page_title: Dennis Specialist Vehicles
section_title: Commercial vehicles
hierarchical_section_title: Dennis Specialist Vehicles / Dennis Brothers Limited 1901 to 1972 / Commercial vehicles
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Mail Dennis van, LE 304, at the British Postal Museum &amp; Archive.
context_page_description: Dennis Brothers Limited was an English manufacturer of commercial vehicles based in Guildford, building buses, fire engines, lorries and municipal vehicles such as dustcarts. All vehicles were made to order to the customer's requirements and more strongly built than mass production equivalents. For most of the 20th century Dennis Brothers was Guildford's main employer.
  Following a decade of financial difficulties original shareholders sold out in 1972 and Dennis's ownership has since passed through quite a number of hands. The Woodbridge site was sold and a new small factory built in Slyfield remains in use by lineal business descendant, bus-maker Alexander Dennis. No Dennis haulage trucks have been built since 1985. The last Dennis fire engine left the Guildford factory in 2007.
  The Dennis brand is still used on Alexander Dennis buses and Dennis Eagle dustcarts.
context_section_description: Commercial vehicle activity increased. Their first was a van for Harrods in London. Dennis made its first bus in 1903 and their first fire engine in 1908 — for Bradford Council Fire Department. The last car was made in 1913 after the Dennis brothers saw there was less competition in the commercial vehicle market.
  The rate of growth of the business may be gauged from the regular expansions on their new site at Woodbridge Hill on the outskirts of Guildford — in 1907, 1910, 1912 and 1913.  In 1913 Dennis Brothers moved their main operations to a new much larger building of almost four acres on the twelve-acre site at Woodbridge leaving their purpose-built Onslow Street premises solely for repairs. In March 1913 the investing public learnt that Dennis Brothers was a manufacturer of motor-vans, motor-lorries, motor-fire-engines, motor-cars etc. The brothers' offer of shares to the public was substantially over-subscribed and Dennis Brothers Limited became a publicly listed company.  Rising international tensions precipitated a major contract for supply of 1,000 3-ton "subsidy" lorries to private buyers on terms set by the War Office. Taking the subsidy obliged the buyer to release the vehicle to the War Office in time of war. Materials had been ordered but no subvention lorries completed when the situation changed.
caption: 1910 van replica
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