How many of you can remember the following?

No ABS
Only one electrical suzie
Three air lines
No air suspension
320bhp being seen as decent horsepower
Tautliners being seen as dead posh

Three pedals on the floor and a gearstick beside you. Ropes hanging on the back of the cab.
Oil can in the passenger footwell
Feeling old now :smiley:

Box on the catwalk with chains and stretchers, plus chocks for reels and a backscotch fastened across the chassis :laughing: :laughing: happy days! Regards Kev.

Steel springs, short wheelbase leading to current Actros ride quality.
Boards placed across the bonnet to sleep on, Night heater? :unamused:
No power steering.
Cast steel steering column bolted directly to chassis, so any road imperfection transmitted directly to your hands, row of hard lucas switches touching your knees.
Toughened screens that would shatter and blow thousands of glass fragments into your face and lap, and forever more be rattling around inside the dash and what loosely passed for a heater.
Secondary brake lever/deadman, which worked on the steering axle and trailer only, trailer only braking handle on some foreign motors.
Cable trailer parking brake, which either seized or got wound off its spool.
No load sensing on any brakes, so empty even a touch of the brakes could see the trailer locking up.
No spring brakes, once air drained out brakes would release, so don’t forget to apply the unit manual brake, often a transmission brake comprising a brake drum on the back of the diff.
Manual gearboxes with no synchromesh of any description, and an unassisted clutch pedal that in heavy traffic you would need both feet to hold down.
Flat out at 48mph, dropping to 12mph or less on steep hills, many motorway climbs seeing you down to 20mph.
Split screens.
Small flat mirrors, heated? :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
Appalling headlights.
Freezing cold in winter (wake up and scrape the ice off the inside), enough heat to cook you in summer, even before global warming reduced to country to desert.
Hands and fingers cracked and bleeding through the ropes cutting in.
Handball 21 tons off regularly, sometimes after handballing it on too.
Parking trailer wheels on your sheets so they didn’t vanish during the night.

Yes they were happier days, camaraderie was the norm.

Just about everything has been covered so far,except 320 was a HUGE engine used mainly on low loader work by the likes of Pickfords 150 to 220 was pretty much the norm on general work pulling silly trailers like 4 inlines and huge 35 footers :laughing: :laughing:

Doors you had to unlock with a key . And in winter having heat up the key lock with lighter use hot water just to unlock the door to get in.
And windows that you had to wind down with a handle.

Bloody hell Juddian have you been saving that one up, you’ve just about covered everything. :laughing:

Only talking to the boss at end of week when tipped, that’s if you could find a payphone that wasn’t vandalised and /or stunk of ■■■■.

Parking up and having brilliant ‘‘lock up yer daughters’’ type nights out :laughing: , with groups of drivers, each of which you never met before, or again.

Air wipers that only worked when it wasn’t raining. :neutral_face:

Jumping out of an old Atki or ERF after a long journey, and walking like Quasimodo until your back straightened out.

Ribbon rags on mirrors to keep em clean and dry.

Windscreen obliterated by flags and pennants.

Plucking up courage to get out of your 2 warm sleeping bags after waking up to frosty windows in the likes of Aberdeen in winter.

Changing wheels on the hard shoulder, lying on your back kicking off a stuck fast inner wheel on your trailer… with passing trucks rocking your trailer :open_mouth: .

Tightening a chain dwang with a 4’ foot pipe and it slipping, flying through the air like a ■■■■ rocket, with other drivers diving for cover.

Rolling a drip sheet out 15’ on top in the ■■■■■■■ rain, then negotiating a safe way down.

Chaining up trailer axles/blanking off brake pipes :open_mouth: … to get you home.

Ah yeh…‘‘The good old days’’ NOT !

Juddian:
Cable trailer parking brake, which either seized or got wound off its spool.
No load sensing on any brakes, so empty even a touch of the brakes could see the trailer locking up.
No spring brakes, once air drained out brakes would release,

All of these on a handful of trailers built in the late 70’s/early80’s. Pulled by a twin splitter equipped ERF.
Only remember because it was 5 years ago :open_mouth: :laughing:

robroy:
Bloody hell Juddian have you been saving that one up, you’ve just about covered everything. :laughing:

Only talking to the boss at end of week when tipped, that’s if you could find a payphone that wasn’t vandalised and /or stunk of ■■■■.

Parking up and having brilliant ‘‘lock up yer daughters’’ type nights out :laughing: , with groups of drivers, each of which you never met before, or again.

Air wipers that only worked when it wasn’t raining. :neutral_face:

Jumping out of an old Atki or ERF after a long journey, and walking like Quasimodo until your back straightened out.

Ribbon rags on mirrors to keep em clean and dry.

Windscreen obliterated by flags and pennants.

Plucking up courage to get out of your 2 warm sleeping bags after waking up to frosty windows in the likes of Aberdeen in winter.

Changing wheels on the hard shoulder, lying on your back kicking off a stuck fast inner wheel on your trailer… with passing trucks rocking your trailer :open_mouth: .

Tightening a chain dwang with a 4’ foot pipe and it slipping, flying through the air like a [zb] rocket, with other drivers diving for cover.

Rolling a drip sheet out 15’ on top in the ■■■■■■■ rain, then negotiating a safe way down.

Chaining up trailer axles/blanking off brake pipes :open_mouth: … to get you home.

Ah yeh…‘‘The good old days’’ NOT !

Oh yes they were…which is why you still drive a sodding truck !

Juddian…

Covered pretty much all of it.

I can only add, carrying two different types of leg winders and a bolt to go with them, boxes of lenses for different rear light clusters and lastly, actually going right through London or using the north and south circulars.

There’s loads more, c’mon lads thinking caps on.

Hating it when you knew the brainer donor every yard was stuck with had dropped an empty trailer which was being loaded with summat heavy and you had to pick it up…without fail he would have wound the legs right down and then some, and often those old trailers only had one gear on the legs so you couldn’t wind the trailer down, had to search all around for planks and blocks to reverse the rear wheels onto once under the trailer so you could get the legs up enough…said brain donor would always do this and invariably he was the only one with a sliding fifth wheel so higher than everyone else’s anyway :imp: , it wasn’t deliberate he was just thick as two planks.

Knowing whether your load would ‘settle’ once moving, so when you initially roped up would you join the ropes as you went along or tie them off individually, tieing them off used more ropes but if you needed to tighten them after a while made it easier overall.

320 bhp :open_mouth: the OP must be a newbie! us Gardner 180 pilots could only dream of 320 bhp :laughing:

Radio permanently on full vol to get heard above the engine/exhaust. You could dip the oil without leaving the cab if it was raining. No need for microwaves: wrap a pie in tin-foil and wedge it on top of engine before stopping for night. Trailer number plate held on with cut up inner-tube band. No need for gym membership after driving the trucks Juddian described, and hand-balling bricks, roof-tiles or kerbs.

Mirror arms that vibrated for fun - revving the engine to stabilise them or the arms folding themselves in the faster you went.

Taps on the Suzies - and forgetting to turn them on !!!

Empty paint tin etc. to light a fire to un-wax the diesel

Has someone just run over the Hovis kid riding the bakers bike?

As I wasn’t sure if I was hearing the sound of a brass band playing the Hovis theme tune or the sound of an old akti brakes screeching while the kid was run over due to the crap brakes

peirre:
Has someone just run over the Hovis kid riding the bakers bike?

:laughing: :smiling_imp: , what’s scary is how recent all of this is, and how much our hair, if we still have it, has changed colour…though the scars and cracks in our now arthritic hands still tell the rope tale and our knees creak their story too :cry:

peirre:
Has someone just run over the Hovis kid riding the bakers bike?

As I wasn’t sure if I was hearing the sound of a brass band playing the Hovis theme tune or the sound of an old akti brakes screeching while the kid was run over due to the crap brakes

Ah, early Navi system. Ask a local delivery bod for directions.

Only thing I forgot was tying your door to the steering column at night,just to stop somebody opening the door if the locks dont work so the planks you slept on didnt drop and have you sliding out the cab like being on a shute :laughing: :laughing:

Leaving a Commer TS3 in gear so you could leave the ratchet handbrake off so you could layout your bed for the night.

Chasing the trailer (you were trying to couple up to) around the yard !

Just a few things to add to the already extensive list by Juddian ect,
Nitelight candles lit and parked on the dash to keep the frost off the inside of the screen while asleep on the makeshift bed over the engine cover and seat. Sourcing plastic ‘Swish’ curtain rail for your home made cab curtains, Putting your bed legs into your boots to stop then being nicked while sleeping in the dormitory of transport cafe digs . Keeping a notebook of good digs to stay overnight, lorry parks in almost every town were either livestock markets or football ground parking.
Transport cafes on every roundabout on the A1 and lastly friendship, drivers actually used to talk to one another
without trying to outdo one another with tall tales of d erring do…well, you did run into the odd character now and then !