bestbooties:
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
Thanks for that Sandway. Not a Centurion or Chieftain, which are what I drove, but same sort of thing. At a guess I would say that it is AmericanAs a former Chieftain driving instructor, my tank recognition tells me that the tank shown looks like an M48A1 Patton. (USA).
Just wondering bestbooties. But as you are in Staffordshire. were you 16/5th by any chance? I was 2nd Royal Tank Regiment.
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
bestbooties:
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
Thanks for that Sandway. Not a Centurion or Chieftain, which are what I drove, but same sort of thing. At a guess I would say that it is AmericanAs a former Chieftain driving instructor, my tank recognition tells me that the tank shown looks like an M48A1 Patton. (USA).
Just wondering bestbooties. But as you are in Staffordshire. were you 16/5th by any chance? I was 2nd Royal Tank Regiment.
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.
You could be on the road for years and then suddenly meet someone you hadnât seen ages. Or you could meet someone you knew next trip and never see them again. I never bumped into Black Jack of Hicks again but I did bump into Jeff Stringfellow of Duxburyâs a year later. I was in the National having done three drops in Yugo and went to reception to get the key to a room for a shower. On the wall near reception was where the telexes were pinned up with details of return loads that were available. Often our office sent our return load details here to await our collection. Anyway, I met Jeff and another driver whose name was, I think, Mick and they were on their way to Baghdad. Mick came from Nottingham, as did Jeff, and he had this tasty girl friend with him but the Iraqi Embassy wouldnât give her a visa. As I had got on well with Jeff in Volos he asked me if I would take Mickâs girlfriend back to the UK with me. Well, the gentleman that I am I couldnât refuse, could I. But first I had to pick up my reload which was three farm tractors from a factory somewhere behind the National. Because the load was very light the company routed me back via Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and France. A most enjoyable and hassle free route.
During the journey back I found out from Mickâs girlfriend (canât now remember her name) that she hardly knew Mick. He was a customer in the nightclub where she worked and only agreed to go on the trip with him because it sounded like a good crack. I think she was very glad to be going home though. When we got to Dover I found a driver from the Nottingham area to take her the rest of the way home. A couple of years later I met Mick again and asked about his girlfriend. He said he hadnât seen her since although he had been back to the nightclub. He had asked after her but been told she had got another job. I reckon she was worried Mick was trying to get her to the M/E to sell her into slavery!!!
Talking about characters and only meeting people once. I was somewhere well down the road in a room packed full of drivers of all nationalities at some god forsaken border. It was heaving and stinking and very noisy and we were all trying to get to the little window at the front to put our papers in when suddenly this deep booming voice could be heard. âExcuse meâ âexcuse meâ excuse me" came the booming voice. I looked to see what was happening but all I could see was a TIR carnet and other paperwork moving towards the little window above the heads of all the other drivers. âExcuse meâ excuse me Iâm British" excuse me" as he reached the window. Thank you he said to nobody in particular as the window opened and his paperwork disappeared inside. It was there only a few minutes after which it was shoved back out for------------------ Andrew Wilson Young, Astran Owner Driver to pick up and push his way back through the crowd thanking everyone as he went. Never saw him again either but I was told he normally did Doha virtually non stop. I can well believe it if he spent so little time doing customs.
bestbooties:
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.
You know what they say Ian, if you canât take a joke then you shouldnât of joined. 
Now then Sandway, maybe you can answer this question that I asked on another thread over four years ago.
Was the guy with the beard on the right in this photo a Promotors driver in the early eighties. You might remember a hotel where we used to stop in Austria which was between Salzburg and Vienna in a village called Saint Valentine, it wasnât far from the Mauthausen concentration camp and I am sure that I met up with him along with a few other British drivers but I canât remember any of their names.
I think that the guy driving the Brighton Van Hire was called Lawrence and he told me that he was from Hastings. Many years later when people started putting Long Distance Diaries on here I often wondered if this was Lawrence Kiely.
B.T.W. I think that the place behind The National Hotel in Belgrade where we used to reload the tractors from was called Zenum. I have a feeling that we also picked up spare parts for Yugo cars somewhere in the same area.
mushroomman:
bestbooties:
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.You know what they say Ian, if you canât take a joke then you shouldnât of joined.
Now then Sandway, maybe you can answer this question that I asked on another thread over four years ago.
Was the guy with the beard on the right in this photo a Promotors driver in the early eighties. You might remember a hotel where we used to stop in Austria which was between Salzburg and Vienna in a village called Saint Valentine, it wasnât far from the Mauthausen concentration camp and I am sure that I met up with him along with a few other British drivers but I canât remember any of their names.
I think that the guy driving the Brighton Van Hire was called Lawrence and he told me that he was from Hastings. Many years later when people started putting Long Distance Diaries on here I often wondered if this was Lawrence Kiely.
Youâve got me there mushroomman. I donât ever remember Promotor hiring in lorries from Brighton VH. Can you tell the year from the reg? Nor that kind of load on what are, I think, a couple of our stripped down supercubes. As for drivers. I donât recognise anyone but I have a few names who drove for us at that time with beards. John Preece.(Hmmm). Clive (not Newman) from Maidstone. Tony Grainger (beards to dark for him). John Mantle (possible). Brian Holmes (donât think so). John Barclay (definitely not). We did have part time drivers on from time to time. I donât seem to have helped there much but maybe Micky T can help.
Does the Promotor lorry have the Promotor name on or is it our Afro Camion painted one? Difficult to tell with my poor eyesight.
Sorry Sandway if I didnât make myself clear. 
The Brighton Van Hire Transcon was nothing to do with Promotors apart from the two drivers who looks like they have teamed up together along the way for the trip. I remember meeting the guy with the beard in Saint Valentines where a couple of Promotors drivers used to stop.
Now you have got me thinking, is it an Afro Camion lorry and could the guy who took the photo be the Promotors/Afro Camion driver. 
I remember loading Yugo tractors from Zenum in Belgrade but I canât remember where I delivered them to in the U.K. 
I assume the Promotor lorry and the Brighton VH lorry are both pulling Promotor loads as they are identical. We certainly did hire in units as and when needed.
sandway:
mushroomman:
bestbooties:
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.You know what they say Ian, if you canât take a joke then you shouldnât of joined.
Now then Sandway, maybe you can answer this question that I asked on another thread over four years ago.
Was the guy with the beard on the right in this photo a Promotors driver in the early eighties. You might remember a hotel where we used to stop in Austria which was between Salzburg and Vienna in a village called Saint Valentine, it wasnât far from the Mauthausen concentration camp and I am sure that I met up with him along with a few other British drivers but I canât remember any of their names.
I think that the guy driving the Brighton Van Hire was called Lawrence and he told me that he was from Hastings. Many years later when people started putting Long Distance Diaries on here I often wondered if this was Lawrence Kiely.
Youâve got me there mushroomman. I donât ever remember Promotor hiring in lorries from Brighton VH. Can you tell the year from the reg? Nor that kind of load on what are, I think, a couple of our stripped down supercubes. As for drivers. I donât recognise anyone but I have a few names who drove for us at that time with beards. John Preece.(Hmmm). Clive (not Newman) from Maidstone. Tony Grainger (beards to dark for him). John Mantle (possible). Brian Holmes (donât think so). John Barclay (definitely not). We did have part time drivers on from time to time. I donât seem to have helped there much but maybe Micky T can help.
Does the Promotor lorry have the Promotor name on or is it our Afro Camion painted one? Difficult to tell with my poor eyesight.
The guy on the right in the photo looks like John Mantle. He was working as a fitter on Proâs when I left in 83, but he went on to drive and I met up with him again when he went onto Kepstowe as a driver. So we met up many times in Moscow.
Clive, from Maidstone, was Clive Turner, also known as the Arab. His hair and beard were jet black.
The Yugo car factory was at Kragujevac. There is a museum there which holds the artefacts of the schoolchildren and teachers, who were killed by the Germans during World War 2. They were shot in reprisal for a German patrol, who were ambushed and killed by Partisans. Pam and I were taken there by a woman from the Yugo factory, who showed us around and explained the history to us.
We used to deliver the car parts in Reading. The cars were shipped over to Reading, left hand drive and the staff at Reading changed them to right hand drive. New dash etc. We then took the L.H.D. parts back to Kragujevav.
bestbooties:
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
bestbooties:
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
Thanks for that Sandway. Not a Centurion or Chieftain, which are what I drove, but same sort of thing. At a guess I would say that it is AmericanAs a former Chieftain driving instructor, my tank recognition tells me that the tank shown looks like an M48A1 Patton. (USA).
Just wondering bestbooties. But as you are in Staffordshire. were you 16/5th by any chance? I was 2nd Royal Tank Regiment.
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.
Yeah, I remember the RHG before they amalgamated. I had a relation, through marriage who served in the RHG. He had to shoot one of his lads who ran amok with an S.L.R. in the guardroom one night while they were in N.I.
As I said, I was a Tankie, so never went anywhere near horses. However, I drove a few old dogs, of tanks. I trained as a driver on Chieftain 2 and drove them in Hohne. When we went to Berlin in 1969, to take over from the 9th/12th, while they went on leave and courses I had to train on Cents and drove them in Berlin, on the crash out.
Yes you are right Micky T. Clive Turner lived in Maidstone and used to park his lorry down by the river where the market was held years ago. I think the new courthouse has been built there now. I know Clive went to get his lorry one day and was a bit late. When he got there he was almost hemmed in by cars and only just managed to get out. Dave Stagg our transport manager would have loved that excuse. When he left Promotor he went back to driving busses for the corporation in Maidstone.
Well done Mick, Kragujevac is another place that I have never heard of for nearly thirty years and the car parts did go to Reading.
The only time that I can think of when I met you and Pam was in The Dolphin Bar in the passenger terminal in Dover Eastern Docks in 1980. I was with Ken Singleton and Lee Marland, you came over to say hello and Pam went off to buy a newspaper or something.
After having another look at that photo I am wondering if they were Baily Bridge sections. Dow Freight did a couple of similar looking loads, we used to load them in Stockport from a firm called Thomas Storie or Storie Brothers, bridge builders. I remember once running down to Ankara with a Whittles driver from Preston who was delivering some bridge sections down to Basra when the Iraq/Iran war was on and he had also loaded in Stockport.
Another place where we used to backload out of Yugo was in a little town somewhere near Celje or Kranji with large rolls of newsprint for The Sporting Times in London. I remember meeting up with an English O.H.S. driver with a Seddon who gave me directions of how to find the place as he had been there before.
Regards Steve.
I loaded back from Yugo several times, as well as tyres from Nis, car clutch assemblies, oil filters etc.
On the occasion I had an engine failure on the Tapline and Big Cliff from Funstons towed and topped me back to the National where I rebuilt the engine to drive home, I loaded back with tractor tyres from somewhere not far from the National.
I bet that there were a few drivers Ian who back loaded from Tiger Tyres at Pirot, not too far from that tunnel where the policeman in the white uniform was always on duty, day and night. 
mushroomman:
I bet that there were a few drivers Ian who back loaded from Tiger Tyres at Pirot, not too far from that tunnel where the policeman in the white uniform was always on duty, day and night.
There canât be many drivers who didnât load Tiger Tyres in those days!!!
mushroomman:
I bet that there were a few drivers Ian who back loaded from Tiger Tyres at Pirot, not too far from that tunnel where the policeman in the white uniform was always on duty, day and night.
The funny thing was that in all of the trips that I made to Yugo, I never loaded tyres from Pirot. Usually it was pine furniture from Slovenia.
However, my usual trick was to be out in Yugo over the Christmas and New Year. In 78 I tipped at Zagreb on Xmas Day and they then ran me to Nis, to reload television sets. When I reported to the factory in Nis I was told that the wood for the t.v. cases had not arrived and would not be there for at least a week. Then, they had to make the t.v.s. So Promotor ran me all the way across Yugo, to load tinned fish at Pula, at the bottom of the Istra.
I ended up spending New Year in Zagreb, but the Zagreb Motel was closed. So I stopped at the P.T.T. Motel.
Sometime in the early 80âs I had a 14 ton forklift on board to be tipped in a quarry near Tuzla, south east of Slavonski Brod. When I finally found the place it was in the back of beyond. They had no ramp to unload the forklift so they found an old JCB type machine and built one from mainly earth. I thought this is a recipe for disaster and stood well back but, surprise surprise, it came off no trouble which was a bit of a let down as I had a couple of rolls of film with me that trip and was looking forward to it falling over.
Donât know where or when this picture was taken but at a guess Iâd say it was 83 and could be a delivery to the Steel mill at Smederavo, 50km south of Belgrade.
Whilst many of us have a tale to tell, did those tales fill you with pride or make you cringe back into your boots. The next little anecdote I am about to tell could fall into either camp.
I was in Yugo sometime in 1979 or 80. I had done a couple of drops and ended up at the National with one drop, in Bucharest, still to do. This last drop was two pallets of booze for the Lucas stand at an exhibition which was opening in about 4 or 5 days time. Now being a bit adventuresome (or should that be foolish) I didnât want to head up to the border south of Timisora as it seemed a long way round and I knew from looking at the map there was a crossing near Turnu Severin. I asked around and a few drivers thought you could cross into Romania there. I knew a big hydroelectricity power plant and dam were finished in 1972 so I decided I could cross there and off I went early next morning. I canât remember the exact route but it entailed heading down towards Nis chucking a left and heading up towards the border. It was a long drag, I think about 280 miles before I came to a wide expanse of water. This was the lake formed by the dam and Romania was on the other side. I followed the road along the Yugo side of the lake and started to climb. The road got narrower and there where overhanging rocks almost blocking my way. I turned a corner and the road almost disappeared into the mountain. I stopped, looked ahead and then made the fatal decision, âyes, thereâs enough room to get throughâ. I inched forward, almost got the whole rig through before I was brought to a grinding halt. I had become wedged in. I got out to have a look at my situation and found the back 4 or 5 feet on the top corner of my tilt ripped and hanging down. âOh blowâ (or words to that effect) I said to myself. It was at this point a âdobra danâ in a van came towards me. He couldnât get by so got out, scratched his head and indicated I should go back. Yes I thought, easier said than done. Anyway, with his help I did get out and the reversed half a mile back down the road being careful not to get to near the edge as the lake was down below. After much head scratching I knew I had to go back to the national, which I did, arriving late evening.
Early next morning I drove down to our agent near the customs and told them I needed my tilt repaired immediately as I only had a few days left to get to Bucharest. They said thats impossible as the whole of Serbia is about to go on a 5 day holiday . They then rang Promotors office in the UK. I thought, Oh bother, why did they have to do that. Peter Calderwood (Mr Promotor) came on the line. You have to deliver that load to Bucharest on time. Do whatever is needed. I went back to the National and thought ok, its not the end of the world. I will do the repairs myself or at least bodge up a repair. I carefully prised the plomb off and kept it safe ready to put back later then got up inside the trailer. Not sure where the wire and nails came from but by late afternoon I had done a repair that might pass inspection in pouring rain, in the middle of the night and the customs official was dead tired. I had also removed a couple of bottles of brandy from the load thinking they might come in useful later on.
That evening, after having a shower in a room at the National and a meal in the restaurant I drove up to the border that I should have been at 24 hours earlier and guess what!!! It was raining hard, it was dark and the customs official wanted to get his head down. He sent his boy out to inspect the plomb but the boy started a thorough inspection of the trailer. Just before he got to the damaged section his boss hollered out âjust inspect the plombâ. Obviously he wanted to go to bed as I was the only lorry there and as the half drowned boy didnât need telling twice he shot round the back of the trailer. Quickly looked at the plomb and was gone.
I made my way to Bucharest, found the Lucas stand and delivered the two pallets of booze on time. I had to tell the Lucas boys that they had lost two bottles of Brandy to the customs men, which were of course under my bunk (the brandy not the customs men). They thanked me profusely and shook my hand. Whats that for I enquired. Well we sent an extra 10% to cover losses en route. As I left I thought well you could have given me a bottle for getting most of the load through intact. Still, I knew I had two bottles under my bunk that would help me sleep well for the next few nights.
Promotor got that Tigar tyre job around 1972 when a guy walked into the office (shawfield park) and asked Peter if he ever sent motors down to yugo and if so did we want any reloads, he was from a tyre firm in Coulsdon next to the railway bridge, I thought Peter was gonna kiss him, we was struggling for reloads at the time so it couldnât have come at a better time, the first couple of reloads went to the depot then they started going further afield, I bought one load back from Pirot cleared at Dover, got back to yard and was sent on to s.Ireland, another lot of customs at Fishguard. I must admit it was an easy job then cos we was always guaranteed a backload from there.
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
sandway:
Micky T. Not all my loads were for the exhibitions in Baghdad. On one trip, John Preece and I shipped over on the Koper ferry, cleared customs in Falluga and had to drive way up north to tip in Sulamania, Kurdistan. We were loaded with 3 JCBâs and spare parts.Tell me, what did you do to upset Staggie. Not that you had to do much I know. I didnât think I was his blue eyed boy, far from it but I used the ferry a number of times.
One night, coming down from Scharding to Wells, I was climbing up a steep drag, in the snow. Approaching a right hand bend a cement mixer overtook me and cut me up. I pulled to the right and then slid through the snow towards a sheer drop. Eventually a wrecker came up from Wells and pulled me clear. I drove down to Wells and paid for the tow, which cost about ÂŁ500. It was about 10pm in England and I phoned Dave at home to tell him what had happened. He swore a lot and then there was a loud crash. The phone went dead. When I phoned him in the office the next morning he said âYou caused the biggest row that there has ever been in my house, last nightâ. Not overly bothered I said, âwhy was that thenâ. Slagg replies, âBecause I became so annoyed with you I threw the phone across the room and it smashed against the wall. Then I had my wife on my case all bloody nightâ. So I replied, âWell it was your fault for not being able to control your temper, thenâ and hung up. After that our relationship was not all that friendly.
He was one horrible geezer, he came to the firm as an o/d with a transit and trailer, he was living, for the firm, in Callela in Spain picking up repat cars for us to pick up when we didnât have any other load. I had numerous rows with him while he was there because of his attitude
