steptoe:
Do you have any pictures from those days? I started on an F12 then an F10 (smaller engine bigger pod) before getting a Scania. Never home but still happy days.
I so wish I did. These days it’s normal for everybody to photograph everything they do, but I was only a kid back then and really self-conscious. I didn’t want people thinking I was a newbie (even though I was so wet behind the ears it wasn’t funny!) so I didn’t get any. Bloody shame, I have to rely on other folks having taken them now.
steptoe:
They had a couple of drawbar outfits in the early nineties that had only one body mounted across both the truck and the trailer, a. Strange set up designed in house. As the truck turned the body slid back from the cab somehow. It needed a lot of room to manoeuvre and didn’t take off, but it did allow the same loading area as a standard outfit with a top sleeper but it had a full cab. I think they were made for the Sony contract.
I’m a bit late but I do believe this is what you are referring to. Taken in 1992 at the Philips warehouse in Zona Franca, Barcelona.
It was banned in the UK. I think it got pulled as it was coming out of Dover and the cop just said “You are joking aren’t you?”
I ran with this driver to Greece once. The guys that point you left or right when you reverse on the boat were left scratching their heads as the chassis was going one way while the body was going the other. They eventually gave up, told the driver where he should park and left him to it.
It was a very dangerous bit of kit in my opinion. On tight hairpin bends anyone coming the opposite direction would often come face to face with the front of the body which protruded outwards into their lane. The same was going on at the rear end too.
That thing took my mirror and arm of as it coming out the Blonk on the Italian side. If I hadn’t of been so quick to react it would of had the cab as well.
My boss phoned De Rooy and we got a new mirror out of them.
The driver was called Catweazel and he had his schedule a month in advance .there were only certain routes he could go on. He made good money. Loved the job. Went off route once in an Italian village and had to get a crane to get him out.
harry:
The driver was called Catweazel and he had his schedule a month in advance .there were only certain routes he could go on. He made good money. Loved the job. Went off route once in an Italian village and had to get a crane to get him out.
i remember him, i reckon it was the early ninetys?
