Leyland600:
Yan o Jazzers eh ! Dennis, Noo these lads knew how to rope and sheet whether it be cheese frae Spytri dairy or a mixed load (cartons and drums) frae Marchon. Hector Johnston another brother who worked on his own as an owner driver was very asthmatical and coughed and spluttered quite a lot, other drivers would often take pity on him and offer to help him sheet up especilly when loading late evening at Marchon but his reply was always the same amid coughing. " Git yersels away yam, A’ll seun throw a bit o sheet at it an A’hl see ye ont docks tomorrow morning." Sure enough “The Guvnor” as he was known would be first in the queue at Liverpool next morning despite his LV cabbed ERF unit with 5LW fitted and single axle trailer. If the dockers were becoming awkward a natural instinct they had “The Guvnor” would lay into them calling them all the names he could think of and funnily enough he always managed to get tipped. I alway enjoyed being in his company when away down the road a genuine fellow haulier mate.
Cheers, Leyland 600
Aye Gerald, those were the days when there was a lot more traffic coming out of West ■■■■■■■■■■ than there is to-day ! and the many Characters that drove the motors are ,sadly, no longer with us eh! Cheers Dennis.
harry_gill:
Hiya,
I must have been pretty good at the sheeting and roping never once in my life
on the road 90% of it handball requiring “happing up and tying doon” I never
had one damage or wet signature, I’m proud of that and I never lost nowt.
thanks harry, long retired.
A record to be proud of “H” pity the cab,windscreen and chassis wasn’t as clean as the tidy load Cheers Dennis
Hiya,
Inside the cab was always clean I spent a third plus of my working day in there
and the glass and lenses shone like the moon and stars I do admit to giving the
rear number plate a wipe with a “clarty” rag on the odd occasion just to get it
back to the yard you understand that combined with a spot of log sheet/book
engineering, well you can’t do enough for a decent Gaffer can you now.
thanks harry, long retired.
Excellent photographs, I just wondered if you had a shortage of ROPE as on most of your trailers roped very well I must say, however the front end is always roped in-between the hooks on most of your loads, not using every hook!
.Now your mates picture the green truck, roped “every hook” does look the business just an observation .
I do understand the fly takes some of the credit as they all work within the hooks,
or was it canny cost cutting .D.B.P.
deckboypeggy:
Excellent photographs, I just wondered if you had a shortage of ROPE as on most of your trailers roped very well I must say, however the front end is always roped in-between the hooks on most of your loads, not using every hook!
.Now your mates picture the green truck, roped “every hook” does look the business just an observation .
I do understand the fly takes some of the credit as they all work within the hooks,
or was it canny cost cutting .D.B.P.
c.mon lads if your old like me (68) roping and sheeting is also about what size sheets you had, at onward we had 28 foot by 28 foot x 2 sheets plus a bottle sheet 54 feet by 14 feet, now on 48 pallets of bottles it was great, but if you got a back load of say 24 pallets of paper which wasn’t very high,it was still ok if you had folded your sheets properly unless along came the wind, basically if you could rope and sheet it was ok, we had a shunter in the pop works in Featherstone who was not the tidiest of shunters that untidy that I used to carry a little card stuck on the side window of sleeper cab that said…the driver of this vehicle did not rope & sheet this vehicle lol, but I used to pride myself on being immaculate I even used to put a star right on the arse end of the load just like the Scottish drivers, you must admit there was a lot of smart loaded trailers coming down from Scotland, then along came tautliners oh and im still at it but there aint much roping & sheeting nowadays thank god I cant climb like I used to
Bewick:
A 24ton load of cut board on Pallets stood in the depot at Milnthorpe.
i noticed the nestles yorkie trailer in shot , did you do much for them dennis ? dave
Hiya Dave, Our depot was right behind the Libby/Nestle factory in Milnthorpe and there was next to no room on the factory site for their two spare trailers plus they didn’t have any motors based at Milnthorpe so I did a deal with them and our shunter loaded their trailers during the day and Nestles night men ran into our depot and changed trailers, they took the loaded trailers back to Burton-on-Trent or Warrington, we mainly got the Kit Kat and Yorkie vans as well as their Nestle liveried Tautliners, they loaded their own flats on the odd occasion they turned up at Milnthorpe.Cheers Dennis.
deckboypeggy:
Excellent photographs, I just wondered if you had a shortage of ROPE as on most of your trailers roped very well I must say, however the front end is always roped in-between the hooks on most of your loads, not using every hook!
.Now your mates picture the green truck, roped “every hook” does look the business just an observation .
I do understand the fly takes some of the credit as they all work within the hooks,
or was it canny cost cutting .D.B.P.
Apart from the odd RTA I can only ever recall losing two loads out of the many thousands of loads we hauled over the years and they were both 22ton loads of British Cellophane pulp and both were “roll overs” on roundabouts. They were basically about 24 ft long loads on a 40ft trailer, I’m not making excuses for the two drivers as we hauled hundreds of the same loads from Portbury to Barrow without incident but they were top heavy and you had to treat them with the utmost respect. With regard to your comment about roping well each of our loads was roped as required which meant you didn’t have rope every hook just as long as the ropes you did use were in the right place on the load to do the job. We had some of the very first YORK LD 40 footers around 1972/3 and for some reason the first ones were built with either 15" or 18" cross members and each one had a hook on it. Well I recall one episode when a Subbie was pulling for us and I can’t just recall where it was loading but he was on the phone complaining that he’d run out of rope as he got to front trailer axle, the dozy ■■■■■ He could have missed every other hook and he would have been fine, I think one of our own drivers sorted him out as there was two or three of them there IIRC. The usual complement of ropes on each of our flats was 6 x 90ft long Polyproplene plus maybe a couple of short bits for roping the rolled up sheets on and for bits of finishing off jobs etc. All our Drivers usually carried a couple ropes on the unit just in case more rope was needed which wasn’t very often! Cheers Dennis.
That must have been quite tight on th railway bridge dennis , it looks to be well over13ft . our curtainsiders were about 13ft6 and they went under ok until the first ec came with a different 5th wheel and that wouldn’t go . i think it was 4" higher than the rest . someone made a fine job of sheeting those staggered rolls . dave
It was meant as a joke , me being silly, I never over roped a load if not needed .I and lots of others drivers carried all types of loads, from anywhere.
and Ropes! and chains, and snappers, ,and 4 sheets , a back scotches,timbers under the trailer lags , 2 bags of scotches for reels ,as much as you could get in the passenger foot well ,loads of ropes wet and smelly.in the cab as well also tied on the back of the cab on the air cleaner brackets… good days ,sometimes.
dbp.
He could have missed every other hook and he would have been fine, I think one of our own drivers sorted him out as there was two or three of them there IIRC. The usual complement of ropes on each of our flats was 6 x 90ft long Polyproplene plus maybe a couple of short bits for roping the rolled up sheets on and for bits of finishing off jobs etc. All our Drivers usually carried a couple ropes on the unit just in case more rope was needed which wasn’t very often! Cheers Dennis.
