More Poclain Archive Photos and Memories

I’ve been delighted to receive a batch of archive photos from the previously mentioned neighbour in my village, Steve Arnold, whose late wife, Theresa, used to work with the transportation of machines at Poclain’s UK headquarters in Hook, North Hampshire in the 70’s & 80’s.

We had an interesting chat about those days and some of the things they used to get up too back then, which included visits to trade shows such as the old SED when it was held at Whipsnade, as seen in the headline image.

In this shot also taken at SED in Whipsnade in 1985, we see the ever-popular Poclain 60, these machines competed in the 12-tonne class sector and were well liked by groundworks contractors. This example would have been delivered to Mc Goldrick’s after the show. Compared to other machines on the market at that time, these were pretty advanced excavators, and unique and typically French in design. The high-pressure hydraulic systems were unfortunately prone to leaking.

Another machine on the show ground was the Poclain 350 CK, these machines weighed somewhere in the region of 60-tonnes, and this example was in face shovel configuration.

In this shot we see a pair of Poclain’s on display next to the car park at the Hook headquarters, the 170 B-Series and what is potentially a 90 B sat next to it.

The sheer size of the Poclain 350 CK can be seen here in this shot of one sat on a large low loader about to head off to a job somewhere up north.

Looking somewhat battered, this Poclain 400 face shovel was undergoing some long awaited TLC in the depot at Hook.

There was a good team working at Poclain and later CASE-Poclain in Hook, and they participated in numerous local events, such as the Basingstoke carnival, seen below where they took a CASE 580G backhoe loader, and a Poclain wheeled excavator on the procession.

Even to this day, Steve still has a treasured scale model of a Poclain 350 CK in his possesion from those glorious days.

We dedicate this blog post to the memory of Steve’s late wife Theresa, who sadly passed away some 9 years ago, who at the time worked for Peter Whipps and Len Batten, who ran Scania trucks out of Hook delivering the machines to customers up and down the country. Len eventually left to live in France, and Theresa then took over that side of the business. However, things changed when CASE became the bigger partner in the business and transport was then hired in.

Steve recalls great times at the local pub The Old House at Home, where they all used to frequent, Steve said, “The pub was a great place to be in those days, just great times”, Theresa is seen here at her usual spot at the bar.

We thank Steve for sharing these classic old photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.