OAKFIELD TRAVEL
Like Topsy, they grew and grew and grew
Oakfield was started by two chums from their days in the forces. Always based in the market town of Blandford in Dorset, Joe Smith and Terry Greenslade started with taxis and grew through minibuses to the operation of full size buses and coaches. In that time honoured division of responsibilities, Joe ran the office and Terry looked after the engineering side of things. Their yellow and blue fleet soon became a familiar sight on contract and private hire work, and the firm evolved slowly into market day type bus operations, originally with a Tuesday service from Sturminster Marshall to Salisbury (to the initial displeasure of the incumbent operator Wilts & Dorset).
Growing pains meant that the business could no longer be run from outside the partner's homes and a new purpose built depot was established on the Sunrise Park trading estate just to the north of Blandford. With bus deregulation in 1986, a successful tender bid was made for the county council subsidised contract to operate the four times daily Blandford - Shillingstone - Okeford - Sturminster Newton route. This had always been a Bere Regis route since daily operation started forty years earlier, when Bere Regis had taken over the route from the original village operator, Charlie Fripp of Okeford Fitzpaine in 1946. The new route represented a considerable expansion of activity for Oakfield, being their first daily bus operation. The Saturday journeys were extended from Blandford to run through to Poole and Bournemouth.
In 1989, Oakfield took over the operations of the Stanbridge and Crichel company. The two garages at Sunrise Park, Blandford and at Stanbridge near Wimborne were both continued as operating bases. The work taken over from Stanbridge included the Rossmore Bus service in Parkstone as well as the traditional Stanbridge country routes from Wimborne to Witchampton, Cranborne, Verwood and Salisbury.
Terry at the wheel ............
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Retirement beckoned Joe and Terry in 1992 and the Oakfield business was sold to an ex-London Country operator, Guildford and West Surrey. A further rapid period of expansion ensued when Oakfield successfully bid for the routes between Dorchester, Cerne Abbas and Sherborne (ex-Southern National, previously ex-Bere Regis); Dorchester, Cattistock and Yeovil (ex-Southern National, previously ex-Pearce of Cattistock); and Dorchester, Piddle Valley to Sturminster Newton (ex-Bere Regis). The operation of a network reliant upon outstationed vehicles and drivers thirty to forty miles away from the Oakfield base at Blandford was to prove troublesome and unreliable, and the Sherborne and Yeovil routes soon reverted to Southern National, with the Piddle Valley route passing to Wilts & Dorset, later Damory Coaches.
Wilts & Dorset, having purchased another smaller Blandford private operator, Damory Coaches, from its proprietor and founder Vic Kimber, then also acquired the Oakfield business from Guildford and West Surrey, including all their Blandford and Wimborne area routes, in November 1993.
The cover of the November 1992 timetable with the list of routes operated
