mushroomman:
Thanks for that Robert, I thought that was very interesting and it sounded like the convoy from hell but I wondered if there was another side to the story.
I wouldnât of criticised anybody who carried snow chains in Southern Yugoslavia in the winter and even if you didnât need them then surely that was a bonus.
Prague, in my opinion was one of the worst cities in Eastern Europe to transit with all itâs low bridges, low tram wires, cobbled roads and itâs many road works which must of been a nightmare with a convoy of 20 trucks so I wonder if John took them along the old road around Prague so they didnât get split up and lost which to me would of made a lot of sense.
I wonder what other drivers think of the article.
Regards Steve.
I was always of the opinion that if more than two lorries ran together it was a recipe for disaster. How twenty got to Albania was nothing short of a miracle. Whilst we are talking about Albania it was a well known fact that outsiders werenât allowed into the country. Promotor did on a number of occasions deliver to one of the border crossings where they had to unload. I think Nottsnortherner delivered a consignment to the border on the Adriatic down south of Dubrovnik.
And was I the only one who had a small short wave radio to listen to the BBC World Service in the evenings whilst parked up in some god forsaken hole in the back of beyond in Yugo. At 2000 hrs most nights you could tune in to Radio Tirana and listen to the voice, of what we imagined was a beautiful young Albanian lady, repeating the days utterances of their wonderful leader Enver Hoxha. This Albanian Communist leader led his country from 1944 till his death in 85. After 85 our nightly entertainment came to an end. It only left Pivo and the local girls. The end of an era!!!
Efes:
Edward Mansell-Thomas on your right Sandway. He worked for Saftcrest out of Northiam, Sussex, and they had a container parked in Baghdad that was painted in the Union Jack colours. They sold sports equipment.
I delivered their container back to Northiam. He and his wife were really great company and we went all over the place together as they had a house in Baghdad. It was on their stand that I was interviewed by English language Radio Baghdad which was famous amongst the ex-pats because the fellow hosting had such bad English. They were interviewing Edward - whilst I was suppressing laughter - when he suddenly swung around and put the microphone in front of me⌠he said âso Mister, what you like in Iraq?â⌠My mind raced through all the âthingsâ - the ânice thingsâ about Iraq and replied, after a long silence âErrr, you have very good weather hereâŚâ. Talk about feeling dim.
I met up with Andy McLean (jazzandy) recently at MickTwemlowâs funeral.
I had a few beers with Gavin too and he told me about turning his car over whilst trying to impress an Irish Nurse from the Park Hospital. She wasnât impressed.
Saftcrest were a great company to have at the Fair. Who wanted to look at boilers or tractors when you could play on their pool table or play table tennis or even get in the full size boxing ring. Of course we only did that during the early afternoon break when the fairground was closed. Locals werenât allowed unless they were young and female. I was led to understand they only had one customer in Iraq and that was the top man and his family or was it the family were Saftcrests agents?
I have a number of photos taken on their stand unfortunately I am unable to access them until I return home (after Brexit and the worst of the winter weather) in the spring. Meanwhile I have attached a photo that has been seen before of Saftcrests boxing gloves.
Hi Brian, I had a Blaupunkt short wave radio fitted in my M.A.N. 16.280 and at the moment I canât remember if it was short wave/ a.m. or short wave/ f. m. but I will never forget listening to Radio Tirana âThe Voice Of Albaniaâ in some off the beaten track village usually in Yugoslavia. I say usually because I could also pick it up in Romania just past Sibiu on the top of the hill where the restaurant was.
If you remember Radio Tirana was on the same wave length (or near enough) as The B.B.C. World Service and if you were high up on a mountain somewhere on a clear night usually in the winter you could pick up the B.B.C. signal. Just before the B.B.C. World News came on at 8 p.m. you would hear the faint sound of a trumpet which played about eight notes and then went quite for about ten seconds. I have a feeling that anybody who heard this sound might still remember it like I did, as soon as you mentioned Radio Tirana.
These trumpet notes usually started around 7.50 p.m. and gradually increased in volume until around 8 p.m. eventually blocking out the signal from the B.B.C. When they stopped a voice said in English â You are listening to Radio Tirana, the voice of Albania. We are transmitting on radio frequencies (blah, blah, blah) and here is summary of todayâs world newsâ.
Sometimes you would be lucky if you could still manage to hear the B.B.C. headlines in the back ground but by now the signal from Albania was much stronger and so you had no choice except to try and search for a signal from Radio Free Europe, switch off or listen to the propaganda that was being spewed out from Tirana.
One news headline from there in the early eighties is one that I shall never forget and went something like this.
Mr (so and so) from the United Nations today made a statement on how good life is for all the people in Albania. A United Nations survey has shown that compared to the United Kingdom, where there is only one tractor for every 28,500 of itâs people, Albania now has one tractor for every 1,000 citizens.
In 1985 my uncle died and at the funeral I was talking to my cousins son who worked for British Telecom as a radio technician at Portishead Radio near Bristol. I happened to mention to him about Radio Tirana and he knew all about that trumpet sound and said that it was a jamming signal. I also asked him why I could pick up the B.B.C. quite clearly in places like Izmir, Adana and sometimes in Greece but couldnât get it places like Ankara, Istanbul and Bulgaria and he told me that the signal was probably coming from the B.B.C. relay transmitter in Cyprus.
So there ya go Brian, another almost forgotten memory from Yugoslavia, until you mentioned it.
Oh how could they do it. Have just found a pic of my old lorry on the web. We saw active service in most of eastern europe and middle east for almost four years together. Went through good and bad times but always came out the other side but look at her now. An extra axle has been fitted which is fine but look at all the other rubbish she has been adorned with but to cap it all theyâve painted her pink and called her âPink Pantherâ. Can you imagine driving into Syria or even Italy in that. Oh the ignominy of it.
Many years ago somebody told me they had seen my old lorry EPU 305T with an extra axle and painted black. Did anyone else see it?. Donât know if this was prior or post âPink Pantherâ. I see its reported as appearing on âEastendersâ at some stage. I wonder if it was pink or black at that time. Blimey, times must have been hard to appear on there.
I see the famous tunnels on the way to the Bulgy border have been rebuilt and widened. As has been said many times on TNUK it was sh-t scarey driving through them years ago but you know what!!! I never heard of anyone clobbering their trailer on the side of them so perhaps it was all in the mind.
I wonder what ever happened to that life sized, white uniformed, wooden policeman just before the entrance to the tunnel near Pirot. He scared many a speeding British driver as you came around the corner heading East, until you got to know him. He was out there in all weathers, rain or shine, summer and winter holding his little red lollypop, I never saw him wearing a rain coat, he was always wearing his white Adriatic uniform. He was probably the best Yugoslav policeman that we ever met as I never heard about him fining any of us.
Maybe he has finally retired after all these years and is living in a little holiday home on the Dalmatian Coast with a nice little police pension.
Or did Marshall Tito have him shot, ah the good old days.
Sorry Brian, but it wasn,t me that took a load to the Albanian border. I went within 10 ks of it to two different destinations on two separate occasions close to Ohrid and then Prizren, the latter in company with Roger Graber. It was winter and in an effort to reach Rijeka to backload we took a route which was advised in order to save time. Big joke that was !!, it took us over a pretty substantial range of large hills where we promptly got stuck in the snow! The result was that 28 km section took us 28 hours! and we missed our relaods. I,m pretty sure that back in the 70,s/80,s there was no diplomatic relations between UK and Albania and we were strongly advised not to travel there hence those guys unloading/transhipping at the border. Back then that was a very strange part of Yugo, occupied by remnants of the moslem Turks who chose to relocate down there rather than push on back into Turkey after the Austro-Hungarian pact kicked them out at the turn of the century. My history of the region is not brilliant tho some people thought I was living there I went so often!!. I,m sure Efes willfill in with any errors I,ve made!
Changing the subject while on-line I,m just wishing every contributor to this site a very merry christmas and hopefully I will catch you all in the new year.
mushroomman:
Brian, if you look at the âOld A One Driversâ 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 âDry Gingerâ 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 70âs / 80âs. 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 donât 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, itâs 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 âThis is radio Tirana, broadcasting from Albania, the only true Communist state in the worldâŚâ. 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 heâd 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 heâd presented himself. Zog funded an invasion of Albania but the people who went were never seen or heard of again.
From a beach in the sun I would like to offer sincere good wishes for a âMerry Christmas and a Happy New Yearâ to all followers of TNUK wherever you are.
A few posts back I mentioned that I had flown from Tehran to Baghdad a couple of times during the Iran/Iraq war. This happened in the mid 80âs but as no airlines dare operate that route, naturally I had to go via a third country. In my case Dubai which was the obvious choice. It was a simple operation and gave me a few days of R & R in comparative luxury. My second passport with my Iraqi visa would be flown out to whichever hotel I stayed at. However, these flights still had an element of danger as was starkly illustrated on the 3rd July 1988 when a missile was fired from the USS Vincennes bringing down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Straights of Hormuz killing all 290 people on board. Years later the Yanks paid out large sums of blood money to the families of those killed.
I wasnât sure which years my trips occurred but after looking at some of the old photos I can confirm 1986 was one of them. During the mid to late 80âs I also handled a couple of exhibitions in Dubai itself but I have very little recollection of them. The only thing I know for sure was that Promotor shipped the freight in by container and I flew there to do the onsite work.
It wasnât until 85/6 that the idea of tourism and mass development of Dubai was first mooted to counteract the falling price of oil. Whilst I was there I saw very little of the changes that would transform this piece of heaven into the metropolis it is today. I do remember on one occasion staying in the Hilton and catching a mini bus to the Hilton Beach Club where an enjoyable day was spent in the company of another guest of the hotel.
The first photo was taken in Tehran at the Trade Fair. We had two of our lorries there both well loaded as well as a number of subbies. One thing we were good at was loading the trailers to their full capacity. Not an inch of space wasted. The date 1986 can clearly be seen on one of the crates. That years fair was a biggie for us and we had a number of people onsite from the UK. I did the put in but left before the pullout as I had to be in Baghdad for their Trade Fair. The second photo shows Gavin Marshall, 2nd Sec Commercial at the British Embassy in Baghdad,receiving the trophy after winning the prestigious and world famous 1986 Promotor Darts Tournament. He looks a bit overcome with emotion in the photo but knowing Gavin I think it was only the drink getting at him. The remainder of the photos are of Dubai before the development started.
Brian, if you look at the âOld A One Driversâ 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 âDry Gingerâ on a trip that he did to Mostar on Page 9 of the thread which I think that you might find interesting.
Its taken me a few weeks to find and read that very interesting article mushroomman. Many thanks for pointing it out to me. I did try to copy and paste it on here as it was mainly concerned with Yugo but the âlittle grey cellsâ refused to co-operate. Mostar was one of my favourite destinations but we always approached it from the north unlike the AI drivers who came up from the coast road to the south.
Hi Sandway, I thought that you might of enjoyed reading that story from Dry Ginger as I was hoping that it might of stirred a few of your old Yugoslav memories, like it did for me.
In fact, on my second trip to Yugo I was running with Barry Longdonâs younger brother Dave who was about a year older than me. As it was only my second trip to Yugo and Daveâs third trip I looked up to him as the âexperienced manâ and stuck to him like glue.
We also travelled down along The Dalmatian Coast as I was going to deliver to a place somewhere near Split and Dave was carrying on to offload in Mostar. Neither of us had a belly tank on our trailers so we both topped up our running tanks before we had left Hungary. I had filled up on the Black Market in places like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania before so I had a fair idea of what the score was. It turned out that Dave had never bought black market diesel in Yugo before so it was a first time experience for both of us.
About 5p.m. one rainy afternoon somewhere along the coast road we came across a filling station just outside a little town and decided to try our luck. There was a bit of spare ground just across the road so Dave and I decided to park on it and walk across to talk to the owner. We told him that we had no Yugoslav Diners and asked him if we could pay in West German Deutsch Marks. After a bit of humming and scratching his head he asked if we had got any American coffee. Dave said yes, he had a jar of Maxwell House. The owner reluctantly said O.K. and started to write down some numbers of how many litres we could have for D.M.100. Dave and I agreed that it wasnât a bad rate and we really did need diesel so we shook hands on a deal.
Now this was all done in our best pigeon German and we thought that things were going well until the owner said that we must come back when it was dark after the garage had closed.
But it didnât get dark for another two hours and as we had no idea of where the next garage might be we decided that we would make an early dinner and drive over at 7 p.m. It seems like we were sitting there for hours until just before 7p.m. most of the lights went off in the garage and the owner waved us across.
We both filled up and decided to do a bit of night driving to make up for the time that we had lost. Driving down that coast road in the rain at night, especially as we didnât know the road ahead was not a great idea but sometimes you felt that it just had to be done.
We parked up about 10 p.m. that night and in the morning we were woken up by another Dow driver Ken Singleton who was on his way back from Dubrovnik. We had breakfast with Ken and told him where we had got our diesel from the night before.
Ken started laughing, he thought that it was quite funny and told us that there wasnât much of a black market for diesel in Yugo. If we would of gone into a bank and exchanged our Deutsch Marks for Yugoslav Diners we would of got a good exchange rate and there was no need to buy diesel coupons like you were supposed to in rest of the Commie Block.
It seems that for what Dave and I had paid for the fuel along with the jar of coffee we had been given a raw deal so we both had to put it down to our inexperience.
I enjoyed seeing your old photos of Dubai Creek Brian and I have a feeling that you might be a bit disappointed if you ever decide to go back there. I must admit that I never managed to get down to The Emirates forty years ago but I still enjoy seeing those old Dhow boats close up. What still surprises me is that you still see loads of goods waiting to go places like Muscat, Goa, Mumbai and Colombo. There were stacks of computers, big screen television sets and other electrical goods waiting on the pavement to be loaded on to the Dhows so it appears that containerisation hasnât completely taken over, yet.
I still get a buzz walking around the Souks in these kind of places, seeing all the different kind of spices, rices and walking around the gold shops even though we never seem to buy anything from them nowadays.
Brian, I wish you and all the other ex Promotors drivers a very happy and prosperous New Year and I hope that you all keep this great thread going through out 2019.
Just as a point of interest the Stari Most (old bridge) at Mostar was rebuilt in 2004 so once more the teenage lads can impress the local talent by jumping off into the river below !
I thought that was very interesting and it sounded like the convoy from hell but I wondered if there was another side to the story.
