Woking Buses 1911-1939

Product Description

The motor bus did not come to Woking until 1911. Unlike many other areas the town was not subsumed into the network of the major territorial operators for a considerable time. It was on the extreme fringe of the empires of Aldershot & District & London General & it was not until the mid-1920s that Aldershot & District was able to anchor itself firmly in Woking while London General had to wait until 1931. Being on the boundary of two major operators who were providing little meant that the Woking area (and Guildford too) became ripe for exploitation by local proprietors. Men were returning from the Forces after the war with their demobilisation gratuities. A fourteen-seat bus on a lightweight American chassis was relatively cheap so the cost of market entry was not prohibitive. It was however a cut-throat business with numerous proprietors competing on the most lucrative routes almost on a dog-eat-dog basis. One Councillor described the Woking
- St Johns
- Knaphill route as a little goldmine making competition fierce & surely against the public interest in terms of providing a regular reliable service. The history of A&D & London General has already been documented but little in-depth has been written about the so-called independents. This book sets out to remedy this & to put the activities of the larger companies into local context. The book concerns itself with the period before the Second World War up to the time of the disappearance of the last of the independent operators.