I had a warm morning once when I picked up my DAF roll on from the Scania service centre in Peterborough, I did my checks and headed for the services to fill the old girl up so I positioned myself on the pump near KFC and started filling the tank.
Sometimes the pump is noisy and I made sure she was full and I replaced the pump now to be honest I thought there was something wrong when I could see smoke coming from under the cab,this prompted me to try to move the truck out of the way to no avail so my next course of action was to ask the till attendant to switch off the pumps.
He wasn’t the brightest spark and after a round of what? Fire where? I went back and got the truck moved off the pumps as it was a DAF automatic box (deep joy)
I call Scania out and they said the starter motor had stuck on (the more experienced of you knew that at the start of my tale) follow me said the fitter about two miles to the garage.
The nearer I got the warmer I got until I parked next to the garage, now the panic in the fitters eyes will stay with me until I die as apparently the starter motor had now caught fire and was sending flames up the back of the cab.
Linford Christie I ain’t but bugger I moved! My only regret is they put out the fire before I got a different truck.
I had a colleague who’s truck caught fire in the tanker park on a RAF base, he was the last to know as he was surrounded by fire tenders in seconds.