Industrial Heritage In Action: Museum Team Tours Leyland Assembly Plant (19th June 2025)
Over the last couple of weeks’ members of the Museum team have had the pleasure of attending Leyland Trucks for a guided tour of the assembly plant. There the team learnt all about truck production, delving into the various intricate components involved in producing trucks. They also had the opportunity to observe the manufacturing process in action.
Leyland Trucks is one of nine plants owned by PACCAR, an American company who design and manufacture large commercial trucks through their subsidiaries which include DAF, Kenworth and Peterbilt.
The primary focus of Leyland Trucks is on the design, development and manufacturing of light and medium-duty vehicles, with the plant being at the heart of such production for PACCAR. They are also one of Britain’s leading truck manufacturing companies.
The plant currently has over 1,000 employees and turns out approximately 62 vehicles a day (although during peak demand this has been as high as 100 trucks a day), with around 40% of their products being exported to European Union markets and the wider world. If you see a DAF truck on the roads here in the UK, chances are it was made here in Leyland!
Members of the Museum team completed a walk about a mile long (the assembly plant is roughly the size of 11 football pitches side by side) around the factory, beginning in the PACCAR Technology Centre where the DAF XB and DAF XF were on display (pictured left).
As part of the tour members of the Museum team were able to observe a chassis being turned using a highly sophisticated rig, the painting process (with robots and people working side by side to spray the chassis), piping being fitted (a whopping 12km of piping is used a day, over the course of the year the length of piping used equates to the distance from Leyland to Eindhoven… and back!), engines being integrated into the vehicle and the wheels being fitted, all on a moving production line.
The site’s operations are overseen by an extensive planning network, utilising advanced technology to improve efficiency and monitor safety. Technological advancements have resulted in the implementation of AGVs (automated guided vehicles) within the factory, these small carts work using electromagnetic tracks integrated into the factory floor to guide them and deliver various parts to the relevant workstation.
Producing a vehicle around every 7 minutes is an incredible feat and it was a privilege to witness the hard work of the employees at Leyland Trucks first hand. We’d like to say a huge thank you to our wonderful guides for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative visit to the plant.
