Hello Dave Clark. Were you on Pro’s in the mid to late seventies? I know your name but can’t put a face to it! Were you there before Dave Stagg?
The showhaul scania that was a wagen we bought it secondhand from curries of dumfries to get some french permits me and richard phillips picked it up from there
daveclark:
hey, dont forget me ,
hi im dave clark i worked for about 3 years for PRO-MOTOR (EUROPE) LTD, one of the best jobs i ve, had, a great time and looking back,
im still in touch with george fardell ,and last week had a chat with roy cloke. Unfortunatly i dont have any photos to offer i lost everythng in a house fire so i dont have a single photo of me or anyone else ,if you do please post, thanks.the ones ive seen on this site so far are a memory jogger
Hi Dave, I remember you mate, Bob Heath, you started when we was in the Bromley office, when Dave Stagg was the shunter in Spain, I was on there 1971/2-1975 ish, can’t recall the exact dates. You, me and let’s see how good the memory is, Stevie smith, Jimmy Conlan, Billy Heath, Tony grainger. it will all come flooding back soon.
bestbooties:
I used to work for Expo Freight out of North Farm Loughton and we pulled Promotor’s trailers from time to time.
This is one time I pulled a step frame tilt of Promotor’s to a trade fair in Teheran.
Knowing what tyre trouble one can have with a fully freighted step frame on small wheels, I took several spares with me, but only had one puncture in Bulgy on the way out.
And who could forget George Fardell, with his two watches, constantly rubbing his eyes to stay awake!
This pic is unloading at the trade fair.
Hi, my name is Bob Heath and I worked for promotor early to mid 70s, you say you was on for expo, was that the same time as jed Clampitt, or reg Cawkhill as was his proper name.
Lokeren Truckwash Belgium about 1980. It was always nice to give the outfit a cleanup before catching the ferry. Lokeren was my base when pulling the flatbed trailers Wim Voss operated for a while in the UK in the mid 70’s.
This picture was taken at the bottom of Hope Street in Maidstone about 1973. I was loaded with Cape Apples for Cardiff Market.
sandway:
Hello Dave Clark. Were you on Pro’s in the mid to late seventies? I know your name but can’t put a face to it! Were you there before Dave Stagg?
Dave Clark was on Astran before Promotor, I first met him when he was working the blue book for Astran, I was doing the same for Promotor…Bob Heath.
Have been off line at home for the past ten days. Boy! How did we manage before modern communications. We had a haystack on wheels (pulled by a farm tractor, not a lorry thankfully) transit our village here in the sticks when a telegraph pole jumped out into the road and got pulverised. The lines came down and the whole area lost contact with the outside world. Well, we still have our 2G mobile phones if you can get them to work. This mobile haystack took me back many years to a time in the 70’s when I was driving down the motorway between Ploiesti and Bucharest. It was late evening and very dark when all of a sudden there was a mobile haystack pulled by a horse in front of me. No lights of course. I swerved into the outside lane, luckily no other traffic was on the road. I missed the trailer by inches but it was to close for comfort. The moral of this story is “don’t drive at night in Romania or anywhere else come to that”.
sandway:
Have been off line at home for the past ten days. Boy! How did we manage before modern communications. We had a haystack on wheels (pulled by a farm tractor, not a lorry thankfully) transit our village here in the sticks when a telegraph pole jumped out into the road and got pulverised. The lines came down and the whole area lost contact with the outside world. Well, we still have our 2G mobile phones if you can get them to work. This mobile haystack took me back many years to a time in the 70’s when I was driving down the motorway between Ploiesti and Bucharest. It was late evening and very dark when all of a sudden there was a mobile haystack pulled by a horse in front of me. No lights of course. I swerved into the outside lane, luckily no other traffic was on the road. I missed the trailer by inches but it was to close for comfort. The moral of this story is “don’t drive at night in Romania or anywhere else come to that”.
I had a similar experience in Romania many years ago: the light was failing and suddenly there was an unlit artic tanker in front of me. After that, I rarely drove at night in Rumo. Robert
When ever I see the name Dave Clark I always wonder if it was the same Dave Clark who did Middle East pulling for Whittles in the 1980’s. He was an owner driver from Cornwall and I remember at one time he had a Ford Transcontinental and a Berliet.
And just in case you missed this the first time around.
Re: Astran / Middle East Drivers.
Postby mushroomman » Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:03 pm
Hi Gavin McArdle, thanks for the P.M. it was really interesting I will get back to you about that one very soon 
.
Hello Gavin S. talking about ringing some bells how about sounding some of those old cheap air horns that you could get fitted at the Mocamp. They never did have a clear pitch to them, in fact they sounded more like a cow with a sore throat. I once took over from Old Jock Macdonald a column change M.A.N. 280 which he had already fitted a red light over the bunk in the back of the cab. Although I had to buy my own Turkish belly dancer hanging carpet for the back wall of the cab from the carpet sellers at The Harem car park in Istanbul. I bet that you had the carpet with the camels crossing the desert at night didn’t you Gavin. 
Now that Gavin McArdle has brought up the subject of night driving I suppose that we all remember a night driving incident, well here is one of mine.
When I first started doing the job I was advised by a couple of old fellers not to drive at night once I had passed West Germany or Austria but like most young drivers I didn’t always listen to words of wisdom. So one dark January night in Rumania at about seven o’clock in the evening I found myself heading towards The Calafat Ferry to cross The Danube into Bulgaria.
It was the first time that I had ever used this road and the drivers on here who did use it will remember that there were not many towns on this route. There were some villages that didn’t appear to have electricity and the ones that did have power only had the one or two streets lights in the centre of the village.
This time of the year meant that the roads were often covered in mud ( it must of been sugar beet season or something ? ) I had left the snow behind the day before.
Phil Collins and Genesis were playing on the cassette player and there it was trotting towards me in the middle of the road a horse and cart with no lights on.
The next few seconds appeared to last for a few minutes but it was probably all over in the blink of an eye. I can’t remember seeing anybody sat on the seat of the cart and it was definitely a black horse pulling a four wheeled trailer. The horse stopped in the middle of the road, I had already started pumping the brakes but the only thing that I could do now was to stand on the brake peddle.
To avoid a head on clash I decided to steer to the right and to take my chances in the field. My speed was only about jogging pace by now but I had to do some thing so I swerved to the right.
Once again, the Lorry Gods were with me as next to the side of the road was a small clearing for a bus stop and as the wheels of the unit gripped the dirt underneath them I felt like I had regained control of the vehicle. As I swerved there was a loud bang that really put the chits up me as the passenger side mirror smacked back hard against the passenger door window. In my headlights I could see that the cart was overloaded with straw but the overhang was over a yard wide. At the end of the bus stop I could see a tree in front of me but I managed to turn to the left after I had passed the cart and I was able to get the unit back onto the road and then there was another bang as the trailer seemed to hold me back as I came to a stop.
Shaking slightly, I grabbed my torch and the crow bar that I always kept behind the drivers seat. I switched the engine off but kept the lights on as I got down to asses the damage and fearing for the worst I was expecting to find somebody injured if not a dead horse. As I passed the left side of the trailer I was surprised to see that there was straw stuffed tightly behind the lace of the tilt at the front and where the lace joined the two sheets in the middle. Also along the length of the tilt cord it looked as though somebody had pushed handfuls of straw behind the cord.
It was pitch black outside and very quite apart from the sound of horses hooves running quickly away in the distance. I walked back a few hundred yards shining the torch on the road and at the side of the field in case somebody had jumped off the cart before the impact. I even called out Hello but nobody returned my call it was so quite with just the sound of the horse disappearing in the distance and the wind blowing over the fields.
I walked back to the truck and felt really sick, the back of the trailer looked a right mess as I had hit the tree and pulled it over, I was gutted.
I shone the torch up at the back of the tilt, the top rail had come out and was hanging down, the tilt was ripped, the back side gate had sprung open and worst of all the tilt cord was broken. The impact had pulled the tree slightly out of the ground but as far as I could see nobody had been killed.
After a few minutes of pulling straw out of the offside of the tilt and from most of the eyelets I climbed into the cab and started up the engine. The ignition warning light would not go off so I switched the engine off and crawled underneath the cab, it was as I had expected the fan belt had snapped, ( has anybody any ideas why it snapped at that particular moment ?).
I had passed a small town a couple of kilometres back so I decided to try and turn the truck around and go back to it. There was a small dirt road a bit further on where I managed to turn around and with me keeping a very close eye on the temperature gauge I drove slowly back towards the town. From where the bus stop lay-by was and where all the straw lay on the road I looked out for the horse and cart all the way back to the town but I couldn’t see it.
I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about what had happened and what might of happened and the next morning after replacing the fanbelt I carried on with my journey to Greece. I stopped at the bus lay-by to take these two photos and it left me wondering who had chit themselves the most, me, the horse or the tree, as it looked as if the tree was already dead.
At the Calafat Ferry the Rumanian customs men wanted to open me up which was fine by me as I was able to refit the back stanchion into position and then I was able to fasten the side gate. I had to end the Carnet T.I.R. and bond the load through Bulgaria and after tipping in Volos three days later I found somebody in the docks who for fifty Deutsch Marks ( about £12 .50p ) repaired the rip in the tilt and fixed the tilt cord.
It was the most expensive accident that I ever had in my driving career but I must admit that I also collected a few cracked mirror glasses from the ferries and jockeying for a position at Kapic but that wasn’t always my fault.
Like everybody else there were times that I did the odd through the night hits but I sometimes wondered the following day if I had ever gained all that much 
.
Accidents do happen.
It might not be the tree of knowledge but I learnt something that night 
.
Regards Steve.
mushroomman
SENIOR MEMBER
Posts: 2646
Joined: Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:55 am
Location: QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA
Dirty Dan:
You got to keep us updated when that book is coming Andy! I must buy that one mateDanne
The book is due out on December 12th Dan. It can be pre-ordered now from the publisher, Old Pond.com
Hi Gentlemen. That was an interesting photograph of Pam, Ken Singleton from Dows and Myself in Czech’. The Czechoslovakian boy had come up with his mum and dad to see the trucks. He’s probably about 40 now and running his own trucks, on low rates.
All of the photo’s bring back a lot of memories as do the names of all of the guys that I worked with. Hope that life’s treating you well Steve. You’ve started a great thread. Joe 90 was Dave Boulding. One name that you forgot was Bob Archer, but he may have left between me starting for Pro’s and you starting.
I take it that you were on Dow Freight Mushroom man. There were a load of boys that I knew who worked for Roger.
Morning Mushroomman. Great story you told there. Horse and carts and modern vehicles never did mix very well. Glad to see you had your camera with you. I took mine with me often but now look back and kick myself for not using it more.
Hello Micky T. I have a photo of you somewhere. Will dig it out and post it in the next couple of days.
sandway:
Morning Mushroomman. Great story you told there. Horse and carts and modern vehicles never did mix very well. Glad to see you had your camera with you. I took mine with me often but now look back and kick myself for not using it more.Hello Micky T. I have a photo of you somewhere. Will dig it out and post it in the next couple of days.
That’s very kind of you Mr. Sandway. Thank you. If you were with Welly in 81 then we obviously worked together, so give me a clue as to your name mate because I can’t work it out from your alias.
Yeah, Mushroomman’s story is one that we can all relate to because it was impossible to transit Romania without coming across an unlit horse and cart at night. I came close to wiping out a horse and cart in the daytime on one occasion. I was following Ronny Hart and Buggsy Bertram. We came to a right hand bend in the road and they swept into it. I followed up and came face to face with a horse and cart coming towards me on my side of the road. I just managed to steer around it but the horse freaked and I watched it set off at a great rate of knots, in my rear view mirror.
Talking of Romania, who remembers parking up in a layby, miles from anywhere and within minutes being surrounded by a load of Roms’ who just stood around looking at you. Where they had come from God knows because there were never any houses within sight.
1 Like
Do you mean like this Micky. I woke up one fine summers morning at 5 a.m. to do an early start and when I pulled the curtains back these two were stood there looking after a cow. They watched me as I made my breakfast and followed me around as I kicked the tyres. I ended up giving them a couple of biscuits each but I had to drive off and find another lay-by just to have an early morning pee.
I am really pleased that Flyingflash 007 mentioned that Graham Bertrum used to call everybody Blue as I remember spending a night with him parked up at The Zagreb Motel in Yugo. I put it down to the amount of bottles of Pevo that we were having with our meal in the restaurant as to why he kept forgetting my name.
Whenever I used to look at this photo many years ago I always felt sorry for these two kids but when those horrific pictures started coming out in the 1990’s about the Romanian orphanages after the fall of Communism, I felt that they were probably some of the lucky ones.
Regards Steve.
SUPERCUBE:
sandway:
Hello Dave Clark. Were you on Pro’s in the mid to late seventies? I know your name but can’t put a face to it! Were you there before Dave Stagg?Dave Clark was on Astran before Promotor, I first met him when he was working the blue book for Astran, I was doing the same for Promotor…Bob Heath.
Hello SUPERCUBE
You must have known the lovely Liz then, Peters wife. Super lady. What work were you doing in the early days? I assume Bannons exhibition work to eastern europe featured.
Yeah Steve.
I never took pictures of them because I reckoned that when it was developed the lay-by would be empty. I always thought that they were the living dead. I never looked at them in my mirrors either.
Buggsy Bertram always called everyone Blue. I think that he was bad with names and that was his way around it. That’s why I call everyone mate. ha ha ha.
The old Zagreb motel. I used to love their calamari. Do you remember when Billy Proudlove from Pro’s was banged up there for months under house arrest until he went to court, for killing that Yugo family in a road accident.
I remember one night with Ken Singleton when he got that ■■■■■■ that he opened his drivers door to go to bed and climbed up the wrong side of it. He climbed onto his bumper and then fell off. But being an ex paratrooper he landed properly and never hurt himself. He was a great mate of mine and Pam’s. But then, all of you that I knew on Dow’s were good lads.
Hope that life down under is treating you well.
Mick
Hi Mick, I am sorry but I can’t remember that incident about Billy Proudlove although now that you have mentioned it, at the back of my mind I do remember seeing an English motor parked up somewhere in Yugo with a tarp over the cab. 
Ken was a great mate of mine and mentioned you and Pam on quite a few occasions. I have been racking my brains trying to work out where I met you and the two places that came to mind were when Ken took me on a trip to Austria and we were going down The Cats Back in Germany near Koblenz. You and Pam were coming up the other way, you were flashing your lights and you were both waving like mad. It was some months later when I was working for Dow and heading towards Brno in Czech on the motorway that I met you. You were on your own coming the other way, we both stopped on the hard shoulder and you walked across the carriageway and asked where Ken was. (Don’t try that now on the M6).
When Dow finished Ken retired through ill health as he was into his sixties and his health was deterring badly after he developed emphysema. He always put it down to smoking all those duty free Rothmans and Kent cigarettes. I used to call in and see him every now and again but it was terrible to see him sat there with his oxygen mask on. He passed away about four years later, I went to his funeral and met up with several Dow lads who had heard about his death.
Yes Mick, there were some great lads working for Roger but sadly there are not that many that are left now and most of those that are still alive have a reunion at least once a year.
B.T.W. why did everybody call Graham, Bugsy.
And another old question that you Promotor lads might be able to answer. I think that it was Jeff The Flying Foden who showed this photo years ago which was probably taken by Phil Bunch. We were never sure if this Ford D series belonged to Promotors so maybe one of you might recognise the rego or somebody in the photo.
Ken and Eric.
mushroomman:
Hi Mick, I am sorry but I can’t remember that incident about Billy Proudlove although now that you have mentioned it, at the back of my mind I do remember seeing an English motor parked up somewhere in Yugo with a tarp over the cab.
Ken was a great mate of mine and mentioned you and Pam on quite a few occasions. I have been racking my brains trying to work out where I met you and the two places that came to mind were when Ken took me on a trip to Austria and we were going down The Cats Back in Germany near Koblenz. You and Pam were coming up the other way, you were flashing your lights and you were both waving like mad. It was some months later when I was working for Dow and heading towards Brno in Czech on the motorway that I met you. You were on your own coming the other way, we both stopped on the hard shoulder and you walked across the carriageway and asked where Ken was. (Don’t try that now on the M6).
When Dow finished Ken retired through ill health as he was into his sixties and his health was deterring badly after he developed emphysema. He always put it down to smoking all those duty free Rothmans and Kent cigarettes. I used to call in and see him every now and again but it was terrible to see him sat there with his oxygen mask on. He passed away about four years later, I went to his funeral and met up with several Dow lads who had heard about his death.
Yes Mick, there were some great lads working for Roger but sadly there are not that many that are left now and most of those that are still alive have a reunion at least once a year.
B.T.W. why did everybody call Graham, Bugsy.
And another old question that you Promotor lads might be able to answer. I think that it was Jeff The Flying Foden who showed this photo years ago which was probably taken by Phil Bunch. We were never sure if this Ford D series belonged to Promotors so maybe one of you might recognise the rego or somebody in the photo.
Ken and Eric.
They called Graham ‘Buggsy.’
Not sure on the Ford D’ photo. Those are Pro’s colours alright. Guy in the yellow vest with his back to the camera could have been Tony Grainger or John Mantle.
Yeah, Ken was a really good bloke. I used to meet him in Yugo, or Hungary, or on the way up and down to there. I always remember him sitting with his chin in his hands, while he talked to you. And he was a great laugh. Really funny.