Hi Robert! Thats some great pics you got,nice to see them!
Got some more?
Reg Danne
Dirty Dan:
Hi Robert! Thats some great pics you got,nice to see them!
Got some more?Reg Danne
Well done Robert - terrific pic’s mate. thanks - keep e’m coming. Fred
As has already been said Robert, great pictures. Keep em coming 
Happy new year everybody ! 
Some trouble for the green Transco. Other stop for helping
robert1952:
001As promised, more pics:
Great pics Robert. I worked for Simon for 5 years up to 2008. Unfortunately didn’t go further than Italy or Spain then. I still do a bit of casual work for him and was down the yard before Christmas. He was showing more of your pictures from when you were working for him. Come on, get some more on here, the other members will love to see them. 
Fantastic! T-cab on m/e work and what a driver then 
Keep the comming!
Here are a few more Gulf-bound pictures, transiting Turkey. As someone on these blogs regularly declares: ‘Happy Days’ - amen to that! Robert
Righto chaps, here we go: Saudi. I’ll tell you what, I’ve lived in Cairo for the past six years and when I look back on these pictures and compare what used to be ‘unusual’ to me with what is now ‘normal’ I have to smile from time to time! I have to say, I LOVED Middle-East / North-Africa driving for all its dangers and frustrations…
Fantastic photos Robert keep them coming I remember seeing your Scania and Eurostar getting about. Was Dave Poulton on for Trailways at the time you took the photos. I always got a flash and a wave from him.
The second last photo you have with Aluminum Andy looks like you have some crates on from O’Niels Export Packaging from Leicester.
I have a feeling you might have a photo of my truck which would be a white Italian reg FH with either a Smitz fridge or Cardi tilt.
Jeff…
No mate: the crates had special corrosion-resistant pipe elbows for the Saudi gas-fields, made in Scotland. The driver of the Uzbek truck spoke as much Turkish as I did so we got along just fine and share our trailer-box meals for a couple of days while we cleared customs. He was as fascinated by my trip home via Athens, Paris and London as I was fascinated by his return trip to Tashkent via Samarkand and Bokhara! Probably equidistant and all relative!
Destination Doha in late 2001. This was an interesting trip, as I started out just after the 9/11 thing in America. Not that it made any difference to my trip to Doha in the Gulf!
Thanks for your encouragement and enthusiasm ya drivers! You may recognise Paul Baker in this shot of my Harrier Scania (DKH 118Y) in severe snow in Bulgaria. We were not permitted to ascend the mountain without snowchains, but I overtook the queue and achieved the climb using the diff-lock, something I did many times during my driving years. I have to say that on this occasion I was not certain enough that I would be successful because I didn’t know the road so it was not a very responsible decision, but later on I learnt the difference! The descent down the other side of the mountain the next morning was the very stuff of every driver’s nightmares: steep, narrow glacial descents with sheer drops to the side… Aaahh!
Is it my mind playing tricks on me or was there a Truck and Driver article about two Harrier Express Scanias on a trip to Istanbul, it would have been in the mid nighties. I seem to remember one was driven by an Ex school teacher.
Spot on driver! I was the ex-school teacher who wrote the article and drove the Scania. After 10 years hard slog on North Africa, Europe and Middle East driving I returned to teaching in Istanbul, Rome and finally in Cairo where I am Head of a school here but still miss The Road: give me an ERF NGC 420 ‘European’ and I’ll drive to China tomorrow! My next book is due out in Spring, courtesy of Old Pond Publishing: ‘LORRIES OF ARABIA: THE ERF NGC 420’ - insha’allah! Robert
By jove, you’ve encouraged me to produce more pictures! Here are some more Middle-East run snaps from 2001 and 2002. Robert
I have to say that December ‘95 was a bit of a ‘baptism of fire’! I remember returning home and saying, ‘I don’t want any more of that!’. But it kept on creeping up on me: I DID want more ‘of that’. Hence my many, many subsequent trips to North Africa and the Middle East. Talking of which, it’s high time we opened a new North Africa Drivers’ thread, isn’t it?
Hello Robert,
If You scroll through You will find a John Mann thread on here somewhere, I never realised You worked for Harrier, I was doing Turkey in 1995 well a couple of trips Nov/Dec 95/96 was a harsh winter I recall.
Regards
Cooper
Here’s an ASTRAN connection: this Scania had just been acquired by Graham Ball and he did a change over here with Trevor Dodwell at Thessalonika in Greece. I was on my way down to Saudi. The rest is history: you can see this wagon on a thousand sites in Astran colours. I seem to remember that Graham was having the brakes done in Greece. Both he an Trevor reckoned it pulled like none other: they were probably right as it had been ‘tweeked’.
Are you ‘Cooperman’ I knew on the Morocco run? I think I’ve a picture or two when we were parked up on Plage des Nations in Bouknadel in Morocco! I’ll hunt them out. Robert
Are you ‘Cooperman’ I knew on the Morocco run? I think I’ve a picture or two when we were parked up on Plage des Nations in Bouknadel in Morocco! I’ll hunt them out. Robert
