page_title: Tilling-Stevens
section_title: Goods vehicles
hierarchical_section_title: Tilling-Stevens / Goods vehicles
caption_attribution_description: Tilling-Stevens petrol-electric searchlight lorry of 1937
context_page_description: Tilling-Stevens was a British manufacturer of buses and other commercial vehicles, based in Maidstone, Kent. Originally established in 1897, it became a specialist in petrol-electric vehicles. It continued as an independent manufacturer until 1950, when it was acquired by the Rootes Group.
context_section_description: Tilling-Stevens also produced goods chassis available with either petrol-electric or conventional gearbox transmissions and built many trucks during World War I. Their cast aluminium radiators were distinctive, with "Tilling-Stevens" cast into the top and either "Petrol-Electric" or "Maidstone"  into the bottom tanks.
  After the war, they failed to invest in updating their products and ended up building mainly buses. Tilling-Stevens therefore acquired Vulcan Trucks of Southport, Lancashire in 1938 to extend their range (and use Vulcan petrol engines). Production stayed at Maidstone, and Vulcan's production was also relocated there.
  The unusual electric transmission became less of an advantage as other makers developed their simpler mechanical transmissions to be reliable and easier to drive. Tilling-Stevens specialised in some unusual markets where the transmission could offer a particular advantage, by also using it as a generator. Some early turntable ladder fire engines were produced where arc lamps for lighting and the electric motors to raise the ladder could be powered by it.
  In the 1930s the lorries also lost the large cast radiators in favour of first a thinner cast aluminium shell and then a cheaper steel pressed bonnet and a small diamond-shaped "TSM" badge.
  Leading up to World War II they specialised in the searchlight trucks for which they are probably still best known today.
caption: petrol-electric searchlight lorry
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