What youth today will push one? The thousands of Walls and Eldorado ice-cream tricycles rot away in scrapyards without the Warrick maintenance scheme. Vestigal remnants of tricar days can be seen around the works. Curious ramp staircases with winches for lowering chassis; an old truck owing its origin to tricar components; a queer experimental motor tricycle of the twenties lurks in a disused store. Drawings of a four-wheeled envelope bodied ‘Landcrab,’ stillborn, lie in a forgotten drawer, and what has become of the 50 Burney motor cycles built in 1923/4 and exhibited at the 1923 Olympia Show?
– L. Mathews, after visiting Monarch Works in 1959,
from the John Warrick Online Museum – www.1914Warrick.woprdpress.com
John Warrick originally operated the Monarch Works for T.W. Pitt, supplying tradesman’s bicycles and tricycles. After building up a successful business, he took over the company. Warrick & Co soon cornered the market in the supply of tradesman’s tricycles and bicycles, which he rented to companies on short-term or long-term contracts. But eventually, as you can see from the above quote from an ex-employee, by the late 1950s young lads were no longer prepared to make deliveries on heavy bicycles and tricycles.
1920s ‘The Warrick Carrier Tricycle’ Model C
with Open-top Tall Box, operating as Village Tinker
26″ Wheels with pneumatic tyres
Coaster Rear Brake
(Now sold)
The frame geometry of John Warrick carrier tricycles are distinctive. The company was one of the country’s major suppliers, and operators could either buy or rent one of the company’s machines. Large companies – such as utility companies – usually preferred to rent, as Warrick & Co would then maintain and replace the tricycles as necessary during the term of the lease.
Small concerns, such as this village tinker, would most likely have bought his Warrick Carrier Tricycle ‘Model C’ secondhand. If the carrier tricycle he purchased had a front box inappropriate to his usage, he could select this open-top tall box from a wide range of body styles supplied by Warrick & Co.
1920 WARRICK & CO CATALOGUE
