^^^ this^^^good post NMM.
NMM’s points should be noted by the many newer drivers we have who haven’t seen really bad conditons, an ill prepped lorry of dubious design that paid little heed to traction or stability, especially one that bends in the middle where you might be pushing 5 axles via one driven is no barrel of laughs when the partly frozen water that sits on top of our packed snow acts as the perfect lubricant in the scenarios described.
Some of the recent posts from others one could be forgiven for thinking that you could breeze down an iced road quite nonchalantly so long as you kept the steering straight, when in practice giving the conditions we get the respect they call for is needed.
Well remembered Carryfast, we did get some nasty winters back in the early 80’s, i drove an artic bulker at the time was it 82/83?, coldest and most heavily snowed i’ve known England since the winter of 63 when i was a boy, the temp never got above freezing for 3 weeks solid.
The daily run i did out across Norfolk the main roads up around Diss were single track for well over a week with snow piled up around 4ft deep both sides where the diggers had managed to make a track of some sort with passing places to pick your way through but still on 4" or so of pot holed frozen solid snow, the farm where we delivered to was good as gold, they dug about 5 miles of lanes out with their tractor buckets and regardless of the hour of the day or night the farmer or his son would follow us back out to the main road after we delivered (three times a day regular we delivered within the hour so they knew if we didn’t arrive something was up and would come look for us, no cab phones then) the product to keep their boilers and therefore their animals fed.
Without wishing to derail this excellent thread, was that the decade the old and IMO infinitely better days of Britain ended i wonder, where we all pulled together got through and got the job done with a smile on our faces, we didn’t seem to take ourselves or life so seriously then, little did we know, it was the time when our government of the day assisted with and helped complete the dismantling of and destruction of our industries and the sale of our country and its services, i don’t think we’ve experienced a pulling together and a national feeling of helping each other out because that was how it was done since about the mid 80’s.
To be fair the lorries of the time were more basic and competent, i had a 2800Daf at the time and it proved itself more than up to the job in the conditions, there’s not a hope in hell that my current MAN with Arsetronic box would cope with the same conditions, not as anything could as NMM points out the massive increase in population has seen such traffic volumes that it would prove impossible to get through unless you had off road capability with a small enough vehicle to take advantage.
If we get those conditions again its going to be interesting to see what happens.
