Hi all,Im a newcomer to trucknet and have been reading some of your interesting letters on here.Im from northern ireland and am wondering if any of you may have come from there and remember John eastwoods in belfast? I passed my hgv test in august 1978 and began driving for them next day.They were a scrap haulage firm (and the scrap included the lorries we drove)
Their whole fleet then was foden,all 8 wheelers except the low loader.The 8 wheelers were all roll on /roll off and all the equipment was designed and built on their site by joe diamond and his crew.At that time the troubles here were at their height and the police were not bothered by lorries that were not roadworthy or overloaded,and a good job too.The lorries were supposed to gross at 30 tons then but the weight without any load just lorry and empty container was around 17 tons!! 
any vehicle inspector from england would have had heart failure if they weighed or examined those lorries.One of my regular runs a few times a week was to mackies foundry where it was not unusual to have 35 tons of a load (yes a load) of cast iron.The tipping gear was a single underfloor ram and if you knew there was no way of offloading some of your load before tipping you got it loaded almost all to the rear which made turning corners very interesting indeed.Anyone who drove a foden in those days will recall the “armstrong” steering and the 8 speed gearbox (or 12 if you knew where to look)The gardiner 180 engine,air operated wipers which slowed when you braked and the cab which froze you in winter and roasted you in summer.How would the modern day scania/volvo lads cope with that. 
In 1979 they bought in 3 of the first volvo F10s in ireland,these were artics pulling their own designed tipping trailers and hiab cranes mounted behind the cab The unit and trailer weighing almost 20 tons unladen.I well recall the sales rep from dennison commercials in ballyclare watching me driving the first load out enroute to the docks and grossing 48 tons!! the expression on his face lives with me to this day.I hope to submit some more of my past experiences from back then as the rules on loads and hours on the mainland would have been bliss then for us.all the best to all on the roads today.
First things first fadetogrey " welcome to truck-net uk ".
Interesting story aswell as entertaining, as you can see from my avatar i also do roll on roll off, but on artic not 8 leggers.
I have to agree about not knowing your weight preciseley until you get to tipping point as my trailer is nearly 20yrs old. As for some of the more fortunate drivers that have only ever known auto gear boxes & 400 plus engines, it would’ve been interesting to see some drivers tackle a gardner 180 david brown, no power steered foden 
. Other than that, you have to tackle whats in you era.
overloaded scrap wagons still happen now . had ten years of it , and the amount of times i got caught out with overloads was scary .
i remember going to hopkinsons in huddersfield not that long ago to collect a 20 yarder full of steel they had cleared from thier yard only to discover they had not been told what they could put in it , the message they had been given was incorrectly relayed to the yard clearing chaps and they had put 32t into it , even if i could have picked it up , and i could’nt , i would have been approaching 50t . i seem to remember it took a fortnight to get it out and cost several hundred pounds .
and i still had to prove to the yard bloke that i could’nt even get close to picking it up , even with the club foot down i still had all 4 front wheels off the deck … 
was eastwoods down where clearway are now ? isn’t that the same ones out near crumlin now ?
hi glenman,the original eastwoods were at the roundabout at andersonstown think it called westwood centre now.clearway in portadown bought them over in late 80s early 90sI believe,The eastwoods at crumlin is run by john eastwood (the son of raymond) who ran original yard with brother gussie.Young john was a real character,Before the new volvo F10s were bought dennisons brought down an F86 demonstrator (the bubble type for those that remember)It was just the unit not even a fifth wheel and young john took it for a run,It goes without saying it flew up the motorway and he was well impressed and ordered it on the spot.Few weeks later it arrived complete with hiab and the lowloader driver hughie dunne took it to the queens quay at the docks to lift a hitachi digger to return to the yard.On his way back he had to stop at the lights at the junction of the falls and grosvenor which is on a hill but not a very steep one.Well lights changed and hughie let clutch out.She rose and stalled and for next 15 minutes hughie almost burned the clutch out to get her up and round the corner.I guess F86s just werent made for eastwoods,that was why a while later we got the F10s and that 86 was returned to dennison never to be seen again.
Interesting to see the pic of your wagon gunner, is it the hook type hydraulic lift? As I said in my first piece ours were hand made as such an were a reel of steel cable on a hydraulic operated drum.The cable ran the length of the lorry and a steel saddle was on it which connected onto the front of the container.when you operated the lever the container was winched up the back of the lorry rather like a train on rails.unfortunatly when the winch was taking up the slack you had to step inside the cable to guide it onto the winch to stop it overlapping.(wonder what the hse would have made of that?) If you left it too late to take your hand off the cable it would have been pulled into the drum along with your arm and the rest.
Mr eastwood would have been very upset Im sure 
It would have meant burning through a good wire cable and the lorry would have been off the road for 2 or 3 hours. 
Hope im not boring you too much people but im medically retired now and have lots of spare time.When im back on again I will bore/tell you how we moved heavy plant then,using an ex army lowloader with neither brakes or even connections for them.and shifting an R.B.22 crane from the yard to the docks and vice versa WITHOUT removing the jib. safe journey to all drivers on the road today.
Yes fadetogrey, its the hook type single arm, twin ram lift . Although we do have 3 trailers that are twin ram, twin arm lifts. And its frightening what they can lift…
The arm with cable type lifts you described, wow hsf would have a field day, and a lot of drivers would have kittens guiding that cable over your runners.
Look forwards to your next story … 
Thanks gunner.Been looking on another page about the old F7s 30 birthday,They followed eastwoods old foden rigids and were like paradise to us.heaters that worked!!increase in power not by much mind think it was 202hp in the 8 wheelers and a 16 speed gearboxwith air assisted clutch.They still suffered from our overloading though,a legal 30 ton gross,a usual 45 ton+ gross with us.but they performed very well although anyone who drove one then will remember that although the switch for the high/low range change was on the gearstick the splitter was on the dashboard so with a heavy load on you were going from gearstick to dash back and forth but it was a small price to pay.some of our drivers (myself included)suffered the embarrassment of calling out a fitter from dennisons on a wasted journey.The F7sand the F10 I drove had what was called a bromms brake down beside the parking brake on the engine tunnel.dunno if they are still there but it was a button that came out if the air supply went down.my first morning after the yard was closed for a weeks holiday I started up built up air and let off the handbrake and went nowhere.Went to the yard manager dreading to tell him my nice new volvo wont go and was (pleasantly )surprisedto see the other 2 F10 and 4 F7 drivers waiting with the same problem.We all told the boss the score and it being a very frosty january morning he assumed the brakes had frozen and rang dennison.Down came the fitter took one look and ask why we never pushed in the bromms brake button?I think the blank looks on our faces followed by a few ,what the f… is a bromms brake answered his question.anyway within 15 mins we were all off with another lesson learned.Incidentally the aluminium front bumper on the volvos didnt last long in a scrap yard and eastwoods fitters made up their own version with steel H beams.The standing joke was when we werent hauling steel we could use the lorry for a D8 dozer.!!thats all for now,safe journey and safe home to all drivers on the roads today.
worked for a firm “d. marks” out of poplar east london doing bottle banks dodgy firm but a good guvnor anyway he bought ex cleanaways f7s so they were pretty knackered when we got them but my little f7 was a joy to drive although not that fast we did not do long distance just london and home counties so speed was not a problem, when were full of glass we would tip at a bottle factory in edinburgh way in harlow we had an old f7 with the t bar splitter switch on the dash and yes it was a pain but sooner that than an 8 speed without splitter we did get a c reg before I left with the splitter button on the stick and as it was not that old it was a great truck to drive , we did have to watch the overweight though as on the m11 there is a hill before the harlow turn off and at the slip road used to be a weigh bridge we were always struggling up that hill with our old trucks and would get pulled sometimes to get weighed now if you fill a lorry with glass from bottle banks you could never be sure how much you had on we used to reckon one full bank was a ton I got weighed a couple of times but was ok but some of our guys did get done, all in all though I liked the f7s not a top weight motor but surely one of the easiest to drive,I however was not over weight myself then the late 80s but time and a lazy way of life now has definitely put me over the top haha cheers fred
I used to bring in crates of rubber from Cork to Broxburn.Used a company called either Lavery or Lafferty.
These guys used to run a bit over.Came in one Sunday night with twelve ton of rubber in a six wheeled rigid.When I got my lot of the driver asked me to shift a few pallets to the front to even out the load.The pallets were only about a foot or so high and had rolls of seatbelt material on them.The one ton forklift wouldnt lift one I had to use the three tonner.I shifted a load of them to the front but the overhang on the body was still well down and all that was left was two big crates right on the backend.Asked the driver if he wanted me to move them forward for him.Whats your forklift lift he asked? When told three ton he says “you`ll never lift them,we had to load them with a crane”
Still,they were a good company to deal with.Reliable and never let you down.
Mark.