Robert Coates - Bedford to Berlin and Beyond, QL, The Forces' Favourite 4 x 4 (1994).jpg

This book tells the story of one of the most interesting load-carrying vehicles ever built. Pieced together from incomplete and disparate records, museum exhibits, books, anecdotes, old soldiers' and airmen's fond recollections - as well as a lifetime of fascination with the 'QL', the story covers this Bedford 3-tonner from evolution to peacetime activity, concentrating particularly on the many and vital roles it played during World War Two.
Despite numerous contradictory 'clues' present in the surviving material, this account gives as accurate a picture as I have been able to construct. Other records may still exist which could shed further light on the subject, and there will be people intimately involved with QLs who will be able to provide fact where I can only provide deduction and conjecture. I ask these experts to bear with me or, better still, to confirm the facts of the matter. For those who are less well-informed, this account will, I hope, provide them with useful and interesting information on the QL and, at least partially, explain my own obsession with the marque.
Part of the reason for this obsession may lie in the fact that the QL was the first vehicle in which I have any recollection of travelling. My father, to whose memory, together with that of my mother, I should like to dedicate this book, was an RASC driver during World War Two and I can recall, as a toddler, riding in the back (of a QLT) and being thoroughly spoiled by the Tommies who plied me with biscuits which appeared from 61b tins stowed under the seats - all very exciting, but something about that day has stayed with me all my life and perhaps even shaped my career, which has ended up in transport consultancy!