04.11.2024

Richard John 'Dick' Lloyd 1933 - 2024

We have received the sad news that veteran crane salesman Dick Lloyd has died following a long struggle with cancer.

He passed away peacefully on the 21st of September surrounded by his family. He would have celebrated his 91st birthday last week and leaves behind his wife, Audrey, of 55 years as well as three daughters: Josephine, Fay and Lucy Jean.

His funeral will be held at Oxford Crematorium on Thursday 7th November at 14:00, followed by tea at the Abingdon Arms, Bickley.

The service will also be available to watch online at:
https://watch.obitus.com
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Dick Lloyd left school in 1952 having secured a place at Merton College, Oxford, to study Jurisprudence, but first he had two years of National Service to do. Having been a cadet at school he was able to choose which service to join and chose the Army’s Royal Engineers. After a year training and working with the Bridge Classification, Mines and Demolition Group he was posted to Port Said, Egypt, where he was appointed as a liaison and troop welfare officer.

In 1954, he began three years of study at Oxford but realised that law was not for him, so as his time at Merton came to an end he began looking for jobs with the usual companies attending University recruitment fairs. He had two interviews lined up, the first to become a management trainee with Rolls Royce, but the interview with a board of stuffy and formal directors failed to impress. Conversely his interview at Coles Cranes with Robert Albon for the position of export sales trainee was far more to his liking, with the potential of overseas travel and excitement. At that time, Coles was the largest crane manufacturer in Europe, and one of the largest in the world.

His time with Coles was successful - especially once he was able to start travelling and selling outside of the UK - and as a result of those early years he remained in the crane business for the rest of his life, adding excavators along the way.

in 1965 Coles appointed a new sales director and Dick struggled to get on with him and accepted a job offer from the managing director of Hymac whom he knew well. The company had launched a hydraulic excavator and also dabbled in cranes and later platforms.

After five years with the company Hymac hired the very person that caused him to leave Coles. So, in 1970, he looked to move back to Coles, which was owned at that time by the family owned Steel Group. While there was no suitable opening at Coles, it also owned crane and excavator manufacturer Priestman. So, in March of that year, Dick began his export sales career with Priestman, and later added Coles to his remit for certain markets.

Coles and Priestman had become part of the Acrow Group and when it went into administration in 1985, Dick and most of the other employees were laid off. Grove then stepped in and acquired the business, putting the Coles management in charge of the business and then merging its own European operations into Coles. Lloyd managed to obtain a sales role with the reformed company, mostly covering Poland. He was officially employed as a consultant with Grove with the plan that he would work with his contacts in Poland to set up a new distributor. The business they founded became Grabcranex. The new venture was initially supported by Grove and before long handled Grove/Coles cranes and Grove Manlift platforms and Dick had also become involved with Sennebogen and began selling its crawler cranes and other equipment they later added a Manitou dealership.

In late 1997 Dick sold his shares in Grabcranex and made his last visit to Grove’s headquarters in Shady Grove Pennsylvania for an international dealer conference. He was one of the very few people or distributors that managed to sell the 150 tonne Grove RT1650, a four axle Rough Terrain crane with hydrostatic drive which was technically a major challenge, but Grabcranex managed to sell at least two of them and Grabcranex managed to keep them going and eventually sort out some of its technical issues.

At the end of the year events conspired to cause him to retire although he was approaching 65, the age that he had always planned to retire, having served 40 years as a crane and excavator sales.

In retirement he began writing and publishing his memoirs. In his first volume “40 Years A Salesman” See original book review he gives a forthright account of his career unabashedly writing about events at the companies he worked for as he saw them or believed them to be. In 2007 he joined us at Bauma 2007, where he sold and signed copies of his book from the Vertikal stand. As you might expect if you knew him, he turned up in full Bavarian dress, complete with lederhosen, Tyrolean shirt, loden jacket and Bavarian hat, complete with feather.

His next two books were more personal memoirs about his earlier days, starting out with “Re-Incarnated A Boarding School Boy” covering his school years along with a large section on the teachings of Arthur Wyeth, a healer who spoke widely on the subject of incarnation to which the young Dick became a follower, thus the title of his book. His third book “Three Glorious Years” covered his time as a student at Merton College, Oxford. More recently he had been working with ex-Priestman colleague Bill Bromwich on a detailed history of Priestman. That text is currently with us for eventual publication.

Dick Lloyd was unquestionably a one off, larger than life and always a rebel. He was a true character, could be loud and was more than capable of irritating some people with his manner, but was also fiercely intelligent. Although he came across as being very ‘English’, he was actually very international and loved travelling and learning new languages as well as meeting people from different cultures. While he has been out of the crane or lift industry for a good few years, the lifting community has certainly lost one of its true characters.