Jan, I believe the tank was built by Butterfields of Shipley, near Bradford, Yorkshire. This was the same company which built the prototype of the Dinky 25-series tanker. In later years and after several takeovers and mergers, Butterfields became part of the Thompsons of Bilton (Staffordshire) group. Thompsons built the real-life Dinky 60Y refueller and 991 Shell Chemicals tankers. Nowadays, Thompsons are a part of the American Heil Trailer company, and the name has disappeared from our roads.

Jan, Whilst Butterfields were indeed a large and prolific tanker builder, they were by no means alone, even in their small hometown of Shipley.  Very close by was the Yorkshire Electric Welding Company (Yewco), another famous builder. Barely twenty miles away near Wakefield, Charles Roberts had a huge factory producing railway wagons and coaches, bus and tram bodies, and thousands of road tanker bodies. They took over Butterfields in 1973 before the company was split up, the railway business going first to Procor, and eventually to Bombardier of Canada, and eventual closure. The road tanker business went to Heil but moved to the old Thompson works at Bilston. Dyson of Liverpool , Steel Barrel of Uxbridge, Middlesex, Gloster-Saro and Darham Industries also built large numbers of tankers. Gloster-Saro was a joint venture between Gloster Aviation and Saunders-Roe, both aeroplane manufacturers who had diversified into road vehicle bodybuilding. Interestingly, Saunders-Roe had built the first Hovercraft, SRN-1, as modelled by Corgi Toys.

Kevin.

I thought the 30 series Studebaker tanker had a Heil streamlined body, so Dinky designers could well have been familiar with US designs as I’m sure British manufacturers were and copied?

Meccano certainly had an interest in the potentially huge American market, and were clever enough to introduce realistic models of American vehicles which would have been familiar to buyers over there, and attractively "exotic" to children in countries where  real American motors were not often seen.