Museum saves famous tow truck from scrapyard

An Albert Looms tow truck captured in a vintage photograph from the site

A tow truck regularly spotted on the roads of Derbyshire has been snapped up by a motoring museum.

In May, Spondon breakers yard Albert Looms announced it was closing after more than a century.

The business began in 1920, originally specialising in demolition and dismantling rolling stock from the railways before a move into car dismantling and parts in the early 1970s including a new fleet of Land Rover tow trucks.

Now the Great British Car Journey (GBCJ) has agreed to purchase one of the remaining trucks, which date back to the 1990s.

The Albert Looms branded tow truck, once a regular sight on Derbyshire’s roads, will be preserved for the public to view as part of the museum’s collection.

Richard Unwin, found of the Ambergate-based museum, said: “We’re going to park it outside for the summer, so it will be on display from today, and then it will go inside for the winter alongside our other Land Rovers.

“It has the Albert Looms livery and personal plate. Land Rovers are nice and honest, it looks like a 25-year-old car but we don’t plan on sprucing it up much.

“Albert Looms has been in business for 104 years but scrapyards now are a disappearing thing. Every town in the country would once have had somewhere like it.

“We thought the Land Rover tells quite a nice story.”

'Really pleased'

Ray Kirk from Albert Looms said: “It was actually on Facebook that this first came about - someone suggested that the museum should have it so I rang them to see if they had an interest, which they did.

“We’ve been towing vehicles since the 1970s but the original Land Rovers did a stupid amount of miles and we just wore them out.

“So although the one that’s gone over there is not new, it's from the 1990s and we’ve run it ever since then.

“They are work horses so once you’ve got a car on the back it didn’t really slow the Land Rover down, that’s what they’re made for.

“The drivers that have driven it including myself, we’re really pleased. If we’d sold it or scrapped it, it would have been a part of our history gone.”

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See more

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• Scrapyard to close after more than a century
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Related links

• Albert Looms
• Great British Car Journey