My wife tells me that the number of funerals in Barrow seems to be much higher than in Lancaster. She discussed this with friends and a number of reasons were put forward, including the throwing of asbestos ‘balls’ in the shipyard in the sixties and seventies.
Mike mills, who was the Chief Mechanic at Bowater Scott used to tell us that when he served his time in Vickers Armstrong’s one of the tricks they had was to drill into a steel block, put a tiny drop of diesel in the hole, then slide a small, oiled piece of bar, exactly the right size into it. The trick was to hit this with a hammer. The compression caused an explosion, which set the bullet sized bar to fly off into the massive shed.
I get calls regarding my hearing, but they lose interest when I say I worked for myself when I was driving the noisy lorries.
We were pretty casual about our health and safety, weren’t we? Leather gloves, nah!
The only place I really didn’t like loading at was the fibreglass works at Pilkingtons, St Helens. Yes it was a lovely light load, but nobody ever offered you a mask and I can remember looking out into the sunshine from the front of the 40’ van and seeing millions of tiny, sparkly threads of glass, filling the air, quite beautiful.
I used to hold my breath from picking up one roll until I was back in the open. I didn’t want those tiny pieces in my lungs!
Perhaps you were right to persevere with the flats and the roping and sheeting Dennis, at least you were out in the fresh air - and the rain, and the snow. Have you met many drivers who didn’t fall off at some time?
When I bought the Mastiff, my Leyland Comet was in Barrow, and I sold it to ‘Wee Jock’, who had a small sawmill in St Boswells.
I asked Bob Brady, ‘The Big un’, if it would be alright to use the loading ramp in the steelworks to load the comet. He of course said yes.
It was December and pitch black in that part of the steelworks. I drove the comet onto the back of the trailer, then climbed out of the cab and jumped down - straight onto a 6 inch nail which happened to be poking through a block of wood! It went right through my foot.
My mate drove me to hospital, nail, wood and all. They removed it, but it kind of took the joy out of my new truck! Of course I carried on driving, limped about for a week or two. Good job it wasn’t a big J with a heavy accelerator.
John.
