Running bent in the 1980s

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
181

kr79:
I don’t think anyone said they were averaging 100kph going to southern Europe especially in the days when a lot was done on national roads.
As nmm pointed out the hours to get to Milan you would be averging 30-40 mph to make it in the time frame.
I’m pretty sure those who done it the way they dI’d as that was the quickest way to do it not because they didn’t want to go to bed every night for a decent sleep.
Especially in the pre open border days they probably would do it the way they did as some customs posts done import loads in the morning and export in the afternoon.
So they would be cracking on to get there in there morning your way might see you there after lunch which means you have lost a day waiting to clear customs.

Oh now you are just putting sound logic into the argument, never mind, that’s never hindered CF before :wink:

Carryfast:

eddie snax:

Carryfast:
The problem would have been that you’d probably have got all the freight there too late taking all those cat naps there and back and running at 55 mph max.

As opposed to job and finish change overs done at pre limiter type speeds.With the win win of awake drivers who’d had their correct daily rest periods. :smiling_imp: :laughing:

:smiley:

as for night running, try getting the correct daily rest on night fruit and veg runs :unamused:

Never saw a Fruitex lorry doing less than 100k’s an hr, unless it was tipping, and that included after limiter came in :smiley:

I didn’t say that non one ever drove a truck at UK type speeds on the continent.

.

I didn’t mention the continent, I was mentioning those that ran uk f & v markets on nights(and other night runs too). I was countering your statement about uk night trunking, by mentioning that not all the guys running nights in the uk 20 yrs or so ago, were running any thing like legal all the time, and were not factoring change overs with other drivers to keep legal and fresh, as this just added another layer of complication to the run, when with a bit of fiddling and a lot of speed, one driver could do, what was probably 1 & quarter drivers work, or 2 drivers under present day conditions.

Averaging 60mph (just under 100kph), was easy on night work with the right truck (F12 in my case, 2235powerliners for fruitex) though this meant that 70mph plus down motorway banks was the norm :smiley: slinging you up the other side still doing 50mph. Crack on driver, best of all, coppers just drove right past, happy days :sunglasses:

182

Carryfast:
I didn’t say that non one ever drove a truck at UK type speeds on the continent.The point was that even at pre limiter uk type speeds no one was going to be able ‘one hit’ Milan without exceeding driving time and/or daily rest limits by a silly margin let alone Southern Italy.While the real world speed regime for trucks on the continent was generally much less than that with limits at best of 90 kmh or more often 80 kmh more strictly enforced than the 60 mph motorway limit here was,such as the example of speeding offences being issued just by tacho trace evidence alone for example unlike here in the day.In addition to terrain enforcing a lot less than even that.

Wich part of the title of this thread: “running bent …” did you not understand ?

Carryfast:
While as I’ve said the definition of ‘one hit’ in this case was more like a case of pointless juggling and breaking down of daily rest periods into short ‘cat naps’ etc just creating the illusion of a so called ‘one hit’ run.Which took more or less the same amount of time over all as it would have done by taking the legal breaks/rest.

A 13 hour drive with a 3 hour catnap is 16 hours, if one was fiddeling, breaks were done driving, so no extra time lost.
A legal 13 hour drive is 9 hour driving, a 45 min break and a 9 hour (minimum) rest plus another 4 hours, makes a total of nearly 23 hours, a 7 hour difference, do that 3 times a week and you were more then 2 legal driving shifts ahead of schedule.
edit: Just noticed KR79 put this in as well, manipulating tachos could get you 2 to 4 shifts ahead at the end of the week, making a second trip possible…

Carryfast:
I think driving a car in Europe gave me enough real world knowledge to know that no one was ‘averaging’ around 100 kmh running to/from Southern Italy and it wouldn’t have made much difference even if they did.While running bent seems to have been more often a case of preferring a bent penny to a straight pound based on a liberal interpretation of a ‘one hit’ run.The result being where we are now with over regulation to suffocation point.

:laughing: :unamused:
We did not need averaging 100 kmh, we just lost one or a few hours more on the tacho.
When on tilts, early 80 ies, from Belgium or Holland, nearly every destination (and back) in europe was only a weeks work, alternating monday to saturday or sunday to friday.
Later when on fridges, weekends were only at home if you asked for a weekend at home. Most of the time you had driving weekends, and with sunday on double pay, it was always a very nice earner.
Nobody (drivers nor police) bothered about weekend rest, and if you desperatly wanted a weekend break on your tacho cards, you wound the milage back and burnt the corresponding tachocards.

In those days, 80 ies and 90 ies, this was the norm, not the exception. Everybody I know/knew worked like this.
So you are making yourself ridiculous by stating you have enough road knowledge. If you have not driven HGV for a longer period of time on the continent in the late 70 ies to early 2000, you have no clue what you are talking about.

183

Carryfast you have surpassed yourself on this thread, on things like Gardner engines you are arguing with opinions, but here you’re calling people liars and you’re getting right on everyone’s ■■■■.

The term one hit describes a drive from point A to point B which would take more than one legal shift done as fast as possible, it may have involved a couple of hours kip along the way, it may have included stops for leisurely meals, but if you left point A one day and arrived at point B the next day, you had done it in one hit.

184

Putting aside the running bent as in driving whilst showing rest on the wire fuse out etc, winding clock forward, winding back the mileometer etc,

Speeding was endemic especially at night , whether at home or abroad, so much so that I remember reading an article by the UK operations director for TNT, asking to have the 60mph limiter, they came first, abolished for overnight work and have a higher 70 mph limit for overnight driving(hgv). When the director of a large transport concern is pleading to have the speed limit raised, you know how wide spread speeding was. Imagine now, he’d probably be accused of bringing the industry into disrepute :unamused:

His argument being that their hub network was roughly placed at half a driving shift from the next, this must have meant that they had calculated it on higher average speeds than that available with limited to 60mph trucks :wink:

185

bald:
We did not need averaging 100 kmh, we just lost one or a few hours more on the tacho.
.

That was my fault, I happened to mention that one, but it was more aimed at UK night trunking/work :wink:

186

eddie snax:
I didn’t mention the continent, I was mentioning those that ran uk f & v markets on nights(and other night runs too). I was countering your statement about uk night trunking, by mentioning that not all the guys running nights in the uk 20 yrs or so ago, were running any thing like legal all the time, and were not factoring change overs with other drivers to keep legal and fresh, as this just added another layer of complication to the run, when with a bit of fiddling and a lot of speed, one driver could do, what was probably 1 & quarter drivers work, or 2 drivers under present day conditions.

Averaging 60mph (just under 100kph), was easy on night work with the right truck (F12 in my case, 2235powerliners for fruitex) though this meant that 70mph plus down motorway banks was the norm :smiley: slinging you up the other side still doing 50mph. Crack on driver, best of all, coppers just drove right past, happy days :sunglasses:

The point was the supposed idea that running bent would allow people to do Northern or Southern Italy in ‘one hit’ which was bollox.At worse there’s a good chance that they’d have gone off the road long before that point.Or at best they were just pointlessy juggling and breaking up daily rest periods into small ‘cat nap’ segments and calling that a ‘one hit’ run. :unamused:

The same applies regarding uk work.IE some might possibly have done something along those lines of London-Glasgow-London in ‘one hit’ ( dodgy daily rest/break regime ) but the same applies whether it was done here at uk pre limiter type speeds or on the continent at continental type ones.IE it was just a silly counterproductive idea that has in large part predictably now resulted in drivers being lumbered with ridiculous levels of over regulation on the basis that high speeds and knackered drivers don’t mix let alone drivers who are so knackered they are unsafe at any speed.Whereas they could have kept more freedom if it hadn’t have been for a few taking the pish out of the hours regs.IE a few idiots zbing the job up for the many.

In the same way that totally incapably drunk drivers have now resulted in the imposition of Scottish type drink drive limits thereby zbing it up for those who were happy to just have a pint or so when driving.

187

Like I said earlier when you go without sleep regularly your body adapts to it. I agree the odd truck may have gone off road but I found that going a bit faster and watching for the gendarmes etc ( weren’t the Italian police kind to leave their blue lights on so you could see them coming) kept me more alert than pouncing about on cc like we do now

188

So all the blokes doing the job pretty much agree that they worked pretty much the same to get the job in the real world done.
Carryfast however can do the same work and stick to pretty much the hours rules and have a full nights rest every day.
Mainly due to the fact he has driven a car in Europe. Looking up distances then dividing it by an average speed is all well in theroy but doesn’t take in to account customers working hours and pre 1992 customs clearance sitting in a fruitmerchants while the load is been picked and packed or multiple groupage or tile collections and all the other variables that happen in the real world but don’t When you are putting pins between two points on a map.

189

Love to have seen carry fast doing Europe back then , there were guys would round a Saudi before he did a milan

190

We’re going to have to start calling carryfast Stan the scania man :laughing:

191

eddie snax:
Putting aside the running bent as in driving whilst showing rest on the wire fuse out etc, winding clock forward, winding back the mileometer etc,

Speeding was endemic especially at night , whether at home or abroad, so much so that I remember reading an article by the UK operations director for TNT, asking to have the 60mph limiter, they came first, abolished for overnight work and have a higher 70 mph limit for overnight driving(hgv). When the director of a large transport concern is pleading to have the speed limit raised, you know how wide spread speeding was. Imagine now, he’d probably be accused of bringing the industry into disrepute :unamused:

His argument being that their hub network was roughly placed at half a driving shift from the next, this must have meant that they had calculated it on higher average speeds than that available with limited to 60mph trucks :wink:

I know all about the uk night trunking speed regime because I did it for 15 years.

The point is that we were,rightly,moaning about drivers working to a legal break/rest regime,being lumbered with a speed regime which ironically was put there in large part because of a few people taking the pish with truck speeds and/or knackered drivers going off the road or into things by mixing speed with tiredness or just being too knackered to drive properly at any speed.The speed thing usually being more about maintaining the viability of direct depot to depot trunking than hub systems.But crucially never about anyone trying to one hit London-Glasgow-London for example.

The result of all this,often pointless,bent running,as I’ve said,being that whereas we could have kept the case for running even with log books and a decent 65 mph running regime we’ve now ended up with the situation of limiters set at 90 kmh and digi tachos all based on the genuine fears of the public regarding such silly antics of those trying to ‘one hit’ runs like Calais-Milan or London-Glasgow-London.With a similar situation going on now in North America. :unamused:

192

The tacho if I remember correctly was a eu wide thing pushed by Germany and limiters were to save fuel.

193

Here’s the thing, Carryfast, the posters on this thread including myself have all been there, done it, got the t shirt, read the book and in my case written a few chapters of it too, whereas you have no practical knowledge of anything but driving a skip wagon for the council and a scheduled night trunk where all you had to do was keep between the lines for 4.5hrs each way five nights a week.

It’s like Lionel Messi being told how he went wrong by an overweight 30yr old pub team player.

194

Remind you of anyone?

195

eurotrans:
Like I said earlier when you go without sleep regularly your body adapts to it. I agree the odd truck may have gone off road but I found that going a bit faster and watching for the gendarmes etc ( weren’t the Italian police kind to leave their blue lights on so you could see them coming) kept me more alert than pouncing about on cc like we do now

The spanish were the same with their blue lights on… :slight_smile:
About your body adapting, once I was on the road I was ok, but after a long weekend home, that first night was always hard and seemed never to end, but the hardest part was when it did end with the first light of the day :confused: .

Carryfast:
The point is that we were,rightly,moaning about drivers working to a legal break/rest regime,being lumbered with a speed regime which ironically was put there in large part because of a few people taking the pish with truck speeds and/or knackered drivers going off the road or into things by mixing speed with tiredness or just being too knackered to drive properly at any speed.The speed thing usually being more about maintaining the viability of direct depot to depot trunking than hub systems.But crucially never about anyone trying to one hit London-Glasgow-London for example.

The result of all this,often pointless,bent running,as I’ve said,being that whereas we could have kept the case for running even with log books and a decent 65 mph running regime we’ve now ended up with the situation of limiters set at 90 kmh and digi tachos all based on the genuine fears of the public regarding such silly antics of those trying to ‘one hit’ runs like Calais-Milan or London-Glasgow-London.With a similar situation going on now in North America. :unamused:

You have the amazing ability to not see, read or understand things people say, that not support your point of view. :imp:
People give you examples were running bent could or would save you 1 day, maybe 2 in a week to do more work, ie earning more…

In Europe we got more laws on road transport first to protect the railways, later with the density of traffic increasing, under the banner of road safety, so running on log books was always going to end.
Oh by the way , I will take the wind from your sails :sunglasses:, do not start that this is in Europe only, in Britain politicians are nowhere better, on the contrary, just look at all the hassle about FORS and cyclists in London. This ■■■■■■■■ does not exist in Brussels, Paris or Amsterdam…

196

I can feel a movie coming out . Carryfast keeping her lit ( well, for 4 hours each way with a 45 in the middle)

197

newmercman:
Remind you of anyone?

:smiley:

198

newmercman:
Carryfast you have surpassed yourself on this thread, on things like Gardner engines you are arguing with opinions, but here you’re calling people liars and you’re getting right on everyone’s ■■■■.

The term one hit describes a drive from point A to point B which would take more than one legal shift done as fast as possible, it may have involved a couple of hours kip along the way, it may have included stops for leisurely meals, but if you left point A one day and arrived at point B the next day, you had done it in one hit.

If we’re agreed that the definition of ‘one hit’ realistically means the same thing as ‘one shift’.There’s no way that anyone is going to be able to run that type of distance in one shift at that speed and without a decent daily rest period,without the real risk of going off the road.Which just leaves the question of what’s the point of breaking down the daily rest period into illegal small segments,creating a so called ‘one hit’ run.When it didn’t even meet that definition of getting there much if any quicker,than taking a proper daily rest,thereby turning it into a two shift,run would have done.

199

newmercman:
Here’s the thing, Carryfast, the posters on this thread including myself have all been there, done it, got the t shirt, read the book and in my case written a few chapters of it too, whereas you have no practical knowledge of anything but driving a skip wagon for the council and a scheduled night trunk where all you had to do was keep between the lines for 4.5hrs each way five nights a week.

It’s like Lionel Messi being told how he went wrong by an overweight 30yr old pub team player.

The way I see it is that it’s keeping the thing between the same white lines for as long as it takes to get the job done safely whether it’s here or over there with the same biological limitations applying in all cases.In which case as I said the idea of anyone trying to one hit Milan was as stupid as anyone trying to one hit London-Glasgow-London.The result being where we are now with drivers being controlled to the minute by digi tachos at 90 kmh max.With America not that far behind with E logs and speed limiters gradually taking over in that last bastion of the freedom of running with log books and unlimited wagons. :frowning:

200

I give in, he’s right and we were all wrong all that running day and night got us nowhere and if cf had chosen to he would have been there before any of us and fully rested with a legal tacho :grimacing: :grimacing: