Mammoths, Moguls & Matadors

AEC was Britain’s first transport vehicle manufacturer with a high-throughput assembly line, and later became a key arm of the Leyland Motors Group.

- Ed Burrows

When AEC (the Associated Equipment Company) was established in 1912, it was not the intention of its parent group to enter the goods vehicle business. But two years later it began producing what finally accounted for around 10,000 of the 25,000 British manufactured trucks delivered to the army during World War One.

AEC did not become a stand-alone business until 1933. Prior to that, it operated as the bus and truck building side of an amalgamated group of London bus operators. What became ‘the AEC’ grew out of a venture initiated in 1908-09 by London General Omnibus to manufacture its own buses. The build-it-ourselves decision was a response to the mechanical unreliability plaguing the Wolseleys, Daimlers and buses of other makes it was running. The problem was so fundamental that, to guarantee dependable passenger services, at the time the in-house project was initiated, the bulk of London’s General Omnibus fleet remained horse-drawn.

Horsing about

In 1909, London General had the staggering total of 11,000 horses. Never mind today’s cries of ‘dirty diesel.’ Imagine the health risks – never mind watching your step crossing the road – of the daily tonnage of road apples dropped by thousands of horses clip-clopping along London’s streets.

In 1910, within two years of the motor bus project’s commencement, an initial batch had been built and the design refined to create the legendary B-type. This was followed by investment in what was probably among the world’s first moving track assembly lines. By 1913, some 2500 B-types were in service and London had said goodbye to its last horsedrawn bus.