A TRADEMARK of Dunfermline's past has made the 2,000-mile journey home after languishing in a Finnish forest for nearly 40 years.

A lorry belonging to what used to be one of Dunfermline’s biggest haulage companies, ‘M A Wilson and Sons’, has just completed a long-awaited return to Scotland after being left to rot in the woods.

Anthony Mitchell, a local businessman, refused to believe his 20-year dream of bringing the lorry back to the Auld Grey Toun was impossible and a chance find via a truck journalist in Finland set the wheels in motion.

Revealing the project's origins, he said: "As a child growing up in Townhill, I used to watch the Wilsons lorries trundling through the village in which they were based.

"My dad drove one called ‘Silver Warrior’ (the trucks all had individual names) and I think at that stage the company had around 50 of them, all painted in a distinctive shiny black with silver lettering.

"Since that time, I’ve had a great interest in classic cars and trucks and spent over 20 years trying to locate one that I could renovate.

"By chance, I came across a photograph of the remains of one through a Finnish truck journalist called Likka Kekko.

"A company in Finland had bought the lorry in the 1980s from Wilsons to dismantle and investigate the tipping mechanism but had no need for the chassis afterwards.

"It was just left to rot in the woods on the outskirts of a small village called Pernio in Finland, around 80 miles from Helsinki.

"My friends and colleagues told me that bringing it all the way back to Dunfermline would be impossible and tried to dissuade me from doing so but that only made me more determined to do it.

"It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do and people telling me, ‘That can’t be done’, only spurred me on to do it!

"I was delighted it survived the long journey via ferry from Finland to Germany, on through Europe to Calais and a long motorway trip back to Dunfermline and its original home."

The haulage company, ‘M A Wilson’, had its origins in 1929 when a Townhill woman named Mary-Anne Wilson, recently-widowed and a mother to three sons and three daughters, bought a second-hand Ford lorry and began a delivery business in the village and surrounding area.

The business came to be affectionately known in and around Townhill as ‘Ma Wilson’s’.

It went from strength to strength over the years with large contracts in the burgeoning mining industry in Fife among the reasons for its growth and success.

Anthony believes the lorry will be very popular once the renovations are complete.

He said: “Although the truck is now safely back in Dunfermline after the long trip from Finland, the hard work in bringing it back to its past glory now has to be undertaken and this will take some time to complete to the high standard I want.

"I know from my own experience in attending truck shows around Scotland that a Wilsons lorry will be extremely popular as I’ve seen for myself the interest there is when one of them has featured at such shows in the past."