They had bought around 180 double-decker buses a year over the past decade, from 1955 onward these had been mainly and then (post-1957) exclusively either Leyland Titans with lowbridge bodies or Bristol Lodekkas.

[6] The fourth chassis (62100D) which was the first LR7, was bought by Edinburgh Corporation in 1962 and stored until 1964 when it was sold via Albion to Western SMT who placed an order with Northern Counties to body it with their last batch of Lowlanders and it was thus delivered in 1965.

[9] That said, East Midland's D162 (162 NVO) appeared at the 1962 Earl's Court Commercial Motor Show with an Albion grille badge, Leyland had previously frowned on the use of badge-engineering to gain stand space at shows, a practice used by arch rivals AEC during the 1950s; however the East Midland bus was on the Walter Alexander Coachbuilders stand.

Glasgow had previously announced a large order for Atlanteans and Edinburgh were mainly committed to Titans, but dithering between body layouts, lengths and braking systems.

With a full complement of badges a Lowlander, regardless to whom it was delivered, would have carried an enamelled Albion saltire shield on the flap concealing the radiator filler, either Leyland or Albion in stylised chrome-plated lettering across the fourth slat down on the radiator grille and a Lowlander badge in chrome finish and Leyland–style script, on the nearside at the foot of the grille panel, just by the nearside end of the registration number plate.

As a major railway junction with many prosperous employers in the area, including Vauxhall and Commer they had a requirement for double-deck buses able to get under low bridges and had begun to replace their early post-war Crossley DD42s, for which there were no new spare parts being made, with Leyland O.600-powered Lolines, two short wheelbase examples were delivered in 1960[13] and had 63 seat bodies by East Lancashire Coachbuilders of Blackburn.

[14] It was 1964 when the fifth coachbuilder bodied a Lowlander, this was Weymann (1928) Ltd of Addlestone, Surrey, who were part of the Metro-Cammell Weymann sales organisation in partnership with Metro-Cammell of Birmingham, MCW had a strong relationship with the British Electric Traction group and did not like the sales incursions by Walter Alexander into their patch, so they offered a better tender price for bodies on Lowlanders for Yorkshire Woollen District Traction Company Ltd, based in the West Riding town of Dewsbury.

These became YWD's 926-39 (KHD400-13) and were the first and last Weymann-bodied Lowlanders as following prolonged industrial action and a fire at the factory, Metro-Cammell's owners Laird Group bought out the Weymann shareholders and closed down the Surrey facility.

To start with, all but tall drivers liked the Lowlander, because it was more powerful than the buses it replaced and unlike the vacuum-braked Titan, stopping within a safe distance was a certainty rather than a hope.

For conductors, although it was better than a side-gangway design, it was worse than the contemporary flat-floor Lodekka as the passenger gangway on the lower deck was narrow and deeply sunken, with odd excrescences to catch unpractised feet: also unlike the Eastern Coach Works body designed to integrate with the FLF there was not an easy refuge area to stand in to allow passengers on and off at stops.

[16] For mechanics, especially those brought up on the Titan, it was a curse, sometimes even inspiring them to violence:[17] every part was hard to get to, and much dismantling of coachwork was necessary even for routine servicing of some components.

As time went by, management discovered brake and gearbox wear figures were much worse than on Titans and although bodied weight was about identical, fuel consumption was also worse, these weaknesses were particularly prominent on the LR1 variant which was chosen for most SBG orders; it was the first semi-automatic bus they had bought and not only was it less tolerant of driver abuse, drivers also had to get used to the fact that there was no longer the engine-braking effect available with a "solid" transmission.

The Alexander body also had problems, the prototypes used a standard Alexander upper-deck structure with a deeply-domed roof and low-set windows as on Glasgow Titans and AEC Regent Vs and recent Dennis Lolines for Aldershot & District Traction Company and North Western Road Car Company; this left no space for most operators' standard front destination displays, and required both pairs of front upper-deck seats to be mounted on raised platforms; All Lowlanders had the offside front seats above the cab raised to give the driver a modicum of headroom.

All forward entrance half-cab buses had structural weaknesses and these showed up on most Lowlanders, panel drumming, entry-doors sticking, stanchions rattling – sometimes even falling out, rainwater ingress causing electrical faults with the lights and bells and larger roof leaks particularly from the joint aft of the front dome[18] all being symptoms.

[20] Southend[21] faced the body structure and engineering weaknesses by using the type increasingly on peak-hour duplication, rail-replacement work[17] and lightly loaded runs into rural Thames-side territory notably route 4B to Great Wakering and route 18 to Ministry of Defence -controlled Foulness Island; for this purpose Southend uniquely fitted their Lowlanders by 1970[17] for driver-only operation, for which the driver had to turn to the left inside the cab to collect fares.

Luton Corporation, like Central SMT, found its mechanics constantly leaving for better paid and more congenial work elsewhere, and prior to selling out to United Counties Omnibus Company in 1970 the fleet had an increasingly shabby and neglected appearance; neglect made Luton's Lowlanders' rear air-suspension a particular cause of trouble, which in turn led to chassis-frame and coachwork problems.

The Alexander companies got on with their Lowlanders, and Midland, in particular, may have felt a sense of obligation, as many of their services distributed Albion workers to Clydebank and Glasgow's northern and north-eastern suburbs from a stand on Scotstoun's Dumbarton Road.

Highland made good use of their cascaded fleet of Lowlanders, mainly on scholars’ contracts and work involved in the Dounreay Fast-Breeder Nuclear Reactor complex.