switchlogic:
We’ve not spoken about weight, people took the ■■■■ with weight just as much. Most memorable is arriving at ferry- ‘we shouldn’t really ship you mate’ why says I? You weigh 51 tonnes! A load of hanging lambs so packed a forklift had to help shut the back doors! Tho I bet many of you can beat 51 tonnes really enough!
49960 kg was my best, load of box Spuds, 28 empty boxes in 28 loaded boxes out, no one told Me it was 22 boxes out so I did one for one. Boss thought it hilarious
newmercman:
Mid 40s were about the heaviest I shipped out, mostly with bulk stuff like waste paper or lead, the day cab shunter would load it to the legal limit and then with a big unit under it and a load of diesel it would creep up a fair bit.
I hate to admit it here because Carryfast will shoot me down in flames over it, but I also drove a demount wagon and drag for an Italian firm, those swap bodies were loaded as only the Italians can load a lorry, the CMRs always made it look legal, but the way the 143 Scania handled, braked and went up hills told a very different story, I dread to think how heavy that was at times.
The Dutch and the Swedes always had a knack of making the CMR’s have your weight dead legal, every unaccompanied topped out at a max 22.5ton, that was what you could get on a tilt legal at 38ton iirc. Though you knew full well, that for instance a full load of paper or chip board, which were regular jobs was running over that to some extent or another
What allways amused me, was that many of the tilts were tandems, and the Dutch ran 4 wheeler units, yet these trailers were rammed to the gunnels. We had to run 6 wheeler units to run legal, 38 on 5. So were the Dutch trucks better than ours to be able run 38+ on 4 that is a rhetorical question, I don’t war and peace CF
switchlogic:
More waffle. Why do you ruin threads like this with your endless drivel? Do you get a kick out of driving everyone away and trying to make everything about you? You have precisely zero experience of what everyone has been talking about yet insist you know best and better than people who have actually done the work being talked about, all because you’ve done a bit of driving in the car in Europe. Give. It. A. Rest.
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.
Late to reply but…but this line is a Carryfast classic!
I can imagine carryfast stopped in some routers talking the talk with drivers the leave and climb in to there scania and volvos and carryfast fires up his Austin princess with a cb aerial.
Not euro work but I used to run between 48-53 ton on bulk rubbish four loads a day every day for about three years.
Used to have the back wheels off the bridge so it read near legal.
Few quid for weighbridge man few quid for me happy days.
kr79:
I can imagine carryfast stopped in some routers talking the talk with drivers the leave and climb in to there scania and volvos and carryfast fires up his Austin princess with a cb aerial.
As I said I think being part of the pre limiter uk night trunking scene was nothing to be ashamed of.As opposed to the plodding often dodgy running practices to compensate for it,Euroland counterpart.While this topic has made me realise that,with a few exceptions in the form of the Euro trunking scene,I might have been less happy if I’d have made that move than staying where I was.
That’s at odds with your normal line that you couldn’t get a start due to all sorts of reasons back in the days when there were lots more UK firms running around Europe than in recent years.
kr79:
That’s at odds with your normal line that you couldn’t get a start due to all sorts of reasons back in the days when there were lots more UK firms running around Europe than in recent years.
There’s a difference between looking back with ‘hindsight’ based on discussions like this one and saying ‘maybe’ I was better off out of it in most cases based on ‘that’,as opposed to my view ‘in the day’.
On that note no like plenty of others I got left out of what was definitely an over subscribed scene then as now.Not surprisingly bearing in mind as shown here the money which could be made doing it although obviously at the cost of some dodgy hours ‘adjustments’ in many cases.
While the best firms,doing what I was ideally looking for,in the form of international trunking,obviously took the issue,of too many drivers,looking for too few job opportunities,to a new level.
Having said that I think I got an idea of the way in which the industry was being affected by those operating at the ‘lower’ end of it in the day just doing a while on UK haulage work.In which I told the guvnor to shove being expected to drive up to the Midlands,doing multiple steel collections,then back to London to multi drop it all around sites in the City,in one shift.So it wasn’t just a Euro thing.
kr79:
Not euro work but I used to run between 48-53 ton on bulk rubbish four loads a day every day for about three years.
Used to have the back wheels off the bridge so it read near legal.
Few quid for weighbridge man few quid for me happy days.
In my experience that is still an on-going occurrence at sites without a weighbridge,onboard lorry or machine weighers tend to throw wobblers fairly regularly
A little anecdote re the car v lorry distance thing: last year my mate set off in his Beemer M3 from his house in Javea (Spain) to drive to his house in Spalding, after an hour or so he overtook an artic with some distinctive though superficial damage to its offside, he also clocked a large fleet number sticker on the unit too. Mid way through France he was surprised to overtake the same truck again.
He got to his house in Spalding non stop apart from fuel and ferry stops and promptly went to bed. He woke the next day and drove out of his house and was dumbfounded to see the very same artic coming out of the local food plant. He spoke to me about it and said that the driver must’ve been running bent, to which I told him not necessarily as my mate drives everywhere at Mach 2 so had to stop every 150 miles to fill up, during which time the truck probably overtook him multiple times.
ive not been on in a while. it seems i havent missed much!!!
alot of what we did was our choice in a time were bending the rules to suit us was accepted
one hits, done a few prato, barcelona when i wanted and needed.i wasnt or we wasnt on our own many did the same. alot of what we did isnt available on google or in books…
next we will get told we didnt go abroad as the number of permits issued to journeys dont add up !!! are you taking the mickey lol … good on ya lads good times and hard times never to be seen again in trucks many wouldnt get out of the yard gate…
the maoster:
A little anecdote re the car v lorry distance thing: last year my mate set off in his Beemer M3 from his house in Javea (Spain) to drive to his house in Spalding, after an hour or so he overtook an artic with some distinctive though superficial damage to its offside, he also clocked a large fleet number sticker on the unit too. Mid way through France he was surprised to overtake the same truck again.
He got to his house in Spalding non stop apart from fuel and ferry stops and promptly went to bed. He woke the next day and drove out of his house and was dumbfounded to see the very same artic coming out of the local food plant. He spoke to me about it and said that the driver must’ve been running bent, to which I told him not necessarily as my mate drives everywhere at Mach 2 so had to stop every 150 miles to fill up, during which time the truck probably overtook him multiple times.
Tortoise and hare spring to mind.
Maybe just the combination of the BM understandably not running anywhere at car confiscation and driver imprisonment type speeds and the truck not stopping for a 45 at around the 250 mile mark let alone all out by around the 500 mile mark. Remind us of the distance between Javea and the Channel Ports.
I think back to the eighties & think about how some of the operators were paying you a week & a half wages which made it good money & not possible to earn running legal, unfortunately you were doing two weeks work in one…
dave docwra:
I think back to the eighties & think about how some of the operators were paying you a week & a half wages which made it good money & not possible to earn running legal, unfortunately you were doing two weeks work in one…
True that if you divided the hours by the earnings, it probably wasn’t that great, but my philosophy was that if you are in the truck, you might as well have the wheels turning as much as possible to maximise your earnings, regardless of the hours
dave docwra:
I think back to the eighties & think about how some of the operators were paying you a week & a half wages which made it good money & not possible to earn running legal, unfortunately you were doing two weeks work in one…
True that if you divided the hours by the earnings, it probably wasn’t that great, but my philosophy was that if you are in the truck, you might as well have the wheels turning as much as possible to maximise your earnings, regardless of the hours
That was my line of thinking too, if I’m away from home I may as well earn as much as possible while I’m away.
To answer your question on my support for elogs Carryfast, it’s a very different situation over here, it’s also a very different time and most of the running bent done over here is to make up for the incompetence of others, not to earn more money, but just to make a living and that is ■■■■■■■■ and nobody will do anything about it until it’s no longer possible to run bent.
newmercman:
I said earlier that 6hrs sleep is normal for me, so that means 18hrs awake before I have to dig into my reserves,
.
.With 8 hours minimum taken as a block,not 6,together with higher speed limits.?.
That’s 8 hrs standing, not sleeping, time you get a shower and some grub, that’s maybe an hour or more gone. In the morning time for a quick splash and brew some coffee, then its kick the tyres and light the fires before rolling thats the best part of another hour gone, so before long you’re down to 6 hrs kip time, which means that the US dot must believe 6 hrs kip or less, to be a suitably refreshing amount of kip to crack on to another potentially 16 hr shift, which may include 13 hrs of pedal time yee haa ps I know nothing of the US trucking scene, but that a rough up some of my routine
