Middle East - Not Astran!

Caravan Trading and General Services was a joint venture between Ali Al Ghoson of Dammam and Alan Newhouse of Behring International, which was based in Houston. This was started in 1979. Sheikh Ali, who had worked for the Saudi Railroad, spent time in the USA learning the trade, and presumably met Alan there because Behring Shipping, an associate company of Behring International, used the railroad, which ran from Dammam Port to Riyadh, to carry containers of equipment for the Saudi armed forces.

The 20 foot containers were end of life units, which were repainted in BEHRING grey in the States and arrived about 30 at a time. They were shipped on the railroad directly from the port to the Military base in Riyadh where they were emptied and then returned to Dammam. Our yard was just behind the railroad yard where they were shunted to. We then had about 48 hours to unload them into our own yard.
Health and safety was not a huge consideration here. Behring had shipped a frame with twistlocks which fitted the crane and could be operated from the ground - a rope system locked and unlocked them, but we soon discovered that this had two faults; it was dreadfully slow positioning it and if the crane driver, who was always just one of us, and not a professional, dropped the frame too quickly on the container it punched neat holes in the roof. This was quickly abandoned in favour of one of us riding the hooks and placing them on the container, then riding the container to the trailer. At that time our trailers didn’t have twistlocks and again to save time, we didn’t chain them on for the few hundred yards to the depot. This was supposed to be a private railway road anyway, but many drivers used it as a short cut from the port to the Khobar/Dammam road, I don’t remember us ever having one fall off!

Riding the hooks was a bit scary at first, but you soon got the hang of it (no pun intended!) I remember Bill Dolan operating the crane once and I had hooked on the container, Bill started to lift when Peter Best came up to the crane cabin and started talking to Bill. They both became engrossed in the conversation and forgot about me going higher and higher. I envisaged the jib going over and the container and me with it. They couldn’t hear my screams because of the crane engine until the hook assembly reached the top, which fortunately stalled it instead of pulling it over! This was all greeted with peals of laughter by them when they realised that I was petrified and about 40 feet in the air.

At the yard we fork lifted them off and it was part of the Transport Manager’s job to sell them. They were popular as accommodation for all the nationalities that worked there and were a major source of income for Caravan.

Photos of Ali Nasser Al Ghoson, Martin Mears riding the hooks, and Mohammed Hassan, a Somali/Yemeni who started as a driver and had become Transport Manger by the time this photo was taken in about 1984.

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