I see you’ve addressed that to me..
Sorry mate my head is spinning trying to decipher it, and work out what you are trying to put across to me.
I don’t know about you but I have a pretty extensive experience in flats and roping and sheeting trailers in the past, so all I said is what I would do with that load personally.
Sheeting certain loads that did not need sheeting (solely to keep dry) , were often made more secure by hoying a sheet over it.
If you disagree, no probs.
I wish i could understand what you are trying to say
No sh it Sherlock! Loaded that would be 100 tonne plus. The tarp is perfectly adequate alone.
You may have read all about it, but many of us on here have real life experience and know all about it.
If the Buffalo wasn’t a success with your drivers Dennis, did you not fancy trying a Marathon with the Cummins option on demo?
Your ex driver and my mate at the time, Brian Newton had a one when we were at National Carriers together tramping, he used to love it as far as I remember.
No I never fancied the Marathon as IMHO Leylands by the 70’s were crap and I was already running Atkys and ERF’s so there was no way I was going to lower our fleet standards by buying Leylands or for good measure Fodens 
I would think with your strict servicing Dennis most motors would be quite reliable. Leyland had a bad build reputation very much like their car side so i can understand why you didn’t bother with the brand. The Foden i had was a 1984 last of the ones before the the 4000 series were launched and it was a great motor but lacked headroom. By then though Scanias would have been your preffered motor
I said in previous posts long past that following the major upheaval to the industry caused by the 1968 Transport act the quality of HGV’s improved dramatically and in my opinion from that time there was no such thing as a bad vehicle it was just that some were better than others. drawing on personal experience my very first motor back in early 68 was a Trader, my next one 6 months later was a new D1000 and the difference was “light years”. However I freely admit that the D1000 together with the two Mastiff units that I bought in 69 and 70 were not suitable fleet motors as was found out by the bigger firms that tried to run them with “run of the mill “ drivers which was an unmitigated disaster. However I believed I proved that back then these V8 engined motors if driven carefully and dillengtly serviced they actually did a decent job for a small fleet particularly when these cheaper economy motors were all that the likes of me at 22/23 years old could afford.So I go back to what I initially claimed that there was and probably still is no such thing as a bad motor as you get what you pay for but then you have to make certain allowances as I have pointed out. having said all this I can say that there was no way I could have run the size of fleet I built up over the years based on the motors I have described it would have been impossible ! sorry to ramble !
You are probably right with what you are saying regarding the Mastiffs which would be more suited to local and medium distance. But the heavier Leyland AEC and even Foden would have held their own with your servicing schedule. Not much difference between an ERF Foden Atkinson Seddon or Guy with similar spec. The build quality of the whole lot would have been dodgy to say the least. But at the time the imports weren’t much better with Volvo suffering from tin worm .The difference being the foreigners were more driver friendly . But i will say it again i think no matter what you operated if they were up to the job would have been decent with the servicing regime you operated. You did say the Seddon was the cheapest 32 tonner on the market and there would have been a reason for that but you still said they gave good service
I wish he could understand what he is trying to write!
Seddon 32/4 with RR 220 engine was the cheapest 32 tonner on the market late 60’s early 70’s closely followed by the Big J with the same engine. Noisy bags of S—t IMHO.
But did they cause you problems?
Pretty much. There’ll be no action there this side of Christmas. They’re just sending us trampers miles upon miles empty (which they obviously hate) to collect bizarre loads in an effort to keep the wheels turning.
Incidentally Dennis did you price the Guy Big J with the 8 LXB 240 ??
Apologies couldn’t help myself ….but it was a way to beg some interaction as this site doesn’t have quick flowing conversations anymore!
Suggest you read your own country’s load security rules regarding load restraints and using a tarp to restrain a load clearly ain’t it just like here whether 1975 or 2025.
One of my first instructions was that sheets aren’t for holding stuff on a flat they are only for covering stuff that needs to be kept dry.That was also made very clear by the ministry in the day and to date.With warnings of prosecutions if it was deemed that a sheet was being used to restrain a load.
Ramone wishes to disagree and nowhere have I ever stated that the rule wasn’t often ignored and short cutted.That didn’t /doesn’t make it good professional practice.
How would you secure a load of loose bricks? Or hand loaded roof tiles?
A rope passed over every single top brick?
They could send you up to ours and get rid of subbies.Sending our tipper drivers home and using subbies local Madness
Go put a full load of wool on and just rope it and see how far you get ….. why do i answer ffs
Yeah, that’s the one I tried (unsuccessfully) to post 
