Here is a Swedish subbie,great truck!
In the 60/70s Era I drove for F.Short & sons , They had a depot in Oxford Street off Wincomblee in Hull & the use to pull trailers sometimes for Ferrymasters, They were usually the 32 Tonne units that did the job, MTN464E. was one of the tractor units, the Driver was the late Don Johnson who was in fact a Hull lad but resised in The Toon, Shorts had a night trunk service from The Toon to John Bull as us old gordies would put it. They were the good old days in my book & Im sure a lot of drivers from that era would agree with me, I would like to hear from them If they are still about, & perhaps we could all have a getogether or in plain gordie terms a ■■■■ UP for the old drivers Eh, lets go for it lads before its too bloody late, Regards Larry.
i was a traffic clerk at ferrymasters desborough depot for nearly 6 years (app 1973-1979)and then subbied for them for several years after that. when i started we had the F86/scania 80/DAf2200 as a fleet plus a routeman for running Mot trailers. When i left the fleet was a mixture of F7/Merc1619 day and sleeper/F88s.The F88s were used by the drivers who did self drive,they replaced what they had originally been using, F86/scania 80 and the DAF 2200.i do remember the Scania 80 (day cab ) doing a run to Berlin,when it was behind the iron curtain.I did have 1 driver on one of the middle east F89s , he never went and spent most of the time off hiring TIP trailers, the motor was written off coming out of Dover when a roll of steel came out the front of the trailer and knocked the cab off. The drivers on self drive eventually ended up with the short sleeper 1619 mercs, until they swapped to the 2025 and 2028 when the weight went up.The depots, each had their own operating area when i was there and you could use any depots truck in your area to do your collections and it didn’t matter if the collection wasn’t going back to their home depot. It was a genuine stay away job.I had 4 night drivers and i just needed to get 4 either immingham or felixstowe(later ipswich) loads back each night for trunk. The others once loaded were a straight run to whichever dock or back to desborough for an inbound or empty trailer for next day.I usually had inbound loads knocking about as we’d pulled them off the dock , but they had specific delivery dates,you could also end up with a glut of export trailers as you’d had a run on export collections and had dumped them in desborough to go and collect some more.Altrincham was the head office and each depot telexed (remember them ) their traffic sheet and yard report in every morning, theoretically this gave the ‘central traffic offce’ ultimate control and they could overide any plans you had for your own trucks. This led to rather ‘economical with the truth’ traffic sheets i’e our area ended at stafford, so if i had a motor tipping at stoke (in leighs area) then he’d suddenly be tipping in wolverhampton according to th t/sheet.mind you we all did the same .
Ferrymasters…that brings back memorys.
Start from Aylesham depot on Monday ,tip the trailer and maybe reload back to Felixstowe.
That was it, you were stuck pulling out of Felixstowe all week until Friday when a trailer would suddenly
appear that was destined for Dover.
Once another FM depot got you that was your lot.
Henry Smithers is another Dover memory.
I am sure they were involved with the 20’ boxes we loaded with coal from Tilmanston going across to Belgium.
These we dropped in Dover east and then returned to the pit with an empty box.
Back in the early 80’s they had their own drivers who would only do IIRC six or maybe seven boxes a day.
Along comes a loony in a new 142 and rattles off 9.
Les Harrington with his 142 cleared 10 on one particular day.
Tin hats on everyone 'cos out came the union cards and lots of threats of strike action.
Plenty of these called at normans cafe, brotherton.
zzarbean:
This looks like then ones they ran down with a couple of Eric Vick Europeans as pathfinders / guides ( the usual practice for first time drivers) By the time they got through Turkey most of the wardrobes and other similar cab fittings had shaken apart and had been discarded through the window. The Europeans were fairly basic for a good reason 
I’m not sure how many trips they did, I think there were a couple of drivers whom ‘stuck it’ but over all it was a short lived experiment. I think Merryfasters found it cheaper to use subbies
[/quote]
This is a tantalizing thread! Does anyone know if Eric Vick took any Ferrymasters tilts or boxes down to the Middle-East in the '70s / 80s? Robert 
robert1952:
zzarbean:
This looks like then ones they ran down with a couple of Eric Vick Europeans as pathfinders / guides ( the usual practice for first time drivers) By the time they got through Turkey most of the wardrobes and other similar cab fittings had shaken apart and had been discarded through the window. The Europeans were fairly basic for a good reason
This is a tantalizing thread! Does anyone know if Eric Vick took any Ferrymasters tilts or boxes down to the Middle-East in the '70s / 80s? Robert
[/quote]
very short lived ,only about a year, if that, as i recall, i was working at desborough depot at the time, i seem to remember most of the 89’s were trashed / crashed and generally wrecked, i remember one of my self-drivers (bill saunders) was given an F89 when they threw the towel in on middle east work , and all his job entailed was offhiring the trailers that had been rented for the work, his 89 was wrecked when he braked coming out of dover on the A2 , but the load didn’t and knocked the cab off.
subbied for ferrymaster in the late 90’s out of 'boro quite enjoyed it when the wheels were turning. and as always 95% of the staff were decent good guys.
gunnerheskey:
Remember they used to have a depot in Desborough in the old station yard. I climbed over the fence one weekend as a kid to have a look at the scammell routeman artics they had, and looked aghast at a brand new F7 sleeper parked up. This is not it but similar…
Some of the other names in the P&O Empire, West midland roadways, Containerflow, Thomas Alan
i had one at dover depot and done european FRT834T, Mike Kelly
Hi.
On hire to FM Hull depot,“Ben Bonner ?” boss and “Tricky Dicky” traffic man ?. I was only supposed to work X hrs,so BB said just fill in the “Extra” hrs and i will pay that.Only did trailers out of Hull,reloaded and back for another. Proper men,super job,the lorry was an AEC Park Royal cab ,painted in FM colours and could catch aeroplanes.
hulltramper
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned that Ferrymasters had a ship on contract to take unaccompanied trailers from Ipswich to Europort in the 80’s. The ship belonged to North Sea Ferries and I.I.R.C. was called The Norsky, it also had accommodation for twelve drivers and used to sail overnight. I am not sure that at the time if North Sea Ferries, P.& O. and Ferrymasters were all in the same consortium or if it was before they amalgamated. The accompanied trucks were the last to load and you always had to back on to the upper deck so that you could drive off which could sometimes be a bit of a pain when the ramp was wet.
I worked forFerrymasters out of Felixstowe with my first tractor unit a Ford Transcon VAY707S on UK, they were always trying to overload me because of the weight of the Transcon over the F7, when I bought my second Transcon NME7R that was a middle East spec and took that out there 3 times, they had a massive amount of work and really good kit and were good to work for, I was just never at home even at weekendss week after week.
phantom:
I worked forFerrymasters out of Felixstowe with my first tractor unit a Ford Transcon VAY707S on UK, they were always trying to overload me because of the weight of the Transcon over the F7, when I bought my second Transcon NME7R that was a middle East spec and took that out there 3 times, they had a massive amount of work and really good kit and were good to work for, I was just never at home even at weekendss week after week.
That would be Norman in the t/office in f/stowe around that time, they had me working there for a week, put me up in the routemaster.all the cmr’s had the same weight 19000kgs
If a B-series ERF is involved, it’s got to be good, not that I’m prejudiced or anything! 
Robert
Turks of Benendon had ERFs pulling Ferrymasters tilts and flats out of Dover.