Foden Trucks.

Foden Trucks' date back to 1856 when Edwin Richard Foden began his career with Plant & Hancock and engineering company in Cheshire, later it became Edwin Foden Sons & Co. Ltd. and in later years changed to Foden Trucks.

In the 1930s Foden was removed from the board of directors for seeing that the future lay in diesel engines rather than steam.

Foden along with his son and two friends, also ex Foden employees decided to set there own company up to produce diesel engined trucks, Foden came out of retirement to head the new company and named it ERF, his initials.

The first production truck was given the chasis number 63 which was Fodens age at the time, in 1933 ERF made its debut at the Commercial Motor Show.

The Foden name became synonymous with a reputation for quality engineering and played a key role in the evolution of commercial road transport both in the UK and around the world through the steam era, into the diesel age up to the present day.

In 1980 Foden became a divison of PACCAR Inc, one of the world's largest and most financially stable heavy truck manufacturers.

ERF was based virtually next door to Foden until 2000 when it moved its operations to nearby Middlewich, sadly though the original Foden plant closed down sometime in 2006 and has remained empty ever since.

Foden have produced some of the finest and most reliable trucks in the world and have occupied Sandbach for over 150 years, not only was it a blow to the local community but a blow to british engineering and another legendary Motoring manufacturer gone forever.

Although Foden has gone its parts and service dealers still provide a network of support to there remaining fleets still in use.

We had high hopes for this place and expected to see a lot, sadly though the entire site has been stripped bare with not so much as a single piece of paperwork left.

Apart from the lack of anything to indicate the sites legendary status or even remnants of its history for that fact, the sheer scale of the place and intricate overhead conveyor systems that once ran over the productions lines more than compensated for our initial disappointment.

It was however a fantastic explore and well worth seeing, the site is currently to let and by the looks of it has been for a while, so its just as well we got in there before its too late.