I was interested to see Windrush’s mention of Alf Sutton, I drove for Sutton’s (TeesSide depot) in 1975,
One of the runs was carrying Nylon Salt from ICI Wilton to ICI Billingham, there was a spare trailer on this job so I dropped one off to offload at Billingham and took an empty back to Wilton for refill, I could do 6 or 7 loads a shift.
Unfortunately one sunny Saturday afternoon I stopped at a mini roundabout at Middlesborough Eye Infirmary (the Parkway by-pass was closed for repair),
When I pulled away after letting some traffic around the roundabout the trailer didn’t, it became unhitched and nosedived onto the road with 5,000 gallons of Nylon Salt, luckinly the barrel didn’t split !.
ICI’s clean up squad were called out, the police arrested me, and Alf Sutton’s comment over the phone to the depot manager – SACK THAT BTD ! – his exact words!
I have never had much to do with unions, but they wern’t having any of this and they stood me in good stead, they took up my case,
it turned out that the 5th wheel was still locked, the police could find no fault on my part - it had been correctly coupled.[/i]
The union then looked further into 5th wheel problems and it turned out that there had been three previous incidents all using Hope 5th wheels, where they became uncoupled although still locked.
They took this info to the police and all charges were dropped and dear old Alf had to change all Hope 5th wheels of which he had quite a few.
They also demanded that I be reinstated and an apology issued and lost wages made up,
I was summoned into Tommy McKinstry’s (Transport manager) office in Billingham where I recieved a phone call from “GOD” himself telling me I was reinstated
my reply – “STICK IT, YOU OLD +++++++”
I walked out of there 10 foot high, hopped into one of Bobby Durham’s Atki’s and headed back into ICI !