Shorts Brian, I hope that they are the long Khaki shorts and that you wear with a Pith Helmet but ditch the sandals with the white socks, one has to keep up standards you know whenever we are abroad. 
Brian, I wrote this out last week and I was going to post it on your thread last Friday but after reading it through, I thought that it might sound a bit long winded and so I decided not to post it.
Anyway, I have just had another think and if it reminds any of you Promotors guys about days of old and sitting around, well what the heck.
FORTY-TWO YEARS AGO, TODAY.
I can tell you what I was doing forty-two years ago today Brian, because April 1st 1980 which was on a Tuesday, was the day that I started driving for Dow Freight.
I had been for an interview on the Friday before and a couple of questions that I was asked by both of the bosses, Roger and Carl, were that if I was offered the job, would I be able to ship out before Easter which was in seven days time. Of course, my answer was yes as I had been made redundant from my other job two weeks previously. This was the year after the winter of discontent, when nearly 3 million people were unemployed in the U.K. and I needed a job.
The reason why I was interviewed separately by both bosses was because, as they both told me, that if they employed the wrong person who wasn’t up to the job, then they were both to blame. They also mentioned that whenever possible they would try and send a new driver out on his first trip with somebody else who would be travelling through the same country. I was told that the decision would be made over the week end and that if I was successful then I would be contacted sometime on the Monday.
It was Monday afternoon when I received the call from the receptionist whose name was Sandra, informing me that my application had been successful. She asked me to come in at 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning with all my overnight gear and to be prepared to go away that day. I asked Sandra did she know where I might be going to and she told me that I would probably be going to Hungary
On Tuesday morning I arrived at their new yard in Stockport, they were obviously expecting me and I was introduced to the import and the export manager who were very friendly and they both made me feel quite welcome. The export manager gave me a set off keys and said “there is an M.A.N. unit next to the warehouse, it’s BFE 155S do you want to go and put your gear in it and come back in about fifteen minutes”.
Sandra, somewhere in Bavaria.
I took all the gear out of my car, stowed it in the unit and tried to sort the cab out. One of the bosses called Carl, who I had met at the interview came over and asked me if I was alright. He shook my hand and welcomed me to the team. He asked me if the unit had a camping stove in it and I replied no. Carl said, well you will be shipping out to go to Zseged in Hungary tomorrow so go out and buy yourself a decent two burner Camping Gaz stove with a grill on it and a gas bottle. Then get yourself a good European road atlas and keep the receipts. When you get back off your trip, we will reimburse you when we do your expenses.
The unit was a right-hand drive M.A.N. 16-280 with a Fuller 13 speed column change gearbox. It had twin bunks, fitted curtains, a radio but sadly no night heater. After sorting out the cab the best that I could, I walked back over to the office.
I sat down with John who was the export manager and he told me that I was lucky as they had two loads which were both going to the same factory in Zseged, Hungary. He said that hopefully my trailer should be loaded this afternoon in North Wales and that he would let me know what was happening. Then he took me over to where the fitters and the driver’s canteen was and suggested that I have a cup of tea and then check my wagon over.
Well, it turned out that my trailer wouldn’t get loaded until the first thing on Wednesday morning so at 3 p.m. I was told to take the unit home and to come back in at 10 a.m. the next day.
On Wednesday morning I was back in the yard and just before 11 a.m. two loaded trailers arrived at the yard. One of the drivers was a lad from Liverpool called Billy Jones who I was supposed to be travelling with, he was a great lad was Billy and I really appreciated everything that he taught me on that trip.
The other lad dropped the other trailer and I backed under it, I wanted to climb into the back of the tilt to see how and what had been loaded. It worked out to be about 18 tonnes of Courtaulds textiles which were in bales and it all seemed secure.
Billy and I went into the office to get all our paperwork and our running money which I.I.R.C. was £300 in twenty-pound notes. We left the yard and headed down to the Hollies Café on the A5 where we stopped for lunch.
After having a half an hour break Billy suggested that we head on down to Toddington Services for another 15-minute break on the M1 and then hopefully we should be able to get along the North Circular Road, down Archway Road, through The Blackwall Tunnel and down to Dover in one hit.
When we pulled onto Toddington Services, I was surprised to see another Dow driver there called Frankie Andrews who was another lad who came from Liverpool. Frank was in in a Scania 111 who was also taking a 15-minute break. Frank had loaded at the Courtaulds factory in Spondon near Derby and was loaded for Weiner Neustadt in Austria.
By 8 p.m. that night, we were boarding one of the Townsend Thorensen boats at Dover Eastern Docks bound for Zeebrugge. As it was a four and a half hour crossing, we all had dinner, bought our duty frees which consisted of a bottle of spirits, 200 cigarettes and a carton (24 cans) of Tennant’s lager. As we were all allocated a cabin, we managed to get about three hours sleep before we were awakened by the sound of Harbour Station, Harbour Station, which blasted through the Tannoy system.
As it was now about 2 a.m. Belgium time because of the time difference, Frank told me that we would be parking on the sea wall for the night. As you came out of the Zeebrugge docks back then there was a roundabout. I followed Frank to the first turning off the roundabout and we went down a cobbled road for nearly a quarter of a mile that ran between the sea wall and the docks. At the end of this road there was a turning circle where we all spun the trucks around and headed back up towards the roundabout. There were several continental trucks parked up there for the night one of which belonged to Dow, a Ford Transcontinental driven by Jock Lockhart. It had been a very long day for me and I asked Frank what time will we be setting off in the morning. Frank replied, when we are all ready, just make sure that you put a new Tacho in now so that it will have shown that we would have had at least eight hours sleep when we get to the West German border. It didn’t take me long to get to sleep that night, even with the strong wind that was blowing over the sea wall and occasionally rocking the tilt.
It was about 10 a.m. on the Thursday morning when I woke up, there was no night heater fitted in the truck and with my Blacks Icelandic Duck Down filled sleeping bag I had been quite warm all through the night. It was a sleeping bag which had cost me a small fortune five years before but it had been worth every penny.
I got up and walked behind to Billy’s M.A.N. 16.280, Billy was sat there with Jock, he wound down the window and said “get your cup and give Frank a knock”. Within ten minutes the four of us were sat in Billy’s cab drinking a hot cup of tea that Billy had made on his Camping Gaz stove. It was surprising how much room there was in a M.A.N. cab that had a column change gear stick and had such a low floor that you could move across from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat with ease.
Jock said that that he wanted some fuel as he had a big Tankshine for West Germany. Frank suggested that we drove down to the Fina garage which was on the main road out of Zeebrugge about two kilometers away. They all agreed that we should go there for a wash and to have a breakfast of Ham and Eggs. I had no idea of what was happening so I decided to keep quiet and just watch what was going on.
Before we set off, we all checked our oil and water and did a quick inspection around the truck. The other trucks that had been parked there when we had arrived in the early hours of the morning had all left, apart from Jock. I started up the engine, I let the air pressure build up until the air assisted Isringhausen seat started to rise up and all the air warning light had stopped flashing and buzzing. I put the Tacho switch on to drive mode and followed Frank into the Fina garage which was just up the road. When we arrived there Frank said, “get your washing gear and put your Tacho onto rest mode, we will be here for at least half an hour.
This to me was amazing, we had only driven two kilometers and now we were stopping for a half hour break. I had a feeling that this job was going to be very unusual and by the end of trip I had proved myself right.
Over brunch, the other three guys were making plans for what they were going to do over the next couple of days. It turned out that Jock was delivering to the goods yard at the Franz Joseph railway station in Vienna so that the four of us would travelling together as far as Vienna. It seemed that a problem arose about the different driving bans in West Germany and Austria over the Easter holiday, which started at 10 p.m. in Germany that night.
After doing an eight hour drive from Zeebrugge we arrived near Frankfurt at Weiskirchen Services on the E5 and parked up for the night. This also included crossing from Holland into West Germany at the Aachen North border where we lost about an hour.
We weren’t allowed to drive on the following day which was Good Friday until 10 p.m. that night when the driving ban for trucks had finished. So, at 10 p.m. we set off for the German/ Austrian border at Scharding and it was about 6 a.m. by the time that we had cleared customs and arrived in Austria.
Billy pulled into an Aral fuel station that he had often used before and he told me to put about 200 liters of diesel in. The garage owner was a bloke called Franz who offered us all a coffee and because it was Easter, he gave us all a couple of coloured painted hard-boiled eggs. I was very impressed with the hospitality that these people who worked in the garages gave to visiting continental truck drivers.
At the time, Austria had a week end truck driving ban from 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon until 10 p.m. on a Sunday night. As it had been snowing in places, we would have been well over our hours if we were going to carry on to Vienna that day. In the end the guys decided to park up for the weekend at a hotel near a village called Saint Valentine, which was just off the Salzburg to Vienna road.
It was only about an hour and a half drive from where we were but the drive through the night and the snow was beginning to take its toll on my eyes. We arrived at the hotel at about 9 a.m. and I noticed that there was only one truck on the car park. Would you believe it, it was a Dow, Foden Fleetmaster driven by a lad called Alan Morrey.
Alan had arrived at the steelworks in Linz which was about ten miles away on the Thursday, only to be told that he could not get loaded until the Tuesday morning after the Easter holiday. Alan looked really pleased to see us, he had dropped his trailer in the steel works and took the chance that there might be another Englishman or a Dutchman who was also week ending there. It ended up that we were the only five truck drivers there for that week end.
Easter Sunday 1980, at the Saint Valentine Hotel, Austria.
We ended up making a full English breakfast with plates of bacon, sausages, eggs, toast and beans being passed from one cab into the other with endless cups of tea.
After we had done the washing up, we all agreed to get a couple of hours sleep before going into the hotel for a lunch time beer. Not only did the hotel have a truck drivers restaurant, with framed photos of old trucks on the wall, it also had truck drivers showers and toilets. The furnishings in the hotel looked very stylish with carved wooden beams, tables and chairs which were all varnished. The whole place had a kind of Austrian Tyrol bier keller look about it with the waitresses (complete with hairy armpits and hairy legs) wearing traditional Alpine, Dirndl dress uniforms. Once again, I was surprised how friendly and welcoming the staff were to foreign truck drivers, it was an enormous change from one of the ‘greasy spoons’ along the A1 back in England.
On Saturday night we ended up back in the hotel for an evening meal and a few steins of Austrian beer.
On Easter Sunday morning, we had another full English cab breakfast and after watching the sleet and the showers blowing across the car park for a few hours it was a relief to go back into the restaurant, have another hot shower and a few more beers. Even though it was a restaurant, they had a large bowl of coloured hard boiled eggs which were free to their customers who could just help themselves. As it was the Easter holiday the hotel seemed very quiet, apart from a few cars and a couple of coaches that stopped for an hour or so.
What I didn’t know until some 35 years later, with the help of the internet, was that the Mauthausen concentration camp was only about five miles from the hotel. Over the next few years, I stopped at that hotel several times and never knew about Mauthausen. I did go past the hotel about eight years ago when we were doing a trip around Europe and there is now a ‘No Entry’ for trucks sign at the car park at the front of the hotel.
On Easter Monday, I think that we all just wanted to get back on the road again but we couldn’t drive until 10 p.m. that night. It had not been cheap eating and drinking in the hotel as much as we did. We had also used up a lot of the duty free drinks while we were sat in the cab which we bought on the boat coming over. The sitting around for hours had not been wasted for me as the other lads had spent hours explaining to me about the use of T 1, T 2 and T2L T Forms, T.I.R. Carnets, Tank shines, Road Taxes, A.T.A. Carnets, Turkish Over Time Tax, G.V. 60’s and Trip Tics etc. They also gave me loads of information on the different countries that I would be going to, the different customs and driving bans and how to get fuel on the Black Market.
At 10 p.m. Billy and I said good bye to Frank, Jock and Alan as Billy said that we would driving at least as far as the Austrian/Hungarian border that night which was about a four-hour drive away. Alan said that he would drive back to the steelworks and sleep there for the night so that he was on the door step for the following morning. Frank was going to follow us as far as the Vienna turn off on the autobahn. Jock said that he would follow us into Vienna and then drive straight to the Franz Josef goods yard, put a new tacho in and then get his head down.
I followed Billy through the cobbled street of Vienna before we headed back out into the dark countryside again. There didn’t appear to be many street lights and there was hardly any traffic at that time of the morning.
Eventually, we reached the Austrian border post at Klingenbach and we were the only two vehicles there. We had encountered quite a bit of sleet and snow and it had been slow going. The Austrian customs man looked a bit surprised to see us at that time of the morning and I had the impression that we had woken him up from having a nap. He just stamped our T Forms, grunted and said “Alles Gut”, he must of known how cold it was outside his very warm office.
As we were going into the Communist Block, we had asked for a customs seal at Dover or as everybody called it ‘A Plumb’. This was a lead seal that was squashed onto a piece of wire or a piece of string which made the trailer, along with some other things, to conform to T.I.R. Customs Regulations. Billy told me that it was known as a Plumb because it was the Latin word for Lead, as in Plumber, a man who works with lead. As we were never taught Latin in school, I must admit that I was quite impressed with Billy’s explanation. I wonder if Plumbers still use lead.
Billy asked how I was feeling and if I could carry on for another couple of hours. I said that I was O.K. and that if he wanted to carry on then let’s go for it. As there were no other lorries going into Hungary, Billy said that it would be best if we could get through now and then get our head down once we were through the border.
The Hungarian border post, which was I.I.R.C. about ten kilometres before the town of Sopron was out in the countryside. It was only about half a kilometre from the Austrian border post which was well lit up and looked prosperous, the Hungarian border looked in a different world altogether.
The landscape leading up to the round metal barrier that blocked the road was flat, covered in snow and looked very bleak. There was a watch tower with a search light just past the barrier which was painted in candy stripes, red, green and white, which were the colours of the Hungarian flag. As I looked over to the right, I could see a ten foot high wire fence with barbed wire along the top that stretched away into the mist. There were orange Sodium lights about every 100 yards and I could just about make out another watch tower in the distance.
Next to the barrier there was a green and red traffic light which was showing red so Billy stopped. We waited for about five minutes and as I was parked behind Billy I got out of my cab and walked up to his cab to see what was happening. Billy’s cab light was on and I think that he nearly jumped out of his skin when I knocked on his door. He wound down his window and shouted “get back in your cab and stay there until the soldiers tell you to get out”.
I don’t know if Billy’s nerves were on edge but mine certainly were now. The barrier went up, the light changed to green and Billy edged slowly forwards. As the green light stayed on, I slowly followed him. Billy pulled over to the right next to an inspection gantry while a soldier who had been standing on the top of the frame looked very carefully at the top of his tilt for any rips or cuts. As Billy pulled forward, a soldier who was stood with an Alsatian dog waved at me to pull up next to the gantry. After a couple of minutes, he waved at me again and pointed at me to park behind Billy where two more soldiers were standing. When I stopped, one of the soldiers opened my door and said “switch off engine, passport”. The other soldier banged on the passenger door and shouted “Cabin Control”, I reached across and opened the door for him.
He hardly spoke to me, he tried to lift up the bottom bunk that was fixed and muttered the words, haben sie guns, drugs, ■■■■■ magazines, with my answer being, nix. “Control Fertig” he said and then he climbed down out of the cab. Billy was now stood outside my door and said get your document folder and follow me.
We walked into the customs building which was like a long hall with large windows on one side and several small cubicles along the back wall.
We first had to go to cabin marked Hungario Camiyon who had to make out some new paperwork for us so that we could bond the load to our destination.
All the cubicles looked the same, each having a small window with a piece of very old dirty curtain material hanging there so that you couldn’t see who or what was happening inside the small office.
Billy tapped gently on the window marked Vama or customs, the curtain was pulled back sharpish. A middle aged women in a grey uniform stared at us for about ten seconds then swiftly pulled the curtain closed. What do we do now I asked Billy? We wait he replied, you will have to get used to waiting on this job. We just stood there but about five minutes later the curtain was pulled back sharpish and the little window opened. Billy gave her the two lots of paper work that we had received from the Hungario Camiyon man. Billy said zwie camiyon. The woman looked stunned and said “zwie camiyon,” she looked at the paperwork and gave Billy one set of papers back, she closed the window and then the curtain. Billy and I had a discussion about the dirty curtains which must have been hanging there for years. We both agreed that they were well over due an oil change.
In fact, the whole room looked as though it hadn’t had a new coat of paint in years and the plaster was peeling off the walls and the ceiling in some places.
After a few minutes the curtain was quickly pulled back, the window opened and the woman handed Billy his papers. As soon as Billy took the papers from her hand, she closed the window and the curtain was quickly pulled across again. I looked at Billy wondering what on earth was going on but Billy just smiled as though this happened all the time. A couple of minutes later the curtain was pulled back again and the window was opened. I handed my set of paperwork to her which she almost snatched out of my hand and once again the little window was slammed shut and the curtain was pulled across.
While we were waiting there, one of the things that I noticed was a long table that went down the middle of the room. We could see through the windows about six Hungarian cars which were heading towards Austria. All the drivers and their passengers were herded into the customs hall carrying all their bags and their suitcases. They were then told to lift them on to the table and to open them up. There must have been about eighteen people, all adults, stood in front of their cases. Two customs men started at one end of the table and started taking everything out, sometimes stopping to take a closer look at what they had found.
When they were satisfied, they moved on to the next suitcase as the other person started to repack his case. They did this all the way along, just taking everything out of the suitcase, shaking most of the clothes to see if any contraband would drop out of them and then just throwing them on to the table. Then they would move on to the next one while leaving the poor man or woman to repack their case. Nobody seemed to argue or say a word, it was like this is the way it is and they all seemed to accept that.
Just then, the curtain at the cubicle where we were waiting was pulled back, the window was opened, I took my paperwork off the woman and I said “Danke schon” as she was quickly closing the window. She didn’t say anything and as expected, she quickly pulled the curtain across the window.
I gave Billy a shocked look but he had seen it all before and said that we will now go to the Hungarian Tourist Office which was another small cubicle a couple of windows along.
Billy tapped on the window, this time the curtain was pulled back straight away, the window was opened and a smart young girl was sat there. Billy said, do you speak English and she replied yes.
Now I am not sure how much it was that we had to exchange into Hungarian Forint, which was the Hungarian currency but it was so many American dollars a day. Billy told her that we should only be in the country for two days and she worked it out how much it was so that we could pay in West German Deutschmarks.
As it was my first trip into Hungary, Billy told me to buy 100 litres of fuel coupons which I also had to buy in Deutschmarks. He had already explained to me to always keep them in my truck so that if I was in a garage getting black market fuel and the police arrived then I could always try and bluff my way out of the situation by saying that I have fuel coupons, what is the problem.
I remember one time when I pulled into a garage in Czechoslovakia and had arranged with the attendant that he would let me have 200 litres of diesel for 100 Deutschmarks. I had just started to fill up when a car with two men in it pulled up alongside me and I could see straight away that the attendant looked panic stricken. I switched the pump off as I could tell that there was something wrong. One of the men came up to me and asked in German, to see my fuel coupons. I showed him the 100 coupons that I had bought about three years earlier at the border. They watched me as I carried on refueling but I.I.R.C. I only put 80 litres in and gave the attendant the 8 x 10 litre coupons. The guy from the car said that everything was O.K. they got back in to the car and they drove off. The attendant cheered up when I gave him two packets of Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
I believe that nearly all of the British lorry drivers who drove through The Commie Block in the 70’s and the 80’s all tried to get black market diesel at one time or another. There were stories that if you were caught then you would end up in a police cell but I never met anybody who had been locked up.
One of the soldiers came over to us with our passports while we were talking to the Hungarian Tourist office girl and told me that I must pay for my visa. Billy told me to get a six month visa which I could reclaim when I was doing my expenses. We walked outside with the soldier where another soldier carrying an Ak47 stood, in fact most of the soldiers were carrying rifles which was quite unnerving. A soldier wearing a boiler suit took off the Dover seal that was on the tilt cord and climbed into the back of the tilt with a torch. After a few minutes he re-emerged and a customs man put on a Hungarian seal to join together the tilt cord and entered the seal number onto our paperwork.
We were given our passports back and told that all was good and to drive forward to the barrier. Billy stopped at the red light and a couple of minutes later the barrier lifted, the light turned to green and we were on our way along the dark cobbled road to Sopron.
It had taken us about an hour to get through the border but Billy had assured me that that was about normal. We must of drove for about twenty minutes when Billy pulled into a lay by. He came walking up to my cab and said “I think that we have done enough for one day” and I had to agree with him.
It must have been about 3 a.m. when we had parked up for the night and when I awoke at 10 a.m. the next morning the sun was shining and the roads were already drying out. I walked up to Billy’s cab just as he was getting out for a pee so I told him to come over to my cab as it was my turn to make the breakfast.
While we were having some beans on toast Billy told me about a garage that wasn’t too far away that he had used before to get some black diesel. He told me that when we arrived there that I should park outside on the road, while he went in to speak to the attendant. If the attendant agreed then I had to wait for Billy to pull out of the garage before I drove onto the pumps.
When we got there all went to plan, Billy waved me in and I have to say that my heart was racing quite a bit. We managed to get 250 litres for 100 Deutschmarks which was about £25. When we did our expenses at the end of the trip, we were given an extra £30 which was tax free. We gave the attendant two packets of Benson and Hedges cigarettes which made him very happy.
Within twelve months we were only getting 200 litres in the Commie Block for 100 Deutschmarks which, when we did our expenses, we received an extra £25. If you had a belly tank on your trailer then you really could make yourself a great bonus. I don’t know when this little ‘perk of the job’ came to an end but I do remember that we discussed this about ten years ago here on Trucknet and somebody mentioned that it was when some of the old Commie Block countries joined the E.U.
By lunch time we were passing through the capitol Budapest and shortly after we stopped at a restaurant in an old windmill in a place called Kecskemet. Billy recommended their bowl of Goulash Soup along with a small basket of freshly baked bread that they baked in the mill. We paid for the meal and bought a couple of freshly baked loaves with some of the Forint that we had to compulsory exchange at the border. After half an hour we were on our way again and we arrived in Szeged at about 3 p.m.
Crossing The Danube in Budapest.
The Windmill Restaurant, Kecskemet, Hungary. Not My Photo.
As Billy had delivered to this factory before we went straight there and reported to the office. They told us to wait for the customs man who they had just telephoned and within fifteen minutes the customs man arrived on a push bike.
By 5 p.m. we had had a shower in the factory, Billy had sent a telex requesting our reload instructions and we were sat in my cab having a cup of tea while the offloading gang tipped both of our loads.
I was told that I had to load at the steel works near Linz in Austria, where Alan had loaded that morning. Billy had to load at an aluminium works at a place called Amstetton which was about 15 miles from the Saint Valentine hotel. Billy wanted to get home before the Sunday as he had a christening to go to. As Billy had already told me, being week ended is bad enough but being week ended twice in succession was bad planning.
We decided to try and get back up to Sopron that night which as Bill said, we would need to do a good hit. We did it, in fact we got through the Hungarian border and parked up at the Austrian border and decided to do the Austrian customs the following morning. Bill told me to put a new tacho card in and that we would be away after having eight hours sleep.
We were on our way just after 9 a.m. on the Wednesday morning and Billy said that he would stop at a layby on the Autobahn near a place called Melk, where we would have some lunch and say our good byes.
It was about 1 p.m. by the time that I arrived at the steel works near Linz, I can’t remember having any problems finding the place. Another English motor was in the loading lane in front of me and he told me that he had only just arrived. I think that he didn’t tell me his name, he was a big over weight fellow who I think may of have been an owner driver as there was no company name on the tilt.
He was arguing with the loading gang who wanted him to pull the tilt cover to the front of the cab so that they could load the coils of steel through the roof with their overhead crane. This guy tried to explain that it was easier for him to strip one of the sides out and that all they had to do was to get one of their big fork lifts from another part of the site to load him.
To save a bit of time I told him that I would give him a hand to pull the sheet forward. To be honest, I did all the work passing down the roof board to him while he threw them on the ground. As the Turkish guest arbiters were loading him by chocking in the coils, I started taking out my tilt cord and getting my tilt ready.
At least, or so I thought, I can follow this bloke back to Zeebrugge and have somebody to talk to when I parked up for the night. He had obviously used lots of truck stops over the years so I thought that he might know somewhere decent where we can park up for the night.
After he was loaded, I climbed up on top of his tilt to pull the cover to the back of the trailer and he said that he was just nipping into the office to get his paperwork. It didn’t seem more than a coincidence that he arrived back just as I had finished lacing up his tilt. He walked around as if he was inspecting it and said to me “you have done a good job there”. He climbed into his cab and I thought that he was just pulling forward to give the loaders a bit more room. I was wrong, he didn’t even say good bye, he just drove off towards the gate and that was the last that I ever saw of him.
I wasn’t that particularly bothered, I had a map so all I had to do was head back to the border at Scharding and then I could pick up the autobahn network all the way back to Zeebrugge.
After I was loaded, I was lacing up the tilt when Billy arrived and pulled up behind me. I asked him what he was doing there and he told me that when he arrived at the aluminum works, they had told him that his load would not be ready until the following day. He had phoned Graham who was the import manager and he told Billy that there was another load which was ready at the steel works in Linz. He told Billy to go to Linz and that he would send Frank into Amstetton as Frank was on his way up from Wiener Nuestadt.
By 4 p.m. Billy was loaded (I think) for Chester and I was loaded for Blackburn so we set off hoping to cross from Austria into West Germany that night.
Now I am not absolutely certain but I seem to think that back then, driving in the E.E.C. (The European Economic Community) you were allowed to do 9 hour shifts with an 11 hour rest period and that on two occasions during the week you could do 2 x 10 hour shifts and have two x 8 hour rest periods. I might be wrong so hopefully somebody will put me right.
Quite often at the West German border posts we were asked to show our Tacho cards and if the card showed that you had had an eight hour rest period on it and that you had not been speeding then usually you had no problems. There were the odd occasions when the B.A.G., known by the British drivers as the Bundes Autobahn Gestapo (Traffic Police) who would ask to see two of your Tacho cards while they were doing a vehicle check.
Billy and I gave it ‘big licks’ across West Germany and Holland on the Thursday and the Friday and caught the North Sea Ferries freighter from Europort to Ipswich on the Friday night.
I arrived home on the Saturday afternoon and even with all the sitting around and the hanging about, I had had a great experience and, on the whole, I had really enjoyed myself.
