I used to often load coal out of hunterston on a Friday to tip Monday morning in Wales. Deal was I went on a Sunday but just took wagon home on Friday night. Used to get a couple of wheel barrows full of coal out of the grain hatch each time. Handy.
We used to load frozen veg to and from cold stores on the east coast all over the country and Northern Ireland and the boys on the banks used to “post” each other goodies like frozen chickens tucked in between the boxes. Jim.
I was loading 10 ton of butter on Liverpool docks and one of Suttons of Tarelton was watching I got 20 x 56 lbs boxes in each row 3 up each side 10 on end in middle and 4 on top 20 rows equals 10 ton. Suttons man said he loaded 5 across 3 high 4 on top equals 19 and it looked the same as my 20 in a row so he did 20 in a row for first 10 rows then 19 in second ten rows .The checker counted the back row 19 then 20 rows said to driver your 20 short driver and loaded 20 more boxes … Drivers first stop was the cafe on the East Lancs Road at Leigh sold 5 cwt New Zealand butter . I never did get my commission .
few years a go got asked if I wanted a xmas hamper,i asked wots in them ,answer was ,do not know yet we have not done the job yet 
did I buy one yes.would have be rude not to 
keith
Good day all
I recall when being a young fella on the recovery crew at BRS Irthlingborough Repair Centre attending a misdemeanour in the fen district where a BRS parcels semi [artic ] had finished up laying on its side roof down in the bottom of a dry dyke. We decided to unload the trailer before recovery and so opened the doors .Regretably the chain gang loaded some of the freight into the back of the wrecker can’t understand how/why but about 40 Watney Red Barrel Ice containers [great chrissy presents] a few cartons of mint sauce in jars and a wooden chest of Typhoo tea certainly reduced the shopping bill a tad.
Cheers DIG
Hiya…i was going to a carpet distribution place we did at Nottingham, we took adhesive and tools no carpet.
so iam two roundabouts from the warehouse and see two cardboard boxes in the road that had fallen of a truck
i stopped in a second scooped the boxes in my cab. i was so excited i couldn’t see straight, i got to the warehouse
backed on the dock and was back in the cab for a quick look…SOD a box of our own tools no use at all, so i handed
them into the lads saying this must have fell of one of your vans…there must have been £100s worth at least…one good
thing i always got tipped quick after that. maybe a thank you.
John
At one time we used to pull out of Stansted Airport, Tea from Uganda was always in tea chests and somehow had a hole in, was always giving tea away as I never drink the stuff, my van always had new tyres courtesy of Uganda. The only clothes I bought were underpants every thing else came of the back of the lorry. There were always Land Rovers waiting to be shipped out, i know of one or two that got lost on their way to be loaded on the Hercules.
Used to work for a biscuit company and overnight twice a week in Southend, was always swapping biscuits for Kunzle cakes (remember them ?) once i swapped some biscuits for a carpet.
Balloonie
years ago i got asked to do a saturday shift lifting a wrecked container that fell off a straddler in the docks,bring it back to the yard,help handball and tranship it into another refrigerated container.anything damaged was to be thrown away and marked off on a sheet.
the load was marked “rock salmon” and it was for export.
every single person in the yard that was shared by 3 different companies came in mid morn waiting for me to arrive.
you have never heard so many cries of woe and indignation when they started burgling the fridge to discover that rock salmon is dogfish.
its a different game nowadays and id never nick anything from anyone with a face,but theres plenty of opperchancities for a perk or three as the occasion arises.
Whitbreads ‘Gold label’ barley wine. (it was good stuff, about 10% abv, small bottles), well, one of their drivers inverted (rolled it over) a full trailer of the stuff. The trailer was put back shiny side up and recovered to Whitbreads, Woodlesford and the insurance company wrote the full load off…total loss. Like hell it was…fill yer boots lads (and your cabs). It seems as though the insurance decided that the gold foil on the bottle caps was damaged so they wrote the lot off. It took a couple of weeks to ‘dispose’ of all the bottles that were left, everybody that went in the yard just helped themselves. happy days.
Hi all,
I called in to a quarry near Warsash one day many years ago and asked the owner if I could borrow a load to demonstrate our new model Volvo F7 8X4 with shiney new Wilcox body.
OK, just check in with office in the morning (Saturday) when you bring it back, ( Gravel ) This is in the country, up a leafy lane.
Young lad in the office far to buisy on the phone to his girl looked at me in my suit and shiny shoes when I said I had some gravel to drop back that I borrowed.
OH !! just drop it in front of the office mate, I will shovel it into a few of the pot holes before I go home.
The owner phoned me in my office monday morning and had difficulty talking to me “he was still laughing”.
The temp thought i must have had a transit pick up and he was there untill the afternoon clearing a path to get his car out to go home. Harvey
Now this is a true story, when I started out as an OD in the 70’s I used to do loads of fruit from Southampton docks mainly to the London markets, any one who has done this there was a protocol to follow. Firstly you had to que at the fruit gate as it was known which was the one by the Western esplanade no other gate then at 6am that was opened and we went to the 105 birth and a 7.30 start by dockers, usually the 4 wheelers were let into the railway gutter first as they were loaded more quickly then artics behind, Breakfast for the dockers was 10am but they ■■■■■■ off at 9.30 to wash there hands ha, ha. anyways if you got out by lunch you were on a good thing, then home and go to bed as you had been up all night tipping in London during the night. Get up at about 6pm have a bath eat your tea, watch a couple hours tele and you were away again to do it all again.
After a few days of this it started to catch you up and sometimes you got disorientated, any ways my point being I did actually step of the side of a trailer one night not realizing I was at the edge, a rude awakening for sure but I was younger and fitter back then so took the fall and awakening easier than I would today so I literally fell of the back of a lorry. Any one else ever done that ? , Buzzer
PS. Better to load in the afternoon as the dockers were on job and knock, far quicker.
Buzzer:
Now this is a true story, when I started out as an OD in the 70’s I used to do loads of fruit from Southampton docks mainly to the London markets, any one who has done this there was a protocol to follow. Firstly you had to que at the fruit gate as it was known which was the one by the Western esplanade no other gate then at 6am that was opened and we went to the 105 birth and a 7.30 start by dockers, usually the 4 wheelers were let into the railway gutter first as they were loaded more quickly then artics behind, Breakfast for the dockers was 10am but they ■■■■■■ off at 9.30 to wash there hands ha, ha. anyways if you got out by lunch you were on a good thing, then home and go to bed as you had been up all night tipping in London during the night. Get up at about 6pm have a bath eat your tea, watch a couple hours tele and you were away again to do it all again.
After a few days of this it started to catch you up and sometimes you got disorientated, any ways my point being I did actually step of the side of a trailer one night not realizing I was at the edge, a rude awakening for sure but I was younger and fitter back then so took the fall and awakening easier than I would today so I literally fell of the back of a lorry. Any one else ever done that ? , BuzzerPS. Better to load in the afternoon as the dockers were on job and knock, far quicker.
.
Hi Buzzer yep loading cable drums at standard telephone and cable Newport ( mon then ) stepped back nothing there straight on to my head on a concrete floor woke up in hospital days late lucky to be here . I was with the red and rust then in the 60s . My birthday yesterday 76 . Where is it gone ■■? . So I gets a badge
When i first started at Fred Chappells on coal tippers (everybody had coal fires in those days)we had a job (Walton Pit, Wakefield to Hess’s Chemicals, Littleborough. Always a bit free and easy getting your delivery note signed, so I asked the regular driver on the job to “leave me a couple of bags on David”.
So he called round at my house late in the day…16 ton (yes, an Albion Reiver, it was full) of best Walton Doubles. Everybody in the street filled their cellars.
grumpy old man:
When i first started at Fred Chappells on coal tippers (everybody had coal fires in those days)we had a job (Walton Pit, Wakefield to Hess’s Chemicals, Littleborough. Always a bit free and easy getting your delivery note signed, so I asked the regular driver on the job to “leave me a couple of bags on David”.
So he called round at my house late in the day…16 ton (yes, an Albion Reiver, it was full) of best Walton Doubles.
I had a job for a while , bag lime to Sheffield and best Cresswell lump coal back . two lumps a day ( they were as big as a wheelbarrow ) and the shed was soon full . I told the coal man we’d gone over to a gas fire . Later on I delivered mushrooms on nights around Lancs/ Merseyside and always a stop at the Poplars on the way back . Wife wanted some cod off the Fleetwood Fish vans I got her a nice fillet , she went mad , the fillet was two feet long and weighed about 10 pounds , all the extended family had fish that week .
around 1980 took a new hyperactive fresh pass down to hackbridge to tip a 2 truck job.
got tipped,and was talking to him as he was up on the trailer coiling up his ropes.
he was walking backards as he coiled it to make it easier right up untill he fel backwards over the headboard,smashed his head in off the gearbox of a marathon and ended up jammed around the propshaft with his head ■■■■■■■ blood.
ended up having to drop the trailer,and i took him to hospital in his unit so i wouldnt mess mine up.
took another dude piggyback unit and trailer as it was broke down after we both had a shift lasting 36 hours straight or similar.
it was my unit with the sleeper on top and he won the toss to crash out in the bunk coming up from southampton or bristol area.
i got as far as tebay before i couldnt see any further,went to the cab and belted on the door to get him up.
he jumps up,opens the door,forgets he is up high,and breaks both ankles after hopping out to change over.
It was all so much easier when everything was hand balled.
Historical note; I know youth will find this difficult to understand but up until the earlier 70’s everything we carried we had to load and unload by hand. Fork lifts were rare beasts back then.
Best of all were multiple deliveries. The boys detailed off to unload whatever it was were always pleased to be told that that was everything and seldom checked. I remember getting caught - out on one occasion when I was tipping 1/2" plaster board on a building site in Plymouth. The boys were happy as usual to be told ‘that’s it’ but the site surveyor appeared with a tape measure and measured the stack. Rats.
Although illegal I always felt that it was a good game as long as the boss got the delivery notes signed clean.
David
Hi, joining the trucking fraternity at the age of 16, I soon learned that all trades had their little perks. one day a few years back I attended a cremation funeral and saw the hearse reverse to the rear of the crematorium. Now being nosey I wandered round there myself. One of the pallbearers stood at the rear of the hearse and outside the door as lookout. He told me to leave as it was a private area and public were banned. therefor I found a place where I could observe. I then saw the door man wave his hand in a forward motion and lo and behold two of his pals came out with the empty coffin which was placed in the lower section of the hearse. Probably after some palms had been greased. I expect the coffin then gets cleaned ready for the next £1000 recipient. A nice little earner, which explains why NO screws or nails turn up in the ashes. Could this also happen with burials which would explain why the earth only sinks about six inches and then is topped up and sinks no more. What do you think?.
Just remembered this, when I worked for Marine Air Freight out of Stansted one of our drivers picked up a load of toys to be delivered somewhere up north, anyway we gets this phone call that he had tipped the load going round a roundabout on the A1, the best bit was the load was all Action Man dolls so he was told to get them to load themselves back on the lorry and don’t hang about. Eventually a local firm sent a motor out and loaded some back to their yard and we had to send a motor up to collect them.
On a slightly different note, when I worked for Burtons Biscuit’s at Bishops Stortford my mate Tony Eldred came in the yard and said that he had hit a fence post, well about a week later I was reversing at a delivery in Rochford Essex and knocked a fence post over, forward a few weeks and Tony hit a lamp post, true to form a few days later in Hadleigh Essex I reversed and knocked a lamp post down, fast forward a few weeks and Tony drives into the yard with the roof of his box pealed back a couple of feet, as he gets out of the cab I asked him what happened as there were no low bridges in the Essex area and he said he was going past a road works when a JCB swung it’s bucket into the road just as he was passing, well I went up to the office and handed my notice in there and then, manager said don’t be stupid it could not happen to you, me i’m not taking the chance, give me my cards, i’m off. In those days you could walk into a job no problems, went to a firm driving a Bedford TK Flat Back delivering and erecting heating ducting but the stories from there are for another time.
Balloonie
I had 20t of one coat tarmac for side streets in Arnold, got there mid morning n the ganger signed me ticket n said to go n loose it. Onto the phone to a farmer he said he didn’t want it but would ring round n try and find somebody. A garage owner was glad of it. On arrival we agreed a price, so I asked him if he wanted me to spread it a bit for him. He said he’d got some mates coming round to help him so up in one, helped him throw a couple of sheets over it n away I went. The remaining 15t heap was carted away about 5yr later.
A crowd were demolishing Kensal Green gasometers n my crowd were carting back up north. One of Jones of Aldridge was loading in front of me so I hopped in with him to ask the craic with weighing off. "Load it till the rims are touching the ground, up the road to so n so’s in Wembley "
So pulled on the weighbridge, 39t! They took 9t off paid me my share. Happy days n a no expense spared holiday abroad that year