USi (Burtonwood)

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.