In September 2015 a terraced street in east Manchester was rebuilt as housing for veterans, over a fortnight, by trades and suppliers who donated the work. The television version is the fortnight. The real version starts months earlier and involves a great deal of storing things.

What a haulier gives to a job like that

Not lifting, mostly. Space. When forty suppliers all donate materials, those materials arrive when the supplier can send them, not when the site needs them, and a street with no room on it cannot take delivery of anything.

So it went to Miles Platting: seven acres of yard, and things came off it in the order the build wanted them rather than the order they turned up.

Then the fortnight

Vehicles in and out of a street with houses on both sides and no turning space, which is why the photographs are all of tractor units nose-first between terraces. A rigid can turn in a street like that. An artic reverses the length of it, in front of a crowd, which is a particular sort of pressure.

Why it stayed on the website

Because it is the best story in the archive, and because the letter afterwards from the main contractor is the only piece of paper in this business we have ever framed.

We claim no relationship with the broadcaster or the charities. We moved things and we stored things, alongside a lot of other companies who did the same.

The whole Canada Street job · The yard and what it holds · About Nortons