my dad left school at 15 and went into the merchant navy travelling the globe. he met my mum-she had my eldest brother-he left the navy and started driving. a sister followed and then me. i can remember from a very early age going with my dad at any opportunity, switzerland mainly. he had a merc (i think it was a 1417 with a funny shaped cab) amongst others. he`s got pics of me wandering around the customs in dover looking at the foreign motors… 
. i wondered how many of you followed your dad into the game?
My Dad was a agricultural engineer/lorry driver may years ago then he became a full time mould maker for a concrete firm, until he had a stroke & died 2yrs later. I followed him partly when I left school I became a lorry drivers mate for an agricultural engineers. That was great we used to take new machines out & the old ones back even burnt out combines{boy do they take some winching by hand onto the back of a trailer 
}. I enjoyed that job until this chap stopped a tractor on my ankle, which blooming well hurt!!!. Thats where I left my Dad’s footsteps I never could do metal work at school so I’m now a full time driver.
My dad used to work for Ford at Dagenham a longgggg time ago and used to deliver chassis only wagons all over the country for them. He’s been dead 22 years now and I’m 27 so it was probably a good 25 years ago when he worked there. I don’t think I ever went anywhere with him in any trucks, although I don’t recall for sure.
I think it was actually a good friend of my mum’s that got me into trucks. She used to be good friends with a guy called Harry Westerman who used to be the owner of H.Westerman transport somewhere in/near Leeds, probably 20 years ago now. He’s been packed up that long too. Does anyone remember this company ? I remember going with the guy a few times delivered big supermarket chill and freezer cabinets rope and sheeted on a flat. Can’t remember whether it was artic or rigid though 
I too followed my dad into trucking. He first started truck driving in Egypt during the Suez crisis, then a couple years following demob he worked as a motorcycle mechanic, and then switched to plant and transport in the early sixties. I think he drove a Guy unit with a straight four low-loader behind. I remember he said that it was so gutless that sometimes he had to call out another truck for a tow when pulling a Drott excavator up Cornwall’s steeper hills. He eventually started up as owner-driver in '72 with a Leyland Comet tipper, which was then replaced by an Albion Clydesdale 16 tonner the following year. He kept that going until '88, and I drove it for two years. I didn’t think it unusual to drive an old LAD cabbed Albion around at the end of the eighties, but I reckon a lot of other truckers did as the old truck used to get a few glances.
In retrospect I’m pleased that my dad gave me a start in driving (he put me on the young drivers scheme and I had the class 3 license at 18). Without him I would have had to learn a lot of things the hard way instead of benefitting from his experience: stuff like avoiding brake fade and how to change your own springs. We didn’t always get on very well and to be honest I was glad to leave when I was 21 and ready for some longer distance stuff (he was probably glad to see the back of me too as all I ever did was moan about his trucks not being as modern as everyone elses) He packed up the trucking side of the biz in the late '90s but still reads the mags, and can’t believe how advanced newer trucks are. Took him out in a big MAN a couple of years back and he was blown away by it, but even so he says he wouldn’t choose to be a driver now. I guess the job has changed almost beyond recognition?
Craig
My dad couldnt even drive (except for a dumper on site) he was a labourer on the building. I just loved trucks really, thats what got me into it.
Mal.
I am following my dad into driving. I have worked in a factory, since leaving school 13 years. Since I have been trying to gain my C+E, I now know that its what I should have done years and years ago.
My dad was a lorry driver, which is where my love of lorrys come from. All my mates gor toy porches and ferraris, and I got Scammels, and Volvo’s… LOL 
I had an uncle too, that was a lorry driver. He worked for a compnay in Eye, in Suffolk, cant remember the name now, but he died last year just after new year.
my dad wasnt a driver but he had friends who were he worked at a now demolished papermill in tamworth and id go down every saturday morning just to see the trucks.but what really made my mind up to become a driver was when i was 14 and i went with my next door neighbour to verona with antique furniture in a volvo f6 artic owned by furnishings italia of cannock
My dad was fleet engineer at Smedley’s Foods in Faversham so I suppose I got the bug from him.
I remember as far back as the age of 4 or 5 dad coming home for lunch in a Thames Trader,either normal control or forward control,with box body or refrigerated body and while he was eating his lunch I’d be sitting in the drivers seat giving it all the Brrmm Brrmm business.
Sometimes I would go in to work with him on a Saturday and he would drive around the factory yard with me on his lap steering.Smedley’s also had a couple of Commer TS3’s and a Karrier Bantam at Faversham and later on some Atki Borderer artics.
I used to pester him something rotten to take me up to the Commercial Motor Show at Earls Court,and then return home laden down with bags of brochures,he even used to buy me CM every week!
Most of the kids I knew had football posters all over their wall,I had posters of AEC’s and Scania’s and collected metal pin badges,most of which I still have.
In the summer I would cycle up to the Brenley Roundabout every Sunday afternoon,which is where the M2 finished at Faversham,and just stand and watch all the F88’s and 110’s on their way to Dover and beyond hoping that one day I would be doing the same.
Gawd,this makes me sound like an anorak!
It wasn’t really my dad got me into the game but he died doing his class 1.
My interest in trucks and anything with engines came from my parents owning a pub on the old A63 before the M62 was built, Hull Fish Docks still had trawlers and the car park in the pub was always full of trucks, Albions, Thames Traders, Morris, Guy. etc. I use to talk to the drivers and sit in thier trucks while they got [zb]. Im not sure whether that made me want to drive trucks. 
if you need stars to beat the censor it shouldn’t be there jon
my father was a bus driver for the local bus company, i didn’t really have an interest in any type of vehicle when i was younger, that was until i done my class two in the army and that urged me to get my class one. since then i could not see myself driving anything else. but if i had left it to my mum i’d be driving the number44 to glasgow,no thanks listening to old grannies talk about the weather. 
I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather…not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his bus.
If we aren’t supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
Well, my ol man was a trucker, and bless him, he took his little girl out for her 4th birthday and sat her on his knee and said steer away girl… (on a dis-used airfield!) Ever since then i’ve always wanted to be a driver…
Nobody would put me thorugh my license, so after going to college for years and uni, and then sittin in an office for 6 years i decided that i’d had enough of people chewing my ear and giving me grief everyday, so i booked up and passed me rigid and artic first go… hehe
3 weeks after, i find out i’m pregnant, should have kept me legs crossed i guess… any3way, i;ve got the license and i’m living my dream… it’s all i’ve ever wanted to do and now i’m doing. First job i can honestly say i’ve actually looked forward to going to and i’m still smiling whern i get home. ■■
Dad used to drive a Thames Trader for C&Q in Wembley (I think) then he worked for McGees in Wembley driving Ford D series tippers, then we moved up here to Northants when I was 7 or 8 and I remember spending every holiday sitting on the doghouse of an old Atkinson (borderer I think) then he moved up to Leyland Clydesdales and then a Daf 2600 (that was the bees knees) It was a unit converted into a skip wagon, it used to fly! then came the Daf 2800, then the daddy of them all the Daf 3600 spacecab! I love my job now, but it was much more fun riding shotgun without all the responsibility and hassle! Dad is 65 this year but still going, he owns a Renault Premium and an Iveco Eurostar, so its definatley in the family
Regards
Paul
Sounds like a familiar story tiggz!
My mum and dad were both drivers, and neither wanted me to be! I ended up getting a useless degree at university. I won’t say it was a complete waste of time though as I did meet my guy there.
After leaving I tried everything to get my class 2 but noone took me seriously. Even joining the TA didn’t get me anywhere. So I ended up taking a deadend job that would pay the bills and allow me to save up enough to do it myself. 
I’ve got my Rigid, my ADR and my forklift now. And I get the pleasure of sticking my tongue out at all those idiots who thought I wasn’t serious.
My dad was a bus driver as was his brother, he then changed to lorries and went tramping. In all my teen years I remember going down to the haulage yard on a saturday morning waiting for him to get back and driving the old mammoth major up the back road . I loved it but I never took to the tramping, I like my own bed, be it night or day|
I like doing that tongue thing too dapper… gives me great pleasure… smiles For all those that said i could’t do it! here’s my tongue 
p