Birmingham Co-op Morrison Bread Van NVP 144

Birmingham Co-operative Society purchased over 700 Morris-Electricars. Most were for the dairy department but BCS also offered deliveries of bread and a laundry service to your home. The bakery and laundry services were early victims of supermarket growth and many of the surviving vans were rebuilt into dairy trucks.

The milk drays differed from their bakery and laundry counterparts, the much heavier loads calling for a more powerful motor and uprated wheels, tyres and springs. The bakery and laundry vans rebuilt to milk trucks were thus beefed up, explaining why NVP 144 received its more powerful motor in 1972.

These Morrisons were tough and many were later modernised with new glass fibre cabs and bodies. By 1988 only a few remained with the old cabs and two were kindly selected for this museum. NVP 144 was chosen as it was originally a bakery van while ROA 127, which arrived with us in 1989, was remarkably original.

Preservation

Restoration of NVP 144 to a bakery van spanned from 1989 to 1994. Initially nothing remained to guide the conversion back to a bread van but we were assisted by first class advice and support from Co-op staff. One bodyshop employee made a chance remark that some bread van decks and associated framework might still exist on the roof of a multi-storey car park. Astonishingly he was right, providing patterns for the rebuild and even some usable parts.