Tim Gosling reflects on advice once received: “Never take on any restoration which has wooden wheels and solid tyres”
In 1992, after seeing an advert for a partially restored 1917 Peerless truck, we travelled to Shipston on Stour to take a look. Despite the Peerless Motor Car Company of Cleveland, Ohio, supplying over 10,000 trucks to the British War Department during World War One, survivors are exceptionally rare. A deal was done on the Peerless along with almost enough spare parts to complete a second one.
As the Peerless parts began to be unloaded at our workshop in Devon, a count of wheels and chassis brought us to to the realisation that we had actually purchased the remains of seven Peerless trucks. Over the intervening years, we have been very lucky in finding additional parts, including two further chassis, but we were always aware that refurbishing the wooden wheels and solid tyres would present a major challenge.
By the time Great Britain had become involved in World War One, the manufacture of truck wheels had predominantly moved on from wooden construction to steel. The US was slow to transition to steel wheels and supplied trucks to the British War Department throughout the war, all o…
