Hey, I drove the types from the mid '60’s and were noisy against the last models I drove as the 95,143,3300 or 362
but I am half deaf. But as my father drove even first the army surplus lorries and the new from the ‘50’s , he’ still hearing better as a dog in his '80’s, and did a lot of forge work too.
But yes I agree noise can make you deaf, but depend a bit of yourselves and Gens.
And yes the young would be deaf very soon because of te weakness of people today, look how many babies arrive in hospital befor their first birthday nowadays.
They don’t make driver as before anymore
Dave the Renegade:
Some of the younger drivers will go deaf, from the radio’s and stereo systems blasting out in the modern vehicles.
Cheers Dave.
I agree with what you say Dave, You can hear the noise when you are along side of them in traffic, Plus these young so called idiots in cars are the same, Regards Larry.
I think some of the young car drivers have more power in their stereo systems, than the car engine Larry.
Cheers Dave.
yep the ■■■■ heads in Whitby with the 1.2 corsas,blasting out, rev the engines to the max lots of noise an get now where,
All i can say is thank you all very much for all your posts as i thought it was only me, and what a good decscription of the TINITUS a dish washer on all the time…
yes i had forgot about the eagle diesel 220 in the seddon,or was it the scammel crusader ,however,i am now convinced it did not do us all any good .the old super comet with the eaton 2 speed did come with a type of leather,replicas jacket over the bonnet if i remmember.
i have tried listning to talking books on my ipod, i still hear the the old washing machine, however if i am tying to sleep about 3 am after 3 hours of wahing machine sloshing around in my ears iplay some music on the ipod, soothing stuff, whale noise,seas shore etc but mega loud to drown out the unwelcome background ,then i am wide awake !!,time to get up and tea and ■■■,you can not win…
i am up more hours than i ever was on the fridges, like all other drivers did , do mega hours,rungis etc but as one post said the first 33daf was music to my ears because you did not know the engine was on unless you looked at the revs…
.ohh and of course there was the old thermo king blasting away,the proper one with the blowers and fan covered inside and you had to drop the first 2 pallets down to get the load on plus all the meat hooks, you had to take out and put in the side box…when i think back no wonder other drivers did not like us fridge drivers at nights ,mind you we worked most nights and half the next day!! ,like the only people out in paris at night were" ladys of the night,"theives, and british fridge drivers[lost]…
Retired Old ■■■■:
My hearing is nowhere near as good as it should be, in fact I’ve been prescribed a pair of hearing aids but the way even the new digital ones change the sound in your ears makes it really unbearable. I’ll stick with my own dodgy ears for as long as I can.
When you’ve spent 50 years with a noisy engine on one side and an open window on the other, you’re just asking for poor hearing. A bit like the “■■■■ & cancer” link- nobody told us at the time. But even if they had, would we have listened? And I wouldn’t have swopped the sound of the ■■■■■■■ in that Big J for a pair of ears like Dumbo!
Having driven a fair few miles in a Big J with the 240 “Percy” in it,it sounded sweet as a nut,but in comparison the ■■■■■■■ powered J’s were noisy,but nice noisy!!! Have you got a photo of your Big J With the 8 potter Percy in, Im sure it would be very welcome on this thread, Regards Larry.
Larry,
It was my comment many moons ago that started Dennis off on his search for a picture of said 240 Percy,if there was one it would have surely risen by now,I was employed by SoM for a number of years,I was driven by Harold Gilmore,the Manchester Depot Manager to Newton le Willows Depot to collect a 240 Percy powered Big J that had come from Maddiston by overnight trunk,why there are so many doubting Thomas’s heaven only knows,but I know what I drove for a few weeks before the J was assigned to a permanent dayman driver.
Can’t say I found the 680’s too noisy, from the exhaust that is.
Ours came out under the front step, muffler was just a big empty tin can yet I found their engine noise far noisier than the exhaust.
But the difference once they were fitted with a turbo, whisper quiet exhaust and all the valve noise simply disappeared.
My hearing loss was mainly caused but those unexpected workshop noises. Blokes dropping something heavy onto the slab, 9" angle grinder chewing into metal and so on.
Happily my boys have seen what can happen and always wear hearing/eye protection.
My hearing sounds like a stereo amp flat out but with no input signal, just a constant hissssssss.
Lost count of the number of trips I did to hospitals having bits of metal removed from eyes.
Then the one-eyed drive home with no depth perception………
At a safety briefing back a while and the bloke in charge didn’t have too great a grasp of English.
He warned using a grinder without goggles could cause a spark to fly right into your ■■■■■■ (retina) and blind you.
This is the same bloke who went to the doctor to have a melaleuca (melanoma) removed from his nose though.
Wind-noise was another factor that I reckon did my shell-likes no favours. I had one unit for a long time that had a driver’s door that had never really fitted properly and it was the wind-noise, not the the other noises that used to wear me down. But I agree with Bradfordlad9999 that driving along with loud music on in a modern lorry will do exactly the same damage and I’m sure any doctor would concur! Robert
Just to extend this a little bit, how many of us has problems with knees, ankles and hips? My feet were never good but jumping out of cabs and off trailers didn’t help. I also know a few drivers who’ve gone in for hip replacements. They say you can tell an old driver by the way he walks and from my observations whilst working on milk tankers, where the average age of drivers seems to be about 70, that certainly holds true. A decent vet would have put many down long ago.
zzarbean:
Just to extend this a little bit, how many of us has problems with knees, ankles and hips? My feet were never good but jumping out of cabs and off trailers didn’t help. I also know a few drivers who’ve gone in for hip replacements. They say you can tell an old driver by the way he walks and from my observations whilst working on milk tankers, where the average age of drivers seems to be about 70, that certainly holds true. A decent vet would have put many down long ago.
You must be thinking of the Gardner hobble, aka a dead right leg from holding the pedel down on an A road where you can’t use the ‘motorway stick’, how I used to look forward to the downhill stretches on the A5 to stretch my right foot when driving an old ERF with a 180 lump fitted. Oh and the slightly offset steering wheel on the Atkis didn’t help much either, it was said you could tell the Atki driver at breakfast because he would eat with the plate slightly offset.
I suffer from tinnitus and yet I am only in my early 40’s. I put it down to bouncing around in tractors with safety cabs but no sound deadening cladding inside the cabs (ford 4000,DB 996 etc) in my youth. I see so many kids today with ear pieces plugged into their IPods etc and think that surely that can’t be good for their hearing? I also suffer from a bad back and dodgy knees, a legacy of doing livestock haulage and crawling under the decks.my doctor told me to help myself by losing weight and do more swimming and walking and it’s worked to a certain extent.( walked up Snowden,Scafell Pike,Slieve Donard and Ben Nevis in the last year with no problems). It’s a pity the Doc couldn’t tell me how to self help my hearing!
I suffer from tinnitus and yet I am only in my early 40’s. I put it down to bouncing around in tractors with safety cabs but no sound deadening cladding inside the cabs (ford 4000,DB 996 etc) in my youth. I see so many kids today with ear pieces plugged into their IPods etc and think that surely that can’t be good for their hearing? I also suffer from a bad back and dodgy knees, a legacy of doing livestock haulage and crawling under the decks.my doctor told me to help myself by losing weight and do more swimming and walking and it’s worked to a certain extent.( walked up Snowden,Scafell Pike,Slieve Donard and Ben Nevis in the last year with no problems). It’s a pity the Doc couldn’t tell me how to self help my hearing!
Sorry! Gone and pressed something twice. If someone can delete one of my posts I would be grateful, first and last time I put my two penny’s worth on the forum…
Dai jones:
Sorry! Gone and pressed something twice. If someone can delete one of my posts I would be grateful, first and last time I put my two penny’s worth on the forum…
Just go to the second, repeated post and click on EDIT. Then you can delete all the writing, but you can’t remove the post. As TNUK, like nature, abhors a vacuum you need to post a nice picture in the space left behind! Robert
Yes tinnitus is a definite 60/70/80s driver thing even as I write this my ears are buzzing ,blame the same culprits ,2strokes ■■■■■■■ etc fridges do you guys remember to check /fill engine oil you had to throw all your gear out take the engine cover off and had to make sure it was locked down or you would get fumes and even more noise happy but noisy days but I loved 2strokes and never minded the noise with them more noise was good noise then ,if only we knew
Yes it was about 2 clips holding the cover down and the old army coat from you dads.plus good sacks,the thought of a RADIO was not even thought about was it.if i want a really bad night in bed i have some spicy food,mixed with the tinitus,recipe for disaster…after a few cans, it did not take me long to realise the best drivers for lack of sleep,just keep going were men when kids were hypper-active.i did a few turns at mr FOWLERS STABLE ACH.Once i returned after a short spell away. started back on a globe trotter ,i opened the top locker and found a empty pack of PRO-PLUS the thought again was no sleep.i wished i had Tinutus then i could have kept up…
zzarbean:
Just to extend this a little bit, how many of us has problems with knees, ankles and hips? My feet were never good but jumping out of cabs and off trailers didn’t help. I also know a few drivers who’ve gone in for hip replacements. They say you can tell an old driver by the way he walks and from my observations whilst working on milk tankers, where the average age of drivers seems to be about 70, that certainly holds true. A decent vet would have put many down long ago.
You must be thinking of the Gardner hobble, aka a dead right leg from holding the pedel down on an A road where you can’t use the ‘motorway stick’, how I used to look forward to the downhill stretches on the A5 to stretch my right foot when driving an old ERF with a 180 lump fitted. Oh and the slightly offset steering wheel on the Atkis didn’t help much either, it was said you could tell the Atki driver at breakfast because he would eat with the plate slightly offset.
Most of us will know what you mean about “Gardner Foot”. I had a bruise on the ball of my foot which made walking difficult for the best part of ten years. It wasn’t until I experienced the many pleasures of a 290F88 that my right foot got better. It was around the same time that I learned that “Hummin ■■■■■■■■ could set up the Gardner linkage so that it was as nice to use as a ■■■■■■■■ Unfortunately, he didn’t have a cure for the offset steering wheel, so I used to drive home in the car squeezed up against the door.
Like your post retired old ■■■■…funny … yes the best bit of the M1 south was the A5 markate hill ,knock her our of bolt and away you go who used to lift their feet up. b ut youi would be watching to see who was crawling up the other bank.alsothe next junction ,hemel i think where all the petrol tankers used to get a speed up on the slip road,and try to put the frightens on you to pull out in front, but i like many used to just keep going in the slow land and fu-k em and they would end up on the hard shoulder doing 50 ish,they would only be going down to the m10 then stop at london colney…but they had more money per hour than us ,and time …i never did get that ,why they had more money than us proper, up the road go anywhere driver ,and they would have a 6 hour shift…who said the TGW was fair…
I am totally deaf in left ear nowt can be done not even a hearing aid had this all my life so everything is alway turned up a bit have tinnitus in the right ear sound like a washing machine it could be from driving although tend not to drive with window open if I do it is the left 1
Have a prob with the back but that was my fault after a accident in my youth ( young daft invincible ) now paying for it both ankles are shot as well ( partly due to injury when younger ) this has come back to bite me later in life as it does knees are ok so far wrist not too bad but this is mainly due to the back prob just a side affect
I just take a concoction of drugs to keep walking & working for now otherwise I would be in a wheel chair ( this is coming from my consultant )
had on my trucks over years am only 32