NCB – Northern Coach Builders.

NCB stood for Northern Coach Builders, a company established over 80 years ago. It came about through tea. The famous Ringtons Tea Company which was based in Newcastle and is still in the hands of the Smith family, delivered in the early days by horse and cart. Not only was distribution made to shops, but they also delivered house to house throughout the northern parts of England. With the demand for thousands of carts, they started manufacturing their own and Northern Coach Builders came into being.

The 1930’s were a hard time for everyone, and this saw them diversifying into building Bus and Trolley bus bodies, mobile shops, ice cream vans etc. They called some of these branches “Smiths Delivery Vehicles Ltd.”

In the same decade began the development of electric vehicles for milk and bread delivery, this branch becoming “Smiths NCB Electric Vehicles”, eventually dropping the NCB part.

Although why NCB closed is not known, one could surmise that if their bread and butter was making Ringtons Tea vehicles, the coming of standard vans from the major motor manufacturers would have undercut the reason for their existence. Add the creation post war of BTC and BET with their own group buying policies and the writing was on the wall for many bodybuilding companies.

Smiths Electric Vehicles still exists as part of the Tanfield Group and is now branded SEV.

Many thanks for this information to Stuart Jollie of Smiths Electric Vehicles.