Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

Recently there have been a couple of vintage adverts that have made us look more than once. Some things have been quite an eye-opener, we’ve doubted the adverts and then wondered if the machines are still in existence. This of course is true of many makes as there are some odd-ball machines out there.

We are all used to seeing the Wrigley Motor Truck as in the advert on the right, but a couple of different adverts just stood out as being rather interesting and worthy of mention, and of interest to anyone in the VHGMC who collects Wrigley.

The adverts in question refer to a couple of Wrigley machines from the 1950’s advertising a ‘New Wrigley 10-cwt 3 Wheel Milk Delivery Truck‘ at Leamington Automobile Co. Ltd in 1951 and also a ‘Wrigley Ice-Cream Van, immediate delivery, beautifully finished, small running costs, reasonable price‘ at Appleyards car dealers in Leeds in 1950.

An Ice Cream Van and a Milk Delivery Truck? Do they still exist? Can anyone shed any light on these machines? We are sure that the ice cream van would have been pretty impressive in it’s day. It’s worth noting that the ice cream van was advertised from October 1950 to April 1952 with no buyer so maybe it was made into something else, or perhaps it was only a modified dairy/milk delivery truck anyway? 

Here are the adverts in question.



More Wrigley images as below can be found in the VHGMC Wrigley gallery.

We know from advertising that some distributors and dealers for Wrigley Motor Trucks included: Appleyard of Leeds, Hough & Whitmore of Gloucester, Newland Motors of Northampton, Dolans Garage in Grimsby, Leamington Automobile Co. in Leamington Spa, Stobcross Motor Co in Glasgow, and Motorsales (Hull) Ltd in Hull and the East Riding. 

An advertisement for Wrigley agents appeared in Scottish newspapers in 1950:


Finally, an advert for Wrigley Trucks and their suitability for farmers, agriculturalists, dairymen, factories and general deliveries. No specific mention of ice cream vans apart from dairies, suppose we could have had a choc-ice if that Wrigley ice cream van was still about, wonder if it played the Greensleeves jingle?