The first time I shipped out…….
The following is the recollection of the first time out of the country without my mum………30 years of fine wine consumption may have interferred with certain facts, but why let the truth interfere with a good story…….
January …ish 1979. The lorry drivers strike is in full swing in Britain, Christmas needs to be paid for and 90% of the countries drivers are not earning any money. I believe this auspicious time in our history was known as “the winter of discontent” ………crisis what crisis??
At that time I was working for a small company based in Hertfordshire running canned goods out of a warehouse in Sunbury on Thames to J. Sainsburys at Buntingford……two loads a day. Eight months earlier I had succesfully passed my HGV 1 and been handed the keys to a big (well it was then) brand new DAF 2300 with twin sleepers and a turbo!! Least I think it had a turbo…….
The strike in January brought our little operation to a halt as we weren’t going to try and run any loads into any unionised RDC’s. With more than a little coercion on my part the boss agreed to take a European bound load from Mousley Trucking (I think that is how it is spelt) of Coventry. We had no Euro experience whatsoever but on account I was 21 it didn’t really matter because I already knew everything anyway.
So, game on. I loaded a fridge trailer (running warm I think so the load didn’t get cold) with photographic chemicals for Hunts Chemicals in St.Niklaas in Belgium. I trundled down the A…something or other because there were a lack of “M’s” in those days and arrived in Folkestone early evening ready to ship out on the night ferry to Oostend. From memory (whats left of it) the shipping line was RMT. After two pints of shandy in the “London Paris bar” I returned to the truck and sat in the drivers seat all exited and ready to board……I sat with my hands on the wheel ready to go for about four hours I think …all the other sensible drivers were asleep in their bunks. I think we loaded around 2330.
Around five the following morning we disembarked and I just followed everybody else of the ferry. This is getting scary……I’m in a foreign country with no map, its dark and snowing heavily………I spent plenty of money on foreign country decals for my sleeper cab side windows but didn’t have a map of Europe! Never mind though I am 21………….
Nine o’clock came and armed with a free map that I scrounged from a petrol station I pushed off to St. Niklaas………a little after ten I arrived at Hunts chemicals. It was to be the one and only trip in 20 odd years I ever managed to clear customs, tip and reload all on the same site. By the middle of the afternoon I was back in Oostend……these continental trips are easy!
The ferry home went into Western docks, Dover. We disembarked on the end of the sea wall known as the “Turret” …………that was an experience in the middle of the night and snow to boot!
The following evening I was holding court to an interested bunch in my local pub explaining the vagaries of trans European haulage and some of the sights that I saw! I think my total mileage abroad for that trip was 225 km.
I got the bug!
