Dixon-Bate

B. Dixon-Bate Ltd was formed in 1921 by Basil Dixon-Bate (born 1898), who was still chairman and managing director in 1959, and was based at Bridge Works, Chester, making general engineering products and trailers. It was listed among aircraft-industry suppliers in 1939. In March 1959 the Commercial Motor recorded its range as four-wheeled trailers for payloads up to 6 tons, close-coupled low-loading trailers for contractors' plant or cable drums, tanker trailers up to 1,000 gallons, two-wheeled cross-country truck and tool-cart trailers for up to 2 tons, and a semi-trailer conversion for the Land Rover; a Dixon-Bate low-loading semi-trailer was shown at the Rover Company's display of Land-Rover variants that April.

From 1950 onwards the firm built a reputation for towing equipment, towing brackets, floor cranes and caravan products, supplying vehicle manufacturers, public utilities and military vehicle makers. Its telescopic shoring bars for vehicle bodies were new in 1968. The Dixon-Bate rotating NATO pintle and the combined tow ball and pin hitch became the standard towing fittings of military and civilian Land Rovers. A management buyout in 1984 moved the company from Chester to an 8,000 square metre factory at Deeside, North Wales, where it added cycle-parking equipment under the Grippa name; it bought Rapide boat trailers in 1999 and West Mersea boat trailers in 2004, and by the 2000s employed 85 people.

In 2009 the trailer business went to Mersea Trailers and, with effect from 18 August 2009, the towing-products business and the Dixon-Bate trade name were bought by Bradley Doublelock Ltd of Victoria Works, Bingley, West Yorkshire, which renamed its own company Dixon Bate Limited and claimed to be the largest towing-jaw maker in Britain; the former Dixon-Bate Limited of 2000 became T + JB Consultants and was dissolved in 2019. AL-KO Kober acquired Bradley Doublelock in 2014 and in 2016 relocated the business, including the Bradley and Dixon Bate brands, to its UK headquarters at Southam, Warwickshire; Dixon Bate Limited (formerly Bradley Doublelock) was dissolved in December 2018. Dixon-Bate jaws, pintles and couplings continue as an AL-KO product line. The dixonbate.co.uk website is a stale 2009 Bradley-era site now carrying injected advertising text and is not recorded here.