Rubery Owen

Rubery Owen began in 1884 as an ironworks making gates and fences at Darlaston, founded by John Tunner Rubery and his brothers Samuel and Thomas. The engineer Alfred Ernest Owen joined the partnership in 1893, the name Rubery Owen was adopted in 1903, and when John Rubery retired in 1910 Owen bought the partnership outright. By 1912 the firm had branched into aviation engineering, motor frames and roofing; between the wars it added metal airframes, storage equipment, pulleys and armour plate, and on Alfred Owen's death in 1929 it employed about 1,750 people with a turnover of £580,000, passing to his sons Alfred and Ernest. The Second World War brought jerrycans, aircraft parts and Mk II and civilian helmets, and in 1946 Rubery Owen Conveyancer launched what it claimed as Britain's first forklift truck. In 1950 the company became part of the new Owen Organisation holding company, bought the BRM racing team in 1952 (world champions in 1962), was designing aircraft landing gear by 1956 and supplied Rostyle wheels to the British motor industry through the 1960s and 1970s. At its peak the group employed 17,000 people worldwide, 5,000 of them on the 74-acre Darlaston site.

The Land Rover product came from the Research & Development Division, whose chassis plates read Rubery Owen (Warrington) Ltd. When the Land Rover 101 Forward Control was conceived as a gun tractor, a powered trailer was specified to carry a tonne of ammunition with the gun behind it, and Rubery Owen built the 1-ton power-driven trailer between 1967, the date of the earliest prototype, and 1973, the date of the last documented unit, 267957/3. At least ten were made, in pairs with minor differences, numbered as prototypes 1 to 8 and production units 267957/1 to 4. Drive came off the rear of the 101's transfer box through propshafts and an articulated treble-hooks-joint nose coupling allowing 60 degrees of movement in all directions into a Salisbury differential matching the 101's own; braking was an inverted-vacuum system drawn from the inlet manifold, the trailer weighed 938 kg and carried 1,500 lb. Scottorn built a rival, the Bushmaster. The scheme was abandoned: one account tells of a demonstration in which the trailer drivetrain bound up in a tight turn with drive engaged and the 101 rolled onto its side, while a Rubery Owen engineer put the decision down to cost. Two refurbished prototypes, numbers 1 and 5, went on the 1975 Trans-Sahara Expedition, one being abandoned near Port Sudan on 16 April 1975 after a spring failure.

Rubery Owen also built the FV2405 Mk 2 trailer chassis and the FV2406 flat-platform and FV2407 cargo trailers on it, single-axle two-wheeled 2.5-ton trailers with air brakes and a retractable dolly wheel for the British Army. The forklift business went to Coventry Climax in 1977, and the main Darlaston works closed in 1981. Rubery Owen Holdings Limited, incorporated on 14 April 1920, survives as an active family company managed by David Owen, registered at Brierley Hill, its website recalling the 1884 foundation, BRM and Donald Campbell's Bluebird.