USi (Burtonwood)
Maker of the USI hydraulic tail-lift of the 1960s, based at Burtonwood near Warrington, which fitted its lift to a General Post Office Series II 109 pickup delivered in October 1963 for loading heavy telephone plant. Beyond a mid-1960s sales folder for the USI Tail-Lift and Bampal Combitainers, nothing about the firm has been traced.
History
The name survives on two documents: the GPO fleet photograph of Land Rover 18909, 965 FXY, a Series II 109 pickup photographed new in 1963 with its USi tail-lift platform folded up across the tailboard, where the British Telephones archive records the body builder as 'USi Burtonwood'; and a four-page mid-1960s sales folder for the 'USI Tail-Lift' and 'Bampal Combitainers' that circulates among brochure collectors. Burtonwood, two miles north-west of Warrington, was the site of the former USAF depot whose hangars and workshops were let to industry after the Americans left, and a light-engineering firm making vehicle tail-lifts there in the early 1960s is consistent with that, but the company's full name, its owners and its dates have not been found.
Vehicles in this registry (1)
Sources & citations
- Land Rover 109 pickup Series II, GPO, with tail lift — body builder USi Burtonwood; registration 965 FXY; fleet number 18909; 1963 ↗ — britishtelephones.com (accessed 2026-09-11)
- USI Tail-Lift & Bampal Combitainers, mid-1960s UK market fold-out sales brochure (listing) ↗ — eBay UK (brochure listing) (accessed 2026-09-11)
- RAF Burtonwood (the former airfield and depot north-west of Warrington) ↗ — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-11)
Maker record updated 2026-09-11T11:55:04.427Z · status: draft