Characters from Yestearyear probably now gone!

We had one driver, who I will call ‘Tom’ as I believe he is still living but must be well into his nineties by now? Anyway he had a Foden S80 tipper, and another driver with coincidentally the same surname although not related, had the sister truck. Being consecutive reg numbers they were both on MOT the same week so both were in the workshop at the same time. Everytime ‘Tom’ came to collect his truck after it has passed its test he used to complain that it drove differently and that we had fitted new parts to the other truck and he ended up with the old parts on his? The wheels, steering linkage, suspension had all been swapped! All a total load of crap but the two drivers never conversed with each other at all because of it and it used to make us fitters laugh, but until the other driver left to set up his own business the feud continued, although actually it was mostly one sided!

‘Tom’ retired early through health reasons and I eventually took his place driving, on his final trip he was coming back up the M1 in his Haulmaster and said that the Gardner 201 started missfiring around junction 23 so he pulled off at junction 24 Kegworth, our foreman went out to it and noticed a conrod protruding from the cylinder block! :open_mouth: I assume there was also a trail of oil between the two junctions as well? ‘Tom’ was very deaf so obviously hadn’t heard it go, I towed him back the next day and rebuilt the engine but he never returned to driving and a lad who drove one of our Sed Ak 200 four wheelers passed his class two test and took it over.

Pete.