Come all ye all boxvan, curtainsider, tilt and pantech drivers and tell us your tale of the time the wind roared that hard it blew you over or took you off the road altogether (or ■■■■ close to it).
I was lucky enough never to have a wagon actually decide to have a little lie down but came closer to it than I wanted to more than a few times. Like fer instance:
Coming back (empty) from a removal in Gloucestershire in a TK luton and nearly ending up in a ditch on the A40 thanks to a gusty south-westerly (horizontal rain didn’t help).
Driving my DAF2100 with a 2100cu.ft body chock full of toilet rolls (a backload from somewhere near Barry I think, Bowaters perhaps??) east over the Severn Bridge (the original one) as a sou-wester roared up the Bristol Channel - the thing was leaning so far left I thought I was a goner and I was down to 30mph. The worst part was going past the bridge pylons - a second or two of normality followed by a violent sway to the left. At one point I caught myself leaning to the right against the door as hard as I could, as if it would have made any difference whatsoever.
One very blustery day going east up over Scammonden in a Merc 1014 with a large van body on it. I was only going over the hill to get a backload from York and very nearly didn’t make it. The higher I climbed away from Rochdale the worse it got, wagons parked on the hard shoulder and one or two 40’ tautliners either on their side or skewed over at a nasty angle.
The DAF again. I’ve loaded at Metal Box NW10 with a full load of caniseters and what have you for Brocks (fireworks) at Sanquhar. A westerly has been blowing hard since about Stoke, and by the time I get past Lancaster it’s blowing fit to bust. Sometime in the wee hours I’m still going north on the M6, and somewhere between Kendal and Shap the wind got that bad the lorry was across two lanes before I could blink. Thankfully there was just about no-one else around, and those few plucky souls (or silly sods) who were still soldiering on were either doing the same speed I was (about 25) or - if they were driving a flatbed - were giving blokes like me as much room as possible.
I never drove a wagon over the Humber Bridge, and personally I’m quite thankful for it.
(if this has been done before, sorry, my searching skilz is rubbish)
like you park royal , i always somehow managed to keep yje shiny side up . coming over shap on the m6 on a dark winters evening with a 15ft 3 taut liner was interesting to say the least , never so glad to see the lights of tebay . another time stopped on the m1 just above j30 due to one blown over ahead and the wind lifting the nearside trailer wheels off the road ( the expression on the daft car drivers face who though he was sheltered by my side was priceless ). going up by metal bridge two by two with a tanker forming a wind break for a tautliner . i always made sure the curtains were as tight as i could get them , helped a lot in the wind . those that flapped about like your grannie’s drawers on a washing line were the first to go over . cheers , dave
Luckily, during that really bad storm that struck the Southern half of the country in the 1980s, I was driving a tanker which wasn’t affected so badly by the wind.
There was a hold-up on the Northbound M1, caused by accidents in the distance, and everything had been stopped dead for some time. I was sat sitting, minding my own business and having a brew, when I saw a small Bedford with curtainsider bodywork, lifted off it’s wheels and dumped on it’s side on the low loader that was stationary alongside it. After making sure the young driver was OK, we all had a good laugh about it. The low loader driver said he would take his “unwanted load” to the next services where they would sort out what was to be done.
Hi, in the early 80s driving a TM Bedford 4 wheeler had the back wheels of the ground twice, once on M606 and A74 Lesmahagow ,don’t half make the backside nip when the engine revs up. Was down on the south coast in that bad storm the trucks over and devastation was unbelievable.
Les.
just about on its ribs about 2 years back between J-44 & J-43 , M6,SOUTHBOUND …the bit over the river …pat my shants big time and to this day still pat them even if its just a slight breeze
Retired Old ■■■■:
Luckily, during that really bad storm that struck the Southern half of the country in the 1980s, I was driving a tanker which wasn’t affected so badly by the wind…
I remember that one very well. At the time (October 1987) I was living in a mobile home in Chertsey. Some time during the early hours I woke up (not normal for me, I don’t so much sleep as go unconscious) and the entire thing was moving like someone had parked it on the deck of the Ark Royal. Took me 2 and a half hours to get to work (NW10), a trip that usually took an hour.
Though I never drove a wagon on the continet, I did do plenty of trips on the bike in the 80s. I didn’t find the Mistral all that much fun in the south of France but by far the worst area was the flat lands on the run north between Paris and the channel ports. No shelter, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, couldn’t get into the bowels of the ferry quick enough.
Retired Old ■■■■:
Luckily, during that really bad storm that struck the Southern half of the country in the 1980s, I was driving a tanker which wasn’t affected so badly by the wind…
I remember that one very well. At the time (October 1987) I was living in a mobile home in Chertsey. Some time during the early hours I woke up (not normal for me, I don’t so much sleep as go unconscious) and the entire thing was moving like someone had parked it on the deck of the Ark Royal. Took me 2 and a half hours to get to work (NW10), a trip that usually took an hour.
Most of us survived that storm, but it did claim the life of one of my mates whose ERF was stuck by a falling tree somewhere in Sussex. Ironically he was on his way to collect a load of timber at the time.
I remember being on with Brinks Mat on my way back from Glasgow with a empty 20ft box on a 20ft skelly. The A74 was like a battleground motors on their sides all over the place, the wheels of the skelly kept lifting and I was sure it would take the F7 over but it stayed upright. It was like piloting a yacht, when you saw the wheels start to lift steer into the wind a bit and they went down again. The bloody Brinks guard with me was cacking himself, I was determined to get back to Manchester that day and kept going.
I was asked on the W.H.Williams thread by Jeffery Ellener to give my experiences on this thread, and for completeness here it is
Hi jeff,
I really have no tales to tell. We only ever had one van that blew over, about 1959-60 A Ford Tames 4D with a 1600 cu ft. luton body on it that was probably too big for such a light weight chassis.
We had a Seddon passenger chassis with a pantechnicon body by Seddon’s subsidiary company Pennine, that was stopped blowing over by being parked next to a building which stopped it and wedged it up, but once again it was 36 ft. long by 14ft 6in high and far too big.
We had a demountable luton van body blow off its stand at our Spennymoor depot, but once again it didn’t count.
However I think our problems didn’t occur because the majority of our vans were pantechnicons by Marsden and Vanplan and were both well designed with skirts down the sides near the ground and the wind simply didn’t get underneath them to lift them over. (If you understand my double Dutch)
The other thing was with regard our small vans with single wheels on the back were not sent out if we considered the wind too strong as I have no doubt one or two of them (Thinking of Morris. BMC J2 and JU’s with large luton bodies) wouldn’t have taken much, but also we told drivers ‘If in doubt park up’ because far better to lose a few hours’ work than have a van’s body destroyed in the wind.
Carl
Hello there ref gone with the wind,I came into Dartford that night got of the ferry and got done by customs for having 2 bottlesof wisky had to let them have 1 .Then parked in the docks it was a bit blowy then about 2hrs later there was trailers banging together empys on there sides I moved up the row of parked trucks I was in to get abit more cover when I got up in the morning I was back at the end of the row every 1 eles had the same idear. I drove then round the south side of the 25 it looked like a war zone after I tipped I had to run back to Dartford to find a phone that worked no handys back then. It was a thursday night friday morning when that hit and at home in Suffolk it took till saturday after noon to get the electristy back on.Thankgod the pub had hand pull pumps in the old days