside. Open storage was also available at most of Smith’s warehouses and depots.
In the late 1960s a Belgian division, named Smith Continental Transport SPRL, was formed, running around 10 vehicles to and from its Brussels yard. This fleet was a crucial part of the firm’s contract with Caterpillar’s Uddingston plant that manufactured V8 diesel engines, which Smith’s transported right through to Grenoble on specially manufactured tilt trailers.
Return loads from the French “capital of the Alps” to Britain took the shape of fully assembled Caterpillar equipment.
Rare AEC sleeper cabs and Volvo F88 tractors were part of Smith’s Belgian fleet