I recently got back from a trip to Taranto, down in the heel of the boot of Italy. It didn’t quite go to plan, unlike Coffeeholics trips.
After being asked on Tuesday, if I would go with the load, I sailed from Rosyth on the Superfast ferry to Zeebrugge. I met a couple of fellas on there first trip via Austria, so I suggested that as I was going that way, they could tag along with me if they liked.
At roughly 11:00 we disembarked at Zeebrugge and drove straight round to the Total garage, in the Truck Zone, to get our Euro-Vignettes for the run through Belgium, then on to the Shell station to fill up with cheap diesel. Then we hit the road. Round Brussels was not a problem at this time of and we reached the Liege (Luik)/ Aachen border in 3:30. We stopped for our first break at the Wally Stop (I think), the Total garage right before the border. I wanted to check if I could get the Vignette here on a return journey, in the future, you can’t it has to be got in Germany. We got onto the A61, down past Koblenz and stopped for our next break just north of Karlesruhe in the Autohof, after another 4 hours driving (we could have had it at Sinsheim or a services but I prefer Autohofs and Sinsheim is a bit awkward to get to just for a break). Then we did the last stretch for a 9:45 driving day totaling 790kms, parking up at Leipheim services a little before Ulm.
Friday we set off late, because Italy has a holiday today, meaning a truck driving ban which is lifted at midnight till 7am Saturday. We get to the border at Keifersfelden and the two fellas who are running with me have to get their Go-Boxes (which is used to pay the road tolls), so we park up for a long break. As we are wandering back, in the general direction of the wagons, a wagon from a well known British haulier pulls in. This is a little odd because I am positive that this wagon pulled out just after we arrived. It turns out I am right, “Don’t bother starting up” the driver shouts, “the Austrians have closed their borders to trucks”. He had driven out of the services and got as far as the next exit where he had been directed up the slip road. There he had been stopped and had his CMR’s inspected. Then told to go round the roundabout and he would get his CMR’s back on the northbound slip road.
After hearing several rumors and directions from the various police agencies of two countries, I reckon that thousands (?) of drivers had come up with the same (obvious) plan. Hit a service area in Austria and wait till an appropriate time to start driving into Italy, hitting the border at around about midnight. All the service areas in Austria where now chock-a-block with trucks, so they had closed the border to stop us getting in and having nowhere to park. Pretty late on, the word comes round that Italians and those heading only into the north of Italy will be allowed to go at 05:00. That would give them 2 hours driving to get through Austria and into Italy. The Italians are fairly relaxed about the bans and will usually give you another 2 hours (if you are heading for a border and will get across within the 2 hours, for eg). The two fellas who had been running with me had time to reach their first drop in that extra bit of time, so went, I would have been on my seventh card by then so had to stay.
Not far from the Keifersfelden Border Post and services is the Keifersfelden See, which happily has a bar/café beside it. See if you can guess where I spent most of my weekend?
Monday I started at 04:00 (05:00 C.E.T.) and headed south, topping up my tanks in Austria because its cheaper than Germany and a lot cheaper than Italy. I had a couple of hour long breaks, in service areas, on the way and just after Ancona I turned off the AutoStrada onto the SS16 (an A road). I asked the attendant at the toll booth about parking and eating so was directed north, back towards Ancona. After about 8 kms, there was a hotel with a couple of wagons parked on the waste ground opposite, so I parked up for the night. A three course meal with a jug of wine and coffee (espresso) costs €15. Another 9:45 hrs driving, but only 785 kms today (There were a couple of times when I had queued up to pay at toll booths).
Tuesday was another early start. I had been due to tip in Taranto on Monday. From Ancona it was another drive down the main East coast AutoStrada. My wife recently bought me a small digital camera, for £20. This saw quite a bit of use at anything which caught my eye. I then discovered that it has a problem. If I pick it up and squeeze it the wrong way, the contact with the batteries gets broken which wipes the memory. As it doesn’t have a memory card or anything else, only the internal memory, there is little that I can do except hope. Any way, I get to Taranto and find the customer with only slight difficulty (The boss has passed on most of the directions from another of our drivers who has done this trip a couple of times). I pull up at the security barrier and walk in with my CMR. Greeting the security man with one of those phrases which I’ve picked up. This one is “Bon-Journo, comes-ta?” His face lights up and he replies Bennay (no idea how its spelled but thats how it sounds), and then asks me comes-ta? The CMR is lying on the desk, being totally ignored, he goes on about how warm it is and I point out that in Scotland we reckon that 10 degrees seems normal, 16 degrees is warm 20 is hot and by 30 degrees we are starting to melt. He glances at the CMR at this point and waves me in, chuckling away. I drive in , looking for some kind of sign but see nothing, turning a corner I see a yard full of what I have bought down so park and go to find someone. Mission accomplished, there is an office tucked away inside and a forklift arrives within a couple of minutes. I get the curtains open and everything unstrapped, pull all the nails out as well (then had to straighten out my hammer shaft). I had suggested nailing down one of the pallets because the load was well tied onto the pallet but was a little fragile and a 5 tonne strap might well have damaged it. The loader had then driven nails well through every pallet, not leaving me much to get hold of to pull the nails out. The forky took off the first pallet and came back for the second. As he pushes in the extensions on the fork, I am thinking that the forks look a bit close together for such a wide pallet. He is, however, the forklift driver and I don’t like getting told how to drive so I don’t say anything. He works the pallet out and all looks OK, then, just as the edge of the pallet clears the edge of my trailer, he drops a wheel into a small hole and disaster. The pallet wobbles and falls off the forks. OH NO, I think. I haul this stuff 2000 miles with no trouble, you do 2 metres and drop it. Then his mate turns up with a digital camera and starts snapping away, so out comes mine and I’m doing the same. No way am I going to take the blame for this. We get the pallet stood up the right way and the damage is minimal, then spread the forks out to their max and the other pallet comes off, no more problems. Then its reverse into the building, open the sliding roof, line up with the run of the crane and lift out the other half of my load in two lifts. This was a fiddley job because there was next to no clearance between the door pillars and the fiberglass sections of my load. This part of the job took some time and it was about 15:00 local time when we have finished. I then turn around and head straight back up north again, finishing my day with just under 9 hrs driving, on a service area a bit north of Bari.
Wednesday I head further north and collect the first part of my back-load near Rimini. This should be the last bit of my load because it is light and will now have to be hand-balled onto the top of the rest of the load, as it gets loaded. I carry on northwards and park up outside the gates of my first collection in the morning. I get chatting to the German driver of the wagon parked in front of me. He has dropped his trailer and we go to a local hotel for our evening meal. This is a bit more expensive, a whole €16.50, all in.
Thursday I get a long lie in and start at 07:00 BST. My collection here is 3 pallets of tiles. Then I head a little way south to Maranello (about 1:30) to make another three collections of tiles. All goes well till the last one. They ask me if I am collecting 13 tonnes. After a quick consultation with my calculator and CMR’s I tell them that that would be the load I wanted, so on it goes. The four collections have been collected with no problems except that I have been hand-balling boxes onto the top of each collection as it has been loaded and its 30 degrees + , in the shade, and I’m in the back of an enclosed wagon with the sun beating down. Hot doesn’t describe it.
I phone my boss to tell him that I’ve just loaded the last collection and am setting of, as I pull out of the petrol station and café after a long cold (soft) drink and a coffee. 10 minutes later my phone goes, its the boss, they have loaded me with the wrong load it seems. I should have had the other load of 8 tonnes, so need to turn round and get the extra taken off. The agents sums add up to me being overloaded. Back I go, open up the curtains again and within about 30 mins the extra pallets are off. Not bad for Italy considering. The problem now is that, with the delay of a 30 min wait plus the time it took to turn around and get back, it is now 16:00 ish local time, ie knocking off time. I am now going to be catching traffic till well past Bologna. As I get north of Bologna, the sky in front starts to get some very dark clouds and there are very big, bright lightning strikes. Then I reach them and the clouds open, dropping huge rain drops which seem to bounce about 3 feet back off the ground, visibility is horrendous and everyone has slowed down to about 50 - 60 kph. It only lasts for about 10 minutes though and in next to no time the roads are dry again and we’re all back up to full chat. I stop for the night at a Garda Est services and have a pretty good meal for €17.50, not bad considering its a motorway services. Later on several truck drivers are standing around the lorry park, having a beer and chatting in the slight cool drizzle, its lovely. Few of us have a language in common, but we all muddle through with hand signals and a conglomeration of different languages all mixed together. A few words of French with a couple of words in German and finishing off the sentence in Italian, assisted with the hand signals gets the gist across to someone who will translate into yet another language for someone else. We are all laughing at each others efforts, and then at the joke when the translation clicks in. A good evening.
Friday was a straight driving day. Up into Austria where I top my tanks up (I put 250l in on Thursday as I was getting a little too low for comfort). I follow my southward tracks and park up in an Autohof just before Stuttgart. I have my first conversation in proper English since last Friday here, with an English and an Irish driver. There we sat, the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman, (I’ll leave the rest up to you). On the way up, my boss had phoned to remind me that Germany had a driving ban on Saturday, so would I be OK? especially after the hold-up yesterday afternoon. I had 2 hours to get out of Germany if I started at my usual early start time, which wouldn’t be enough to get to Belgium or Luxembourg. If I ran across too Saarbrucken and dropped down into France there, I could then run along to Metz and up into Luxembourg that way. My boss checked his handbook and told me that would be fine, not an ideal route but it would do the job. As we were all sitting there someone said that the A61 was OK to drive during the ban, but I was a little dubious about that. As I headed back to my cab I saw, tucked away in a corner, a computer terminal. Remembering the map Coffeeholic had posted I put some money in and came to TruckNet. I got in no problem and found the thread with its map to download, disaster, it will not download the map. I spend the next 20 or 30 minutes trying to find out where I can confirm what routes are open and which aren’t to no avail. I decide to start even earlier to give me more time, so I can hopefully get out of Germany on the more direct route.
Saturday dawns and I have slept straight through my alarm clocks, both of them and its almost my usual early start time. Stuff it, coffee first and head for Saarbrucken and France. Off I go at 04:00 BST and turn onto the Autobahn for Saarbrucken at about 07:10 local, just after the ban starts. There are a few wagons on the road but most are parked-up on the service areas. I am a little bit nervous but quite a few of the truck I see are just curtain-siders, not all local lads either so I’m fairly confident that I’m OK. Just before Saarbrucken I see a police car coming up behind me, but they drive straight past. I cross the border into France at about 08:45 local and breath a sigh of relief, I’m free and clear now. I’ll take a break at Longville services, get my Vignette for today and Monday. Fill up in Lux and park just over the border at Habay in the truckstop for the rest of the weekend. Then I get to the peage (toll booth), a group of Doaner are there and I get waved into the parking area just past the peage. This is a fairly standard occurrence in France so I switch off pick up my CMR’s and jump out of the cab. We exchange greetings etc then the usual questions. You will know them because they are much the same the world over. Where have you come from, where are you going, what are you carrying, may I see your documentation, etc, etc? They are happy with my answers, my load appears to match my paperwork and I have been polite and as helpful as appropriate so they are regretful when they tell me that, in order to drive round the ban in Germany and coming into France I was now faced with the French driving ban so would I please park up, no fine. I looked suitably horrified and asked if I could please drive a further km. to Longville services. Certainly, they said, but no further till 19:00 tonight. I thanked them and did just that.
Longville services no longer do the Euro-vignette so now I have a problem. The truckstop at Thionville will be closed when I get there and so will the kiosk in the layby a bit further on. Lux is a dead loss for getting the vignette so what should I do. I decide to keep going and check each one as I pass. I arrive at Berchem Services and fill up. There in the pay booth is a machine for paying the defunct German Maut (road toll), so I ask for a vignette. No I can’t get that here, I might be able to get it at the border. Off I go again, I am not spending another weekend on a motorway services. Saturday evening sees me parked up at the Truck Centre at Habay, in Belgium, still no vignette. The vignette costs €8 (or £5) a day. Getting caught without it costs about €500.
Monday sees me heading off at my usual early-start time of 04:00 BST. Heading for Calais and whatever crossing my boss decides is the cheapest this week. It turns out to be through the pipe (tunnel). I have filled up again in Belgium and got my vignette at the airport at Brussels. How many trucks fly into there I wonder? Through all the checks, including a fairly thorough search by British customs and I go straight onto the train in Calais. Fill out the rest of my check sheet for anti-immigrant checks and park up for the night at Derby Market and Lorry park. A decent meal and a pint then bed.
Tuesday and I arrive at my first drop at 07:45. Half an hour after leaving Derby, to start reversing the process of restacking my light boxes onto pallets as the room is made by unloading the tiles. All three deliveries of tiles come off, no problem, but I am starting to get a little hot and bothered by all the unaccustomed work with tight time margins, rain and still quite warm. I get to my last drop, the boxes at 16:30. they won’t tip me till tomorrow and they start at 08:30. So its an early finish and a long lay in for me then. Time to find somewhere to eat in St Helens. I end up at a Brewers Fair pub.
Wednesday morning, bright and early I get tipped. I had restacked 60 of my 160 boxes onto 6 pallets. It took us about 20 mins to stack the other 100 boxes and fork-truck them away.It took another 40 mins to unload the 6 pallets and put them away. Last night they had finished work one hour after I had arrived.
Time to get my reload for home.
Just to put the icing on the cake for Saturday, when I got home I checked on the map from Coffees post. Once I had turned onto the Saarbrucken stretch, I could then have carried on, in Germany, all the way up to Remich on the Lux border. I am told I could have got my Vignette there as well. It was a good job I hadn’t carried on up the A61 though. The ban does cover that.
