Celebrating a Survivor

We’re all used to municipal, ex-municipal and territorial operators celebrating their centenary by painting a vehicle into an appropriately early livery and throwing open its main depot. Today, though, is the date chosen to commemorate a considerable achievement in the deregulated bus industry – 100 years of operation by independent John Fishwick & Sons.

And there’s no need to repaint one of its 40 buses into an early livery. Its traditional-looking, long-standing, two-tone green offers a little stability in the constant change we have come to expect over the last 35 and especially 20 years, even if its application is now in a somewhat livelier even racy style (for Fishwick’s, that is). And today’s garage open day is on the very same site used from 1907.

Not wishing to rain on its parade, in actual fact Fishwick’s party is three years early, for steam haulier John of 1907 didn’t start passenger operations till 1910 when, in true early bus history fashion, a petrol lorry was converted for weekend passenger transport, from Leyland to nearby Preston. Oh well. Haulage played its part till 1953.

From the start, Fishwick was an avid user of local Leyland products. In the 1970s and beyond, Nationals gave way to Lynxes, Atlanteans to Olympians. Recently, Fishwick favoured DAF/Wrights. Its two newest vehicles are DAF/Plaxton Centros.

Most services operate hourly, though its killer route from Leyland to Preston runs every 10 minutes.

That Fishwick survived the rationalisation of the territorials during the 1920s and 1930s is remarkable in itself. That it continues as a family firm in today's acquisitive and deregulated times is equally remarkable. Happy birthday.

Picture in Preston Bus Station care of Omnibuses’ Northern Correspondent