After much searching I have finally found another photo of CJN 286X. It was taken at The Baghdad Fair and shows John hooked up to the Lansing Road Show trailer. I see the Promotor name on the headboard still looks a mess.
Hi Guys, I must admit that I have never seen that photo of the three Dow trucks at Carissio before so please keep them coming. 
What I can say is thatâs my M.A.N. with the union flags on the door parked in the middle so I must of been there when that photo was taken but I was probably in the bar at the time. 
At first, the white Scania that is parked further along I thought belonged to Tony Febland from Blackpool who had a red livery for many years but I have a feeling that they might of changed their colours to white round about 1987 although now I am thinking if it could of belonged to Ferry Freighting, I am certain that John McVey who drove for Feblandâs for may years would know more about it.
The Moorlock and the Comart photo was first shown on The Old Companies From Stoke On Trent thread which was started by Jeff, The Flying Foden and is well worth a read from start to finish. There are some brilliant old photo on there from the 70s/80s including many great companies like Thor, Berrisfordâs, Ibis and Morgan Freight etc.
You were correct Efes, most of the Dow motors were named after racehorses and girls who worked or had some connection with the company. The name on that motor that I had in the photo was called Manning Grey but as I have never had any interest in horses I affectionately called it Dobbin.
My first motor was called Sandra who was the receptionist in the Stockport office when I first started and my second motor was called Irene, although I never met or knew who Irene was.
I only worked there from 1980 until 1987 when they finished and I never met a driver who worked for them called Dennis. There was a truck named Red Rum and I have a feeling that it was a Ford Transcontinental so maybe that Dennis had worked there in the seventies. 
The National Hotel in Belgrade certainly brings back a few memories for me which I am sure brings back a few smiles to a lot of people who stayed there. 
The National Hotel, Belgrade. (Photo taken from Trucknet)
Irene In Baghdad.
Early May 1983 saw me in Herr Staggâs office. âUsed to be in the building trade didnât you Mr Holmes?â he casually asked. âWhat was it, carpenter, decorator?â. We had all heard it before and immediately alarm bells started ringing. Herr Stagg wasnât interested in your past only what he could get out of you in the future. âMaybe, could have been, possibly, why are you askingâ were the obvious replies. âWell, Iâve taken on this little job specially for youâ he said. It was at that point I knew I was doomed. No point in arguing. Either find another job or accept your fate. âDonât worryâ he said. âYouâll love it. Hotel every night, all found, very little driving and you get to come home by trainâ.
Dave then gave me the lowdown on the job. I was to build a stand in the Messe in Koln for a company from London. They owned the stand and it was all crated up in four or five crates. Dave would have it loaded in one of our 7.5t box lorries and I was to trundle it out to Koln, the load was on an ATA carnet so clear customs, build the stand, put the crates back in the lorry which was to remain in the exhibition ground and then come home by train. I was to go out five days later to dismantle the stand and bring it back. A few questions immediately came to mind. What tools do I need, how much can I spend on hotels and as almost all stands are built by two or more people will I be paid more for doing it myself. It was at this point a beetroot colour always appeared on his neck before working its way up his face to the top of his head. Blimey I hope Iâm not going to be blamed if he has a heart attack I thought. It was at this point all the drivers knew it was time to make a tactical retreat before a telephone or stapler was hurled at you.
A few days later saw me in the Messe, or Exhibition ground, in Koln. It was a very simple procedure to clear customs at a Messe in Germany especially if the goods were on an ATA carnet. I also had to visit the exhibition organisers office to identify the space allocated to us to build the stand and at the same time find some accommodation for myself. They always had a list of small guest houses situated nearby and I chose one just around the corner. A telephone call by a young girl in the office secured a room for me for the next five nights and a request for a forklift in the same office saw the crates unloaded and placed on the ground around the stand. By then I was up and running. However, it wasnât all plain sailing. After laying the carpet I went in search of the tools Herr Stagg had told me were in one of the crates. With the system being installed a ratchet allen key was needed and I couldnât find one anywhere. I had brought some ordinary allen keys out with me so made a start erecting the stands using them but I was getting nowhere fast. Whilst I was struggling to make a show a super efficient German team of standfitters on the other side of the isle took pity on me and came over with a couple of their old ratchet tools and presented them to me. I must admit I felt very humble by their actions but at the same time hugely relieved as I would never have completed the job without their help.
The digs I had booked were fine. It was just a B & B in a small town house and I was their first ever customer. They were a young couple who ran it and there was only one letting room. OK by me but they didnât do an evening meal so I went out in the evening and found this restaurant run by a Dutchman. It was great. I remember they did a speciality dish of white asparagus every evening as a starter. I got talking to the Dutchman and found he did letting rooms above the restaurant so booked myself in for when I returned for the pullout. I completed the build and handed it over in the morning the day before the exhibition was due to open. As I had nothing to do for the rest of the day I did the tourist bit down by the river and at the same time checked out the train times. Now Iâm not 100% sure but I think I got a train from Koln direct through to Oostende, no changing anywhere. I departed early next morning for an uneventful train journey except for one thing that happened en route. As train approached the border with Belgium, German police or immigration officials came round to check passports. I had with me one of my ninety page passports almost full of stamps from all over. The official started going through it page at a time and after what seemed like an age he looked at me and said or made a sound like âphewâ then handed it back and was gone. Once we had crossed the border the procedure was repeated by the Belgiums only this time the two officials didnât bother with anyone else. They came straight to me and asked for my passport. After thumbing through it they asked a few questions looked at one another almost in disbelief, gave it back to me and disappeared. No doubt going back to discuss it with their German counterparts.
Four or five days later I was back in Koln for the pullout. For some strange reason Dave decided I could have help dismantling the stand and made arrangements for Tommy Birch to help. Iâm not sure if Tommy was making a delivery to the fairground or to the Ford factory in the town but I certainly didnât complain. It only took a couple of days to wrap the job up do customs and be on my way home. Wasnât the most exciting of jobs but it was different.
OK, in response to the identification of the D series driver in the group photo, I have studied the guys for quite a time and can only say that I think at around that time KKP was the mount of Roger Oakley and the guy sitting on the left and not looking at the camera does look like Roger, then again the guy at bottom right certainly bares a resemblance to Steve Lacy !! so the plot thickens. Incidentally Dave Thomas was a distant relative of mine so I can confirm that he is definately not in the photo! In any case by the time that photo was taken Dave was firmly in place in the office at Shawfield Park. The photo of the National Hotel in Belgrade which features later in the post I found very interesting. As you all know it was something of a second home to Pros, drivers so we knew it pretty well so around 3 years ago on an eastern European tour with the IBM trailer we found ourselves in Belgrade. The guy with me had never been there before so on a day off I showed him the sights including the âNationalâ, yes, its still there, still the same but not now on the outskirts of town as the town has now grown so much that it has now reached the hotel! We also took in the well known hilly street in the old Turkish quarter better known as âUp and down streetâ where the local boys stood around drinking whilst watching the local talent who were walking âup and downâ All pretty much the same but more of a tourist trap these days. Sadly the city seems to have stood still in many ways, Serbia having sold out big style to Russian investment over the last 20 years or so. They have built a new ring road and river crossing though to the east of the city and put a weight limit on that rickety old bridge you had to cross in order to get to the customs.
Thanks for the reply Tony. Can you tell us what type of lorry KKP was. Rigid, artic, box or car transporter? Iâm fairly sure Steve Lacy wasnât working for Proâs in 74/75 and I didnât think he went further east than Nis. Were there any D Series artics still operating when you joined?
Must have been interesting visiting the National again. Were there any telexâs offering return loads still pinned to the board opposite reception and did any of the Georgeâs remember you. I have attached a photo of a Jan de Lely lorry. Would Bump into one of theirs in the most obscure of places in Yugo. I remember on one occasion being weekended at the Zagreb Hotel with one of their drivers. It may have been the same trip I was there with the two Dow guys and Mr Long from Astran. We were all pretty bored by Saturday afternoon and somebody suggested we went to the cinema in town as âThe Deer Hunterâ was being shown. Five of us piled into one lorry and off we went. We found the cinema bought our tickets and went in. The place was packed and the film had just started. We were then shown to our seats, the only ones available by that time. They were in the very first row, almost touching the screen. Do you remember in the film where the American guy was in the cage in the water. Well from where we were sitting it felt like you were in the cage with him. I have never had such an uncomfortable experience in a cinema before. Give me the back row anytime!
Another one for you Tony. Iâm guessing all these photos were taken around 76. I know you werenât involved in the job but do you remember anything about them. Looks like decking of some kind and I would think the destination was Saudi.
I have mentioned photobucketâs crass posturing a couple of times today on other pages. I have attached two photos of George Fardell and his beloved F10 Volvo. I have shown the first photo before on here as well as seeing it on other web sites, its quite a popular picture. The second photo is from bubblemans âScrapbook Memoriesâ with the wording âproudly hosted on photobucketâ superimposed on the bottom left.
I assume from this that âbubblemanâ was the originator of that particular picture and I would like to thank him for a great shot. Iâve also added another photo courtesy of M20 Truck Photos which I donât think has been aired on here before.
Thatâs Biddenden Bugsy!
Nottsnortherner:
OK, in response to the identification of the D series driver in the group photo, I have studied the guys for quite a time and can only say that I think at around that time KKP was the mount of Roger Oakley and the guy sitting on the left and not looking at the camera does look like Roger, then again the guy at bottom right certainly bares a resemblance to Steve Lacy !! so the plot thickens. Incidentally Dave Thomas was a distant relative of mine so I can confirm that he is definately not in the photo! In any case by the time that photo was taken Dave was firmly in place in the office at Shawfield Park. The photo of the National Hotel in Belgrade which features later in the post I found very interesting. As you all know it was something of a second home to Pros, drivers so we knew it pretty well so around 3 years ago on an eastern European tour with the IBM trailer we found ourselves in Belgrade. The guy with me had never been there before so on a day off I showed him the sights including the âNationalâ, yes, its still there, still the same but not now on the outskirts of town as the town has now grown so much that it has now reached the hotel! We also took in the well known hilly street in the old Turkish quarter better known as âUp and down streetâ where the local boys stood around drinking whilst watching the local talent who were walking âup and downâ All pretty much the same but more of a tourist trap these days. Sadly the city seems to have stood still in many ways, Serbia having sold out big style to Russian investment over the last 20 years or so. They have built a new ring road and river crossing though to the east of the city and put a weight limit on that rickety old bridge you had to cross in order to get to the customs.
Steve Lacy was a âT form Charlieâ and perhaps only once got as far as Yugo (if ever). Happily I didnât bump into him too often.
Iâd love to see more photos of The National which was a second home for many of us. I stopped driving for Promotor in 1986 and ended up driving (by car) to Plovdiv for a exhibition and I stopped on my way through just before the start of the war. I was greeted with a âlong time no see Georgeâ from one of the old boys. Inflation was soaring, change DM20 to Dinar and by the next day the Dinar were worth less than half. We ended paying in DM for everything as the local currency was becoming valueless - a sure sign of an impending war
Once I remember a Turkish truck arriving and the entire staff (very large and powerfully built staff) of The National ran out and forcefully told him to leave⌠Obviously not keen on their former neighbours. I was quite surprised at how vehement that staff were that Turks were not allowed.
Posted on TNUK a while back but repeated just for you Efes.
sandway:
Posted on TNUK a while back but repeated just for you Efes.
I think he lookâs more like tommy DochertyâŚ
Efes:
Thatâs Biddenden Bugsy!
Ye, well, if you say so! Your eyes are younger than mine Efes.
Pretty sure that was Bugsyâs motor tooâŚ
Over the years we did a fair bit of work for JCB. Not masses but for a small company it was significant. However, the tractors werenât one of my favourite loads. The sheets always proved difficult to tie down, the load stuck out the top and I had the machines move on more than one occasion.
SEMAINE BRITANNIQUE au MAROC
12-16 MARS 1990
Event organiser Promotor Exhibitions
Venue; Royal Mansour Hotel Casablanca Morocco.
- The initial put in.
During 1989 and the beginning of 1990 Promotor, or to be more precise, Promotor Director Dave Stagg, organised a British Trade week event in Morocco to take place in Casablanca. These events donât happen overnight and much forward planning is required, an absolute minimum of fifteen months is needed even for small events such as this one, well two actually as a another event was to take place a few weeks later in Tunisia. These two exhibitions were to prove to be be the pinnacle of Daveâs career, his defining moment even more glorious than his association with the British Group participation at the 1993 Tehran International Trade Fair that I covered recently. From being an OD in the early 70âs, to driving a small Ford D Series for Promotor before sitting behind a desk as our Transport Manager and finally gaining the lofty position of Company Director. Dave had done it all.
Although he was the driving force behind the two events he needed a team behind him. As Iâve said before you werenât just employed as a driver when you joined the Promotor. I flew out in advance to make sure all arrangements were in place. Our customs agent with his onsite crew and machinery were pivotal to the âput inâ together with the back room boys at the Royal Mansour Hotel. This hotel was owned by the King of Morocco and so it seemed, the staff had been told to pull out all the stops for us. The only problem for us was the cost of the rooms so we stayed around the corner in The King George V Hotel. Because of the problem of parking our lorries in the city we didnât send any of them out instead contracting a French company to transport the goods.
Dave âLittle Daveâ Lloyd flew out a few days after me whilst Trevor Thayre drove a converted London bus for the BBC via Tangiers. Once we were there we worked onsite during the build up to the opening of the exhibition. Dave Stagg flew in with some early exhibitors three or four days before the opening day. We employed George Stavaros from Lanaka to build the stands which were shipped to Morocco in a twenty foot container. George would also be building the stands in Tunis for us. He brought along five of his men from Cyprus as well as his wife Alexandria. I think it was her job to find a good fish restaurant every day for lunch. However, George would always say âI know this great little place for lunchâ as if he had been there many times before. We would all sit down to a huge but simple feast with plenty of wine and he always picked up the bill. What a great bloke he was.
We had two areas at our disposal in and around the hotel in which the stands were to be built. The inside area was the banqueting hall on the first floor whilst outside we used a parking area on the side of the hotel. This wasnât ideal as it was on the main drag but because of that received a lot of attention and was a good advert for the event. Dave asked me to come up with an idea for separating the companies exhibiting on the outside area. We needed to keep the area as open as possible whilst still giving a defined boundary to each stand. I decided scaffolding would do the trick and as we had worked with SGB on a previous exhibition I talked them into designing and providing the metalwork in exchange for free advertising in both Casablanca and Tunis. Duncan Displays from Seal near Sevenoaks constructed the lighting boxes which sat on top of the scaffold and gave the area the wow factor. Little Dave and I would handle the assembly of the stands whilst the hotels electrician wired up the electrics for us. The only problem we had was the rain, it didnât stop till weâd finished the build. Yes, sods law!
There are no scintillating or even tittalating stories of daring do or escapades concerning the ladies to tell although I did get a letter six months later from a young lady I met asking me to marry her. As she started the letter âDear Holmesâ Iâm not totally convinced of her motives, though British passport comes to mind.
These next few posts will purely be a pictorial record of âBritish Week in Moroccoâ showing the practical side of what is involved in setting up such an event. For those not interested look away now!
Thanks Brian for sharing these very interesting posts with us, as somebody said on here years ago âif we canât take the time to share these stories now then they will all be forgotten about for everâ.
I can remember waiting at the Turkish border for three days trying to get hold of a wide load permit that was supposed to be coming from Ankara. I suppose that now you would just send a message to somebodyâs mobile phone and that would be acceptable.
I would like to share this National Hotel story with you guys as I think that it might sound familiar to one of you.
On my first trip to Belgrade I was running with an old fellow called Ken Singleton and we arrived at the National late on a Friday afternoon. There was another Dow driver there called Barry Longden and as we were all clearing customs down in the docks next to The Danube we decided to stay at the National and run into Belgrade early on the Monday morning.
Now I remember Barry telling me that when he started running down to the Middle East the road outside the National was still cobbled but I canât remember which year it was. There was a short video on one of the threads a couple of weeks ago from 1975 and it shown that just past The National the road was bitumen so it must of been before 1975 that Barry was running down there. I do remember that he drove for Ashworthâs of Burnley and Jenkinsonâs from Salford before he started at Dow.
Well Ken, Barry and myself walked into the reception area and the first thing that they did was to check all the telexes to see which other British guys were in the area and also to see who was loading from where. Then we walked into the restaurant to be greeted by two waiters who were both wearing shabby black suits and ties. As Barry and Ken both said âhello Georgeâ it seemed to me that they had known him for a few years. Ken asked for three Pevoâs, we sat down at a table and a couple of minutes later the old George from that photo, the W.C. Fields look a like came over to us with a tray with three bottle of beer on it and four glasses. If you remember the beer sometimes came in brown bottles and sometimes it came in green bottles, all from the same brand which I think was called Bip.
So old George, puts the tray down on the table and takes off one of the caps off one of the bottles and then pours about an inch of the beer into one of the glasses. He then drinks the beer in the glass and with a smile on his face he then gives Ken the opened bottle and a glass. I am thinking whatâs going on here but Ken just smiles back at him. Then George opens the second bottle, he pours about an inch of beer into his glass, he swallows it in one go and sayâs âthatâs O.K.â then passes the opened bottle with a glass over to Barry who looks like he has seen it all before.
Then George opens the third bottle, he pours about two inches of beer into his glass, takes a drink of it, swills it around his mouth for a few seconds, swallows it then he puts the bottle and a glass in front of me and sayâs " that is a very good year" and then walks off.
I really felt Gobsmacked and probably looked like it as Ken and Barry just burst out laughing at me, the strange thing was that I saw George do this on a couple of occasions over the years.
Like most of the drivers who stopped at The National in the 70âs/80âs the only words of Yugoslav that I could ever speak was Dobra Dan George, Ein Pevo and a Mixed Grill.
The National Hotel, Belgrade.
Barry Longden.
Ken Singleton.
Great little anecdotes there mushroomman. Loved the one about the beer, donât think Iâve heard it before. Certainly stories still to be told. Iâm relating a couple of short ones which I hope I havenât told before.
The first one concerns a dutch driver. We were both in Belgrade customs and having plenty of agro. I made my way to an office to try and sort out the problem. This dutchman follows me in, throws his papers on the desk of the lacklustre official and gives him a right earful. Not in dutch or english but in the Serbo Croat lingo. This certainly did the trick and the Yugo finally got his ar-e in gear which helped my cause also. I thanked the driver and asked how long it had taken him to become proficient in the language. âSix monthsâ he said. What were you doing to learn the language in the first place, thinking he may have been working there. âI was doing eighteen monthsâ he replied. Seems he had an accident in his lorry and been banged up for it.
The second little tale is to do with Alan Brown aka the â â â Machine. We were in the National and Alan had parked his, I think, OHS Mack in the exact position the PIE lorry is parked in the attached photo. A group of us drivers were sitting around drinking beer in the evening when Alan climbed into his lorry with this old dog of a Yugo women. None of us would have employed her to clean our trailers out but Alan wasnât so fussy. Next morning we were all back in the restaurant having breakfast when Alan came in. To say he looked rough was an understatement but he obviously wanted to recount his night of passion, or in his case â â â â . He told us he only had six condoms and by the early hours had used them all. He woke up about six and was still feeling randy so searched the cab for more condoms without success. The only thing he could do was recycle a used one. It was at this point some of the drivers felt a bit queasy with their recently eaten breakfast looking to make a quick exit. However, what really made some of them rush outside for fresh air was when Alan said, âI donât care what they do to me. They can pi-s on me, they can sh-t on me. I love it allâ. It was only later that I thought, âPoor sod to be so afflictedâ.
Hi Brian, I think that we all got on very well with all the Dutch guys who all seemed to be multi lingual and helped us out on many occasions.
You mentioned a couple of posts back about seeing Jan de Lely motors in lots of obscure places around Yugoslavia. Well quite often if we were loading hanging garments back from the Commie Block we would sometimes see one of their motors loading at the same factory.
We did a lot of Courtaulds work from around the U.K. into Yugo and if we tipping down in Southern Yugo we usually did customs in Skopia. If the load didnât go straight into the customs warehouse then we had to find some out of the place little town, usually in the mountains which had a factory making clothes.
It must of been in January 1981 when I met up with one of Jan de Lelyâs drivers with a Volvo F12 somewhere around Teto Veles in Macedonia and as we both loaded around the same time we were told to wait as the customs man was coming out to the factory to start our carnet and to seal us both up. We were both very happy because it meant that we didnât have to go back to Skopia to do our customs especially as it had started snowing again.
Well I followed this Dutch guy and that night we got as far as Nis by about 10 p.m. and so we decided to call it a day by pulling onto a bit of waste ground and parking up. Now both of us didnât have night heaters so it was a case of stopping and starting the engine all night just to get a bit of warmth. The next morning about 6 a.m. the Dutchman bangs on my cab and tells me to bring my cup as he is going to make a pot of coffee. You know what the Dutch are like, they like real coffee with their coffee beans, coffee percolators and their paper coffee filters, back then for me it was like watching a science lesson in school. Non of that spoonful of Maxwell House straight into the cup like us.
I was sat there in his driving seat with his two burner camping stove in between us and he had a saucepan of water which was attempting to boil on one of the gas rings, when I noticed that the flames on the cooker were very low so I asked him if he was running out of gas. No he said, itâs just the gas thatâs frozen in the gas bottle and he then lifted up the gas bottle from the passenger side footwell and placed in on the other gas ring which was also lit. I nearly jumped straight out of the drivers door in shock as I had never seen this done before. Isnât that dangerous I asked. No he said, the heat will turn the frozen gas back into liquid and the flames will go higher. He was right but I still felt very uncomfortable and as the flames got stronger he eventually removed the gas bottle off the lit gas flame while the pan of water boiled.
Like I said I felt very uncomfortable watching this but the following morning I found myself doing exactly the same thing and it was something that I did on a number of winter mornings in years to came.
Another company that also did hanging garments around the Commie Block back then was this West German firm Josef Meyer from Osnabruck. I think that Dave Shawcross said that this photo with his son Robert was taken at The Zagreb Motel and it looks to me as though it was the same trip when they met up with Mick and Pam in Czechoslovakia.
Now Mick said on Page 2 of this thread that the little boy in the photo was a Czech kid who came up with his mum talking to him and Pam. As Micks book was coming out at the time I thought that I wouldnât mention it on here as it seemed a bit pernickety but I am pleased to say that Robert did dozens of trips with his dad over the years and on one trip I met up with Dave and Robert at the National when we were both on our way to Athens.
I see that there is a new member on Trucknet called Pedro 2 who joined last week and I meant to welcome him to the forum especially as he mentioned a driver who called himself â â â Machine.
Now the only driver who I can recall at the moment who had a yellow number plate on the front of his motor with the words â â â Machine on it was a guy who I met parked up in the desert at Fallujah, Iraq on the 2nd of January.
I.I.R.C. he had an American truck, a White Road Commander with a West Coast cab, the one with the two windows in the roof at the front of the cab and I think that it was painted black. I have a feeling that he might of been from Yorkshire, he was single, he had fair hair and I am sure that he said that he was doing internals, not only in Iraq but all over the Middle East.
The thing that I really do remember about this guy was the way that he explained to us how he had enjoyed a New Years Eve party at the Saddam Hussain Hospital in Baghdad with an Irish nurse. Would it be right to call a driver who had a bonk in Iraq (with a girl), a middle east legend. 
I donât know if this is the same guy who you mentioned who was parked up in the National with you all those years ago.
Proudly Not Hosted On Photo Bucket. 
Alan Brown aka the â â â Machine did work for OHS driving a Mack similar to the one in the photo I have attached. The chap in the photo I hasten to add is not Alan. I have looked back on Topics on this forum and one in particular âForgotten Namesâ submitted by Terry F on August 27th 2010 confirms Alan did work for OHS. I was 99.9% sure but sometimes my little grey cells argue with me.
Mushroomman. Re your last post. I never looked upon myself as a legend and still donât!!!