Any old promotor drivers around

mushroomman:
Brian, if you look at the “Old A One Drivers” thread which by now is on page two or three of this forum then I think that you might find a couple of stories from some of their lads.
A One drivers did quite a bit of work to Yugo and Hungary in the early eighties, you might remember seeing their bright red motors as they often parked up at The Zagreb Hotel and The Hotel Wien in Budapest.
There was a short story by a Truck net member called ‘Dry Ginger’ on a trip that he did to Mostar on Page 9 of the thread which I think that you might find interesting.
As I mentioned Skopia in a post a couple of weeks ago it started me thinking which British companies (if any) actually delivered to Albania in the 70’s / 80’s. As far as I know Dow Freight never went there but I did wonder that if anybody ever went there then it might have been Promotors or O.H.S.
I think that it was Wheel Nut who mentioned many years ago that John Williams took a convoy of aid through to Albania after the fall of The Iron Curtain in the nineties. Somebody mentioned that there was a Long Distance Diary covering the trip but I don’t think that it was ever shown on Trucknet. If Dean or anybody else who has got that magazine can repost that story then I for one would be very interested in seeing it.
Skopia customs yard had a few large warehouses where western trucks would unload and if the cargo was for Albania then it would have to be loaded onto an Albanian registered truck.
I remember asking a Dutch driver if he had ever been to Albania and he told me that he had only ever heard of one guy who had driven there. A Belgium driver who had loaded American cigarettes from Antwerp docks and delivered the load to a place in Tirana.

Regards Steve.

I met a Dutch driver who took Bofur guns to Albania but he was forced to shave before he was allowed to enter the country. He swapped DM20 for the local currency - whatever that was [I remember, it’s called Lek!] - and for this he was given one large denomination note. Following the single track road into Albania he was stopped for speeding and the policeman asked for - I forget the actual number but shall we say 2 Lek - and all the driver had was a 500Lek note. Apparently the policeman had never seen such a high value note and had no change so the driver was let off… He reloaded onions back to Holland.

I too used to listen radio Tirana from The National in Belgrade. What an amusing thing was the English language broadcast. It always started “This is radio Tirana, broadcasting from Albania, the only true Communist state in the world…”. I spent many an evening with a Pivo in my hand listening to their absurd broadcasts.

I did a car job in the UK and delivered to Gloucester to a fellow called Zog Ziegler, He explained that his father had been a friend of king Zog of Albania and that he’d been named in honour of the king. Every year king Zog would send them a Christmas card and each year the photo of himself had more and more medals with which he’d presented himself. Zog funded an invasion of Albania but the people who went were never seen or heard of again.

historytoday.com/richard-ca … -i-albania