Fifty Shades of Tarmac: Adventures with a Mack R600 in 1970s Europe (eBook)

Andy MacLean (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
344 Seiten
5M Publishing Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-910456-17-0 (ISBN)

Infos

It was 1972. It was summer - and the living was easy! Arthur Jackson has a good job, no ties and no responsibilities, but it is not enough - he wants adventure and he wants to see the world!Based on the author's real life experiences and illustrated with photographs from the time, Fifty Shades of Tarmac tells the fictional story of how a naive young British truck driver obtains his first job driving a Mack on the continent of Europe. His first trip with all its pitfalls and novel experiences takes him from Rotterdam to Bremerhaven via Moutiers and Salzburg and then back to Rotterdam. It is told with humour, introducing a number of colourful characters, and providing a personal and unusual insight into the life of a truck driver in the 70s at a time when Europe still had frontier posts and custom restrictions.It will be of interest to truck drivers, Mack fans and other transport enthusiasts and those who simply want to learn more about the social history of Europe in the 1970s.

Andy MacLean trained as a teacher but chose truck driving as an exciting way to travel and see life! He spent a lifetime in the transportation industry firstly as a driver and then as manager of a large international truck company. After starting his own forwarding business, Orient Transport Services in 1985 he retired in 2007. He has a small farm and enjoys playing drums in several jazz bands in London and Kent.

Textauszug

1

On the Road Again

IT was 1972. It was summer – and the living was easy! I was earning reasonably good money, had a share in a flat on the Cromwell Road, was not tied down and had no responsibilities. An enviable position you might think, but for many months I’d been seriously looking for a continental driving job. At that time foreign lorries were eyed more with curiosity than envy. However, my ambition was to drive the biggest, the best and the furthest! Even then that meant the Middle East and I saw a European driving position as the springboard to that end.

In those days I was driving a car transporter for Capel Drivers, a Dodge K1010 equipped with an unusually reliable Cummins V8 engine and an Eaton 2 speed rear axle. Cars were a light load for such a powerful unit and I was up and down the length and breadth of the country every week as regular and fast as the proverbial dose of salts!

But the continent was still the plum in the pudding as far as I was concerned and I was determined to get over there. I contacted countless companies – Union Transport, SCA, Air Products, MAT, even several European ones: Atramef Ghent, Betz Reutlingen, Asian Transport Denmark and even some of the “dodgies” like U.K.–Europe Express and Freightlanes. However, I was always being asked the same question: “What experience do you have?” At that time I was young and honest and therefore was never offered employment except with one or two of the fly-by-nighters whose drivers were punching the hell out of cranked out Seddons, Bedford TKs and Guy Warriors, risking their lives every trip for £40 a week and all the rice they could eat! I was certainly not prepared to make that sacrifice just for a trip over the water.

Then one day I bumped into Wally. It was in the Old Gate cafe on the A2 between Canterbury and the start of the M2. I was sitting there aching from head to back to sides to toes after a night in Dover’s Wellington Dock spent stretched out across the seats of the Dodge. Devouring my bacon, egg, tomatoes and fried slice, I was worrying about what was going to happen to Garth now that Lumiere had been imprisoned by the Androids (I hadn’t read that day’s copy of the Mirror yet) when “Mind if I sit here?” a hearty voice thundered in my ear.

“No, please do,” I mumbled through my early morning fug and Wally sat down opposite me. I immediately recognised him as the guy who’d just swept into the parking lot with a Scania 110 sleeper cab and 12 metres of aluminium Crane Fruehauf boxvan. Would he deign to engage me, a mere Dodge driver, in conversation? What would I have to say which would interest him, this god who had descended from on high (well the Scani was high compared to other trucks at the time) and sat at my table? I could start with “What sort of engine have you got in there?” No, I couldn’t stoop to that. “Just come from the continent have you?” Even more stupid. “They tell me Scani and Volvo drivers are a load of poofters, is that true?” Definitely not. I couldn’t decide, so in the end I plumped for the imaginative, “That your Scani ton ten out there?”

“Yes, it is,” came the reply. “That your Dodge with the Toyotas?” I had the company’s name tattooed across my overalls so I couldn’t lie.

“’Fraid so,” I confirmed.

“Nice powerful motor for your job,” he said. “I used to drive one on Readymix but that was only a six wheel rigid with a straight six Perkins.” Wow, I had a conversation going. “Never actually driven one of those,” he gestured towards my rig, “but they’re always passing me on the M1 so they can’t be bad tools.”

“It’s pretty nippy,” I agreed, “but I’d sooner have your Scani with its sleeper cab.”

“Not much good for your kind of work though,” he said between mouthfuls of the Gate’s stewed tea. “Never get it under your trailer!”

“I’m not talking about my job, I’d like to drive on the continent,” I interrupted.

“Just the same as me a year ago,” he laughed. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Arthur,” I replied.

“Mine’s Wally, pleased to meet you,” he smiled, extending his hand.

“Hm, very continental,” I thought. But what a nice guy and here I was feeling very honoured to be conversing with a man of such obvious knowledge of international trucking.

“Trouble is,” I ventured, “I’ve tried every firm I know but they’re only interested if I already have experience or they want me to drive some old deathtrap to Italy without permits which I’m not willing to do.”

“You’re quite right I’m afraid, mate,” said Wally, “good continental jobs is hard to come by. What you’ll have to do is employ a little cunning.” He paused to take a bite out of his cheese and tomato sandwich. I looked out of the misted windows to see two of Husk of Dover’s Guy Big J’s with flatbed trailers loaded with what looked like crates of fruit and one of George Hammond’s Atkinson Borderers negotiating their way out of the parking and onto the A2 heading north.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Wally looked straight at me, his brown eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Have you ever been abroad?” he continued.

“Well, I did have a two week holiday in Austria when I was at school,” I answered.

“Great, so you know the route,” Wally pointed out.

“I flew,” I confessed.

“Don’t worry. As long as you can say that you’ve been to Austria and add a bit of authenticity, study the maps, the route you’d take for instance – Zeebrugge, Brussels, Aachen (nasty customs post that), Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich (say Munchen, sounds more impressive), Salzburg.” He stopped to finish the rest of his breakfast.

I looked around the large prefabricated building which housed the cafe. On my left was the long white self-service counter and behind it the grill currently sizzling away with preparations for the countless fry-ups they were about to serve to the trucking fraternity. At my end was a fishing tackle counter catering for anglers on their way to the coast. At the other end was a Wurlitzer jukebox, quiet now thank goodness. Behind that, through the misted windows, I could see my red Dodge parked next to Wally’s Scania, both illuminated by the eerie green fluorescent floodlights which were the Gate’s night-time trademark. It was that moment just before dawn when the birds all start to sing and you know that the business of the day is about to start. I was becoming determined more than ever to get that continental job.

Wally was human and ordinary, two facts which surprised me. About my height at five foot eight or thereabouts, crewcut, and clean shaven wearing a black donkey jacket over a blue checked shirt and black jeans, he must have been about 35 years old whereas I was still only 27, but he did seem to think that I could make the grade otherwise why was he giving me these tips?

His meal over, he pulled a packet of Gauloises out of his top pocket and, after offering me one, which I declined, he lit up and spoke again.

“One thing though, they’re bound to ask you some questions – customs formalities, names of borders, that kind of thing – oh, maybe customs agents as well. Your best bet would be to tell them that you’ve only travelled on T.I.R. carnets, then you’d only need an agent at your point of offloading. Don’t forget that you need road permits and you have to pay road tax in Germany based on so much per tonne load per kilometre; normally around 40 Deutschmarks when you’re transiting through to Austria. If they want the name of your agent in Austria tell them Franz Welz, they’re a big enough outfit.”

“What about the company I’m supposed to have worked for?” I asked.

“Oh, just tell them it was a cowboy firm you’ve left because you didn’t like their way of working. Companies rarely check on references anyway,” he said rising from his seat. “I’ve got to get up the road now,” he continued. “Tipping at Stratford L.I.F.T. today I hope. Good luck, Arthur. Maybe I’ll see you over the other side before long!”

“Thanks a lot for the info, Wally,” I said, “I really hope I will.” Heads turned in admiration as Wally manoeuvred his ton ten out of the parking following a G.L. Baker Guy with a Marks and Spencer fridge trailer out onto the A2.

For some time after that I was still unable to find a continental job. They all reckoned either that they had no jobs available or that they had a large waiting list for drivers’ positions. I was beginning to despair when one day, quite by accident, I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard left on a table in the driver’s restaurant at Newport-Pagnell services. More out of boredom than the hope of finding employment, I started scanning the sits vac. As usual under Drivers Wanted there was not much there. Most of the ads which caught my eye continued “own cars”. There were one or two from the agencies and a couple for rigid drivers for London Deliveries – Top Rates Paid but nothing for me. I finished my mug of coffee and picked up the paper again and there in the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.8.2015
• Verlagsort: Mount Joy
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Auto / Motorrad
• Themenwelt: Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Nutzfahrzeuge
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
• Schlagworte: Adventures • Europe • haulage • lorry drivers • Memoir • Novel • Transport • Trucking
• ISBN-10: 1-910456-17-9 / 1910456179
• ISBN-13: 978-1-910456-17-0 / 9781910456170