Lacre Lorries Ltd was established in Kings Cross, London, in 1928 following the closure of the earlier Lacre Motor Car Company which could trace its roots back to 1902 in Long Acre, Covent Garden. The original business was best-known for producing a range of municipal commercial vehicles, in particular road sweepers, by 1936 new works had been built at Welwyn Garden City. The re-launched company resumed building a range of commercial vehicles, once again specialising in road sweepers. Lacre’s factory was taken over by the Ministry of Aircraft Production during the Second World War and vehicle manufacture was suspended but resumed in 1947 for the production of road sweepers. By 1952 they formed an association with Vauxhall for the JS Drewry-designed Lacre SA sweeping equipment to be mounted on a Bedford ‘J’ type chassis, the project being overseen by Bill Lust, a veteran of the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck in 1941. By the 1960s the Bedford lorry was usually the J5 model fitted with either a 5-litre diesel engine or a 3.5-litre petrol engine driving through a four-speed synchromesh gearbox and hypoid bevel rear axle, always left-hand drive to give the driver a good view of the gutter. Power for the sweeping brushes, water-spraying pump and associated mechanisms was taken from the standard power-takeoff position on the Bedford gearbox, from which a short universally jointed shaft connected to the Lacre gearbox. The main brush was 3ft wide in four sections and a smaller gutter brush was fitted. A full-width brush was not considered necessary, for the simple reason that it was found in practice that most road dirt was forced towards the gutter by passing traffic and that to have a full-width brush would have been unnecessary and uneconomical. Both brushes were fully floating and could therefore follow the road surface accurately, cleaning effectively over bumps or depressions. A 180 gallon water tank behind the cab sprayed water onto the brushes as requi
