Wheel Nut:
Smashing pictures Gavin, those lads look like proper lorryists. Boilersuits and Bobble hats
Robbo still only had his vest on under the boiler suit 
Not all M/E was done in dessert wellies
Gavin
Gavin McArdle:
Wheel Nut:
Smashing pictures Gavin, those lads look like proper lorryists. Boilersuits and Bobble hatsRobbo still only had his vest on under the boiler suit
Not all M/E was done in dessert wellies
Gavin
Was the brown vest a fashion statement or just the same colour as the bucket? 
I have never seen Colin Johnson in anything other than a boiler suit either.
Gavin McArdle:
Bestbooties Re Billy Ham. Do you know for certain if he had a wooden leg? He did tell me that he had but-- when I was running my Crusader I was in the Londra one night, I had just had a shower and as you well remember you did not take your clean clothes in with you. So I was naked in my cab ( curtains drawn
The bit that has always confused me is the Crusader was difficult enough to get into with good legs and the Mack probably more so but he got in and out of mine with no problems
Gavin
Gavin.
Billy ham definitely had a false leg and came to his demise / death working for John Eddom, He and i quote
from eddom himself had a heart attack at the wheel and crashed nr to crick on the M1
I noticed he couldnt write or read very well and he had a rubber stamp to sign his CMR notes
and he always got someone to read the delivery address as he said his eyes weren’t very good
I knew once to impress eddom he had all the kids in the area to colour cut the fridge trailer
health and safety would have something to say about that know
rip Billy
Hi Gavin, thanks for sharing some more brilliant photo’s with us 
have you got anymore mate 
.
A few of them look like East Germany in fact the bottom photo looks the big lay-by between Dresden and the Czech border post at Zinnwald.
Regards Steve.
Gavin McArdle:
he gave me a Solidarity (in Polish) badge before anyone in UK had heard about it.Some of the stories from there were quite interesting, perhaps i should put them on another thread like Ash’s trucking in the 80’s one.
Gavin
Was the badge a little plastic thing in cream colour with the solidarity logo on,and a simple pin on the back?
I got one from some union guy,can’t remember exactly where it was,but they used to turn up unannounced wherever I was tipping,whether it was a hospital,orphanage or a church.
I also was given a Solidarity calender,1982 I think it was,with pics of Lech Walesa and the strikers in Gdansk,as well as other odds and sods like a cardboard banner.
People were always giving you gifts of one sort or another,I have a couple of hand carved plates and a cup somewhere.
In fact I’ve still got everything in a box,I’ll take some pics,if I can find the box that is!
You would deffintly need a sense of adventure to head to the middle east in that foden and how big are the headlights on it
Gavin.
Billy ham definitely had a false leg and came to his demise / death working for John Eddom, He and i quote
from eddom himself had a heart attack at the wheel and crashed nr to crick on the M1
I noticed he couldnt write or read very well and he had a rubber stamp to sign his CMR notes
and he always got someone to read the delivery address as he said his eyes weren’t very good
I knew once to impress eddom he had all the kids in the area to colour cut the fridge trailer
health and safety would have something to say about that know
rip BillyGavin.
Billy ham definitely had a false leg and came to his demise / death working for John Eddom, He and i quote
from eddom himself had a heart attack at the wheel and crashed nr to crick on the M1
I noticed he couldnt write or read very well and he had a rubber stamp to sign his CMR notes
and he always got someone to read the delivery address as he said his eyes weren’t very good
I knew once to impress eddom he had all the kids in the area to colour cut the fridge trailer
health and safety would have something to say about that know
rip Billy
I never knew the man so cannot comment on anything about him !
I do remember though an accident that closed the road from the M1 to Weedon (junction 16 & A45 to A5) – Anyone who knows this road knows that it’s a bit tight on bends and the reason I remember it so well is the fact I got caught in the tailback of HGV’s unable to turn and I shouldn’t have been on that road as I was running from home (not Dover via M1) on a “dodgy” !! I believe the truck left the road & I recall comments in the local press the following day as to how the driver was “disabled” !! Might be different accident but who knows !!
Hi Geoff
Now there’s a wiley bunch of names.
Trevor Evans left the company in a blaze of glory having been caught on the A34 using the wrong colour diesel!!! All got very messy… As a kid I’d spent a lot of time with Trevor and it was a shame to see things go the way they did. He has had a couple of cancer scares but I believe he’s still about, albeit retired.
Last time I saw Alan Jewkes was at my Dod’s funeral in Aug 04. He’s just doing local work in the UK in a rigid, no nights out but happy, still living in Dudley
Bob Murray is still about in Birmingham I believe, sporting a pony tail at last sighting. When he stopped pulling for Dad he set up Aquila in Birmingham which had a well documented problem and Bob was shown in not a particularly good light!!
Alan White never worked for us although he was based in the same town. I still see him occasionally. He drives for Halfords and seems reasonably happy. He quit working for himself about 10 years ago. Saw MacAndrews/Andrew Weir out to the end of his Transcon’s life and called it quits.
I last saw Noel Mitchell last summer at John Blackstock’s funeral (sad loss). He’s working nights for Wincanton’s out of West Bromwich, and has been for some time. Loves the job and keeps his head down (surprisingly)!! Apparantly Jimmy is driving for Essexcare moving the road planing equipment about but that may have changed.
Hi Mr MJM
thanks for the reply its was good to hear that most are still about, we are sorry to hear about your dad, if you see any of them tell them Geoff & Lynn were asking after them and send them our love. We spent six years on that Spanish job until we turned to fridge work and we met some great characters and we have some fantastic memories.
I am not sure who reads these mails but one thing I saw the other day was a mention of British International and some of their drivers. I cant remember their names except for Jelly Legs I didnt know his name until I saw it on here, but I remember the day he parked his truck and trailer in a field on the way to Zaragoza. Straight opposite one of those big DAF truck adverts. When you came down the road it looked like British had their own billboard. It must have been 30 yds into the field. Lynn, Myself and Les Chilvers took him for a meal and all he could think of was how much it was going to cost to recover the outfit because they had to make a road into the field. The next time I saw him was in St Malo we had a beer or two and when he went to bed I don`t know why but he climbed up the back of his old Transcon and fell asleep over the airlines.
Great Days
Fantastic people
Geoff
Some more of Kelvins pics.
Moody shot of the scammell-oil checking time. The arabs loved the scammell, then when I hinged out the rad and they found a RR engine they were virtually banging their foreheads on the ground Someone asked somewhere on here if they got upset at the name Crusader, but it was never mentioned perhaps they called the crusaders something else . While on the subject they took a dislike to Fords and banned them from Saudi (a bit worrying considering the number of transcons on the job)but by either swopping the name around like the Austrians did and calling it a Dorf (for the non-linguists a small village in German) or by taking the badges off and putting ‘■■■■■■■ Transcontinenal’ on the tryptic solved the problem 
2 more posers in front of Robbos 86
Where’s this one taken then Steve?
A bit out of sequence as were on our way home here but I thought I would show you THE VEST he also had one in red! If we had a closeup you could see that Robbo had a tattoo of a harem ■■■■■■■ his forearm, he could flex his muscles and make her ■■■■■ jiggle, when we got to the Saudi border (Halet Amar) Robbo walked towards the customs in just his vest and got stopped by an officer who looked at the tattoo and told Robbo to cover his arms. Robbo said don’t you like it and made her ■■■■■ twitch, the bloke shot up in the air and covered his face with his hand then he peered through his fingers and said -again!He did it again and the bloke ran inside, Robbo went and got a shirt when he walked in to the customs everyone wanted to see the ■■■■■ jiggle, then got into a panic in case someone had seen them
Robbo was a good comedian and story teller (I think he could tell a story as good as say Jasper Carrot) all of his stories had an element of truth in them, but you never knew what the punch line would be even if you had heard the story before, he dined out on this one for a long time
Mushroomman - how on earth could you recognize that layby in DDR? I have not seen the pics before and would have said by the cobbles and the Trabant, yes DDR but I could not have been more specific.Your memory must be a bit like Gavin GS’s with his dates. I can usually remember conversations but some mornings I struggle to remember my own name
Still some more pics to come Gavin
Hi Gavin McArdle,
as they say, every picture tells a story and I bet those lorries and drivers could tell some really interesting ones . As regards the lay-by it was the lamp post’s which to me was the clue, the Trabby, the cobbles and the pine trees seemed to confirm where it was.
If you remember after leaving Belgium of a night time, which seemed to have more than it’s fair share of street light’s, it started to get more dangerous to drive at night the further East that you travelled. West Germany and Austria were O.K. but the Commie Block was a different story.
A lay-by in the Commie Block with four lamp post’s in the 70’s/ early 80’s you must admit was a bit unusual. Apart from around the peages in Yugoslavia, places outside the Commie Blocks capital cities were as you will remember poorly illuminated, although some stretches of so called
“ motorways ” did have a few street light’s.
I can remember a couple of the old fellars saying to me “ never drive in the Commie Block after dark, it’s too dangerous ”, but we all did, we all chanced it and the majority of us got away with it. In time you got to know which stretch of road you could safely ( hopefully ) travel on in the dark but there was always a chance of the unexpected happening.
Another reason I recognised the lay-by was because just after I got married I took The Mushroom Lady to Istanbul and we stayed our first night here, how romantic was that ?.
If you shipped out on The Prinz Line Ferries to Bremerhaven or Hamburg it was a fair days journey from the West German ports via Helmstedt or Ratzeburg to here, so I presume that this was where you spent your first night on this trip. I am not sure if there was a small guesthaus across the road on the side that the photo was taken. 
I haven’t a clue where the last photo was taken. The tall trees look like Yugo, the manholes look like Greece but for some reason I seem to think it could be Aksaray or Adana, although the telephone wires look to organised to be in Turkey.
I like the story of Robbo’s tattoo but I had a feeling that you were going to say that when he flexed his arm the girl only had ONE EYE.
I heard a few story’s about drivers who had a girl with ONE EYE in Istanbul. (Poor Girl ) 
Finally Gavin ( yes I know that I have been rabbiting on again ) you mentioned about eleven post’s back a restaurant near Posnan in Poland. Would that of been the one with the Red Indian Totem poles in front of the entrance, with a small lorry park next to the main road. 
Regards Steve.
Gavin McArdle:
2 more posers
I love these two photo’s, I ran an F86 for a while but never went abroad in it, I was trying to get permits to do some Yugo work but as most will understand it didn’t come off.
I wonder what most young drivers today would think about going to Paris, let alone M/E in a 224bhp day cab unit??
Ross.
Hi Guys
The pic of the two trucks on the layby looks like DDR but if the police had come by they would have been done for facing the wrong way especialy at night as u had to sleep with your lights on on major roads as major as they were correct me if i’m wrong if so I want my 10 EG marks back
Roger(Rita)Haywood
sinbin31:
Hi Guysif the police had come by they would have been done for facing the wrong way especialy at night as u had to sleep with your lights on on major roads
Roger(Rita)Haywood
Dead right,I’ve been knocked up at night when parked in a lay by in the DDR and told to put my lights on.
hi everbody what about a two man how worked for don hubbard in spalding one was roland and martin roland i no he works at matthews now he was in prison in romania and martin he was in prison in 1987 in poland for 2 year see him a couple of times he was a quite chap he did a few trip down the middle east in a white and green f89 with davis turner on it i no it belong to don as i new him for a long time just like to fine out were they are now
This months edition of trucking magazine has an article by Chris Hooper following a trip by him and two others down to Kuwait. They go down via the old eastern block which i gather is rather unusual.
I would say it is deffintly worth picking up a copy.
Any of you out there remember a company that came from Bagshot didnt last very long.I remember going for a job with them and the manager telling me that they were planning to run into the far east.I didnt get the job and soon after they went to the wall had red and white assortment of motors F88s and Mercs.
About what year would this be?
In 1976 I met a guy driving a Merc for a firm from that way named Maurice Sigsworth.I met him in Hungary on his way home and he told me the firm was probably folding when he got back.
I told him to ring Brit European when he got back,and what do you know,next time I saw him he was driving for us!.
Hello bestbooties this would have been approx 1970/71
That would be too early mate,this was in 1976.