Aldershot & District Traction

English bus company

Aldershot & District Traction Company Limited was a major bus company operating services in East Hampshire, West Surrey and parts of adjoining counties for sixty years during the 20th century, from 1912 until 1972 when it became part of Alder Valley.

Aldershot & District was inaugurated on 24 July 1912 when the British Automobile Traction Company Limited (a subsidiary of British Electric Traction Company BET) bought the pioneering Aldershot & Farnborough Motor Omnibus Company Ltd, whose five buses had operated services between those two towns since 1906. The initial livery was dark green and white, with the upper deck of double deckers being a lighter green. Variations on a theme of two tone green continued, later with cream relief replacing the white. The familiar looped fleetname was introduced in 1923 and lasted until 1968. In its early years, the company was also a general haulage contractor, operating a fleet of Foden steam lorries. In common with many other rural bus companies, it also carried parcels on its buses until the 1970s. There was increasingly close co operation between British Automobile Traction and rivals Thomas Tilling in the 1920s and, in 1928 BAT was reconstructed with the new title, Tilling & British Automobile Traction Ltd but, in 1942 the company was wound up and A&D's ownership reverted to the parent company BET. Aldershot & District expanded during the pre World War II period, taking over a number of smaller concerns and establishing depots at Guildford, Woking, Hindhead, Haslemere, and Alton, with smaller "outstations" elsewhere. World War II provided a challenge to the company – conscription meant that fewer men were available to serve as bus crews, service engineers and administrators, which meant recruitment and training of a great number of women, and maintenance of the vehicles was difficult; requisition of vehicles to replace destroyed vehicles in London or for conversion to military ambulances caused shortages locally and being based in Aldershot (the "Home of the British Army") meant that the company's vehicles were in continuous demand for transport of troops. Following the war the company invested in new vehicles, mainly AEC single deckers and Dennis double deckers and services returned to pre war levels for a while, until the increase in car ownership brought about significant loss of custom from the mid 1950s onwards. A&D sought to minimise the impact by taking over routes from other operators, for instance Yellow Bus Services, Guildford. Large peaks in traffic levels occurred on a regular basis to meet the special demands of the Aldershot Military Tattoo and the Farnborough Airshow. Passenger numbers had peaked in 1950 at almost 52,000,000 journeys. amalgamating the interests of The Tilling Group (BET's main competitor) with the recently acquired BET Group. From that point the company's independence was lost, as exemplified by the immediate change in purchasing policy, with centrally specified Bristol buses coming in instead of the locally sourced Dennis and AEC vehicles. The company continued to trade as Aldershot and District under nationalised ownership until it was merged with the former Tilling Group company, Thames Valley Traction Company Limited on 1 January 1972 to form the Thames Valley and Aldershot Omnibus Company, which traded under the contrived fleet name of Alder Valley.

The Aldershot & District company had a play on words used by some user groups, "Have a shot and risk it". In 2012 to mark the centenary of the former longstanding company's incorporation, Stagecoach briefly repainted some of its local vehicles as A&D.