Thwaites was founded in 1937 as Thwaites Agricultural Engineering by Basil Thwaites as an agricultural engineering company based in Cubbington. The company manufactured trailers, milking machines and forage harvesters and in the late 1940’s ventured into the construction industry by designing and manufacturing a brick elevator, the first site dumper being a three-wheeled powered by a single cylinder Petter with a 3-speed gearbox. This was superseded to a four-wheeled dumper in 1954 along with a company name change to Thwaites Engineering Ltd and in 1962 the four-wheel drive 2 tonne capacity Alldrive was introduced followed by a 3 tonne capacity in 1965.
They have also ventured into larger rear tip dumpers in 1974 with the Goliath 5 tonne dumper which was updated in 8 tonne is the early 1980’s and the Tusker with its ability to remove the skip and fit a backhoe loader attachment which was then updated to the Alldig compact backhoe.
Thwaites have always been at the forefront of dumper innovation and were the first manufacturer to move away from Lister Petter air-cooled to the more refined Perkins water-cooled and to put a torque convertor into a six tonne dumper. They have always prided themselves on building up top a standard and not down to a price, this quality is reflected in the price of the machine but also the enhanced residual values achieved when the dumper is disposed of.
Thwaites now only manufacture forward tip site dumpers from 1 tonne capacity to 10 tonne and moved from the Perkins engines to Yanmar TNV for the smaller dumpers and Deutz TCD engine for six tonne and above as per list below
Thwaites 1 Tonne Yanmar 3TNV76
Thwaites 1.5 Tonne Yanmar 3TNV76
Thwaites 2 Tonne (Manual) Yanmar 3TNV82
Thwaites 2 Tonne (Hydrostatic) Yanmar 3TNV88
Thwaites 2.3 Tonne (Hydrostatic) Yanmar 3TNV88
Thwaites 3 Tonne (Manual) Yanmar 3TNV88
Thwaites 3 Tonne (Hydrostatic) Yanmar 3TNV88
Thwaites 3.5 Tonne (Hydrostatic) Yanmar 4TNV88
Thwaites 4.5 Tonne (Hydrostatic) Yanmar 4TNV84T
Thwaites 6 Tonne Deutz TCD3.6 L4
Thwaites 9 Tonne Deutz TCD3.6 L4
Thwaites Super Viz Deutz TCD3.6 L4
The Thwaites factory has always been in Cubbington on the outside of Leamington Spa and it is a genuine manufacturing facility, not a production line bolting together bought in components. Sheets of steel still arrive at one end of the factory and finished machines drive out the other!! They do this to control quality and can increase/decrease production as necessary to meet demand.
Its good to see a British manufacturer thriving. The British have always been great innovators and inventors and too often we see us invent something only for it to be copied and manufactured abroad at the expense of our industry. Thwaites, Winget and of course JCB are the only main British players left in the construction equipment industry and its good to see Thwaites are still the market leader, the best innovators and producing the highest quality machines leaving the same factory that it all started in nearly 90 years ago.
