Was it better back when you didn’t need to have hi-viz pants to use the toilet and a risk assessment to get into the tipper to clean out residue? Today you can open and close the tailgate without getting dirty feet, sheet 20tonnes of tarmac in seconds and a screen tells you how much weight Paddy the Hymac is putting on before your springs break.
You used to have to cook in the summer or choke on quarry dust, now there’s air conditioning.
One quirky thing I remember now long gone in our pits are the ramps at the side of the weighbridge so the shovel could top you up. I remember Dad standing on the bridge where the weighbridge man would signal “a bit more” which Dad would relay to the Bray/International driver. Onboard weighers have killed this off.
Draglines have made way for excavators in the gravel pits and tracked loaders (Drotts) are rare on many sites nowadays.
Different type of tipping work near where I live Nathan.The local quarries are very hot on the health & safety rules and regs.A very different situation too my days of tipper driving when there weren’t any rules for the tipper drivers in the quarries,other than not speeding or being reckless etc.No loading shovel topping you up on the weighbridge.You had to go back to the pile and wait for some more to be put on the load.
Nowadays they have weighbridges under the tar plants,so no going to the weighbridge to get weighed and collect your ticket.Now it’s get the load on and weighed under the plant then go to the lab and get your ticket.
You can’t go into these local quarries and ask for an ex quarry load nowadays.You have to have an order number.Unless you can give the weighbridge clerk an order number,or the load has been arranged by a third party they won’t load you.
A totally different day and age.
Cheers Dave.
Aye, I remember loading pond sand which was usually delivered to BICC Sites where they were laying cabels, it was loaded with an old dragline with loads of holes in the bucket so as to release the water, this was at Tilcons Blaydon Quarry, there was a great set of lads there in those days 60/70s, I recall the weighbridge man Bob Balmer, he was one of the better wheighmen of that Era, some of them were right little Hitlers, but not Bob, Regards Larry.
Stuff the old days Nathan,'owt doing to-morrow? or can I have a pint or three?.What time does the Pit open on Tuesday morning? and I want a decent run or two or three,I’m not ■■■■■■■ about running to the stock heaps all morning while you and your mate in the weighbridge “get your act to-gether” either !! You can see I’ve been servicing this little “Gem” so we are good to go,10ton 5cwt at 14 ton gvw !! No room for Hi viz or stupid ■■■■■■■ hard hats !! Got a brand new shovel that Paddy gave me out of French’s stores on the M6 site,give you anything that lad will,for the price of a pint of Guiness !! Cheers Dennis.
My old boss still has a Traxcavator.
He also has an ancient dozer, nicknamed Humphry, down on the quarry backfill he does. Proper OLD, maybe 1960’s.
You won’t see blokes doing this these days.1963/64.
Talking of topping up, some drivers are obsessed with tiny amounts. I’ve had some come back for 200kgs. What can you do with that much? We don’t use it but many places don’t print a ticket over the mgw so you have to be underweight.
Sands and Gravels who had a gravel pit at Standlake and soft sand pit at Hatford near Faringdon, had a rule where they loaded their lorries first. If I did that, our collect customers would be there for hours.
(I will leave the dodgy driveway gangs aslong as I can…or bury their tools)
Early 60’s there was an old lad driving a big CAT loading shovel at Winsford salt mine and you told him the weight you wanted and he could put it on to WITHIN a hundredweight, never failed, no going back to top up or to drop a bit off. I used to marvel at how he did it, he’d no onboard weighing, just his judgement. It was a good job he could, there were LONG queues at the mine in those days, they had to keep the lorries moving through as quick as they could.
One way to get the right amount is to fill the bucket then tip some out so it’s got a level load. I do this so I get regular bucketfulls of around 5.5-6t of shingle. You need a bucket like a Volvo one where you can see the cutting edge as you crowd back. The square one on my cat has a bad line of sight but all the Volvos I’ve driven were brilliant. We used to have an L120 and 4 level buckets of sharp sand was never far away from 20t.
There was a guy at Tytherington who could do just that. I can’t remember his real name because he was always called Scuffer… A right miserable old so and so - he would make you move an inch just because he could! If he was proper grumpy, you would be over or under loaded every time but when he was good, he was magic. Always within a couple of hundredweight and always loaded properly, not flung on like some do now… 
grumpy old man:
Early 60’s there was an old lad driving a big CAT loading shovel at Winsford salt mine and you told him the weight you wanted and he could put it on to WITHIN a hundredweight, never failed, no going back to top up or to drop a bit off. I used to marvel at how he did it, he’d no onboard weighing, just his judgement. It was a good job he could, there were LONG queues at the mine in those days, they had to keep the lorries moving through as quick as they could.
Hiya…been there and done it at winsford in the late 60,s. 2 buckets and a smidgen for 20tons
the lads got it right every time for me.as you say no onboard weighing equipment in those days.
the cat loaders had 275 bhp engines. the people across the way complained about the engine noise
ratteling there houses
John
Piston broke:
There was a guy at Tytherington who could do just that. I can’t remember his real name because he was always called Scuffer… A right miserable old so and so - he would make you move an inch just because he could! If he was proper grumpy, you would be over or under loaded every time but when he was good, he was magic. Always within a couple of hundredweight and always loaded properly, not flung on like some do now…
I replaced the shovel driver who’d written the book of “The Idiots Guide to Cantankerous Shovel Driving”. The guy would look the other way so you couldn’t tell him “10” for a part load of 10t or he’d want the lorries facing one way then change his mind the next load. He’d run the bucket on the floor too, so any water would be picked up with the sand (I’d write this on the delivery ticket, to the annoyance of sales). He loaded me nearly 2t light one day (which I checked with my weigher before driving to weighbridge) yet refused to top me up “because he was shovel driver, not me!”. I went to weighbridge and took the very underweight load out (again writing the reason on delivery ticket) to a job over an hours drive away. Running that light must’ve taken the haulage profit right down.
I’ve fitted my cb in my Cat now, so if I need a lorry to move I can ask them and give them the reason for it (sand too wet, or get them to move forward so I can load them better etc).
Muckaway:
Talking of topping up, some drivers are obsessed with tiny amounts. I’ve had some come back for 200kgs. What can you do with that much? We don’t use it but many places don’t print a ticket over the mgw so you have to be underweight.
Depends where its going I guess. If your on a long run then I guess 200kgs could be worth £3-5. Depends how far back you have to go for your top-up and how busy the place is I guess.
I would only ever bother if it was a longer run (30miles +) and I was 500kgs+ under or if the bloody shovel driver got it hopelessly wrong. Useless the lot of em!
When father had an asphalt truck it was always my job when i went with him at the weekend to drag the sheet out over the load, soon learnt to get the sheet out and get back off the load sharpish after overheating my trotters a few times!. Imagine health and safety brigade now if you put a 12 year old on top of a load of blacktop!! and not to mention driving the truck in the quarry!! 
Renember the days when you wrote one ticket for a days’ muckshifting and simply wrote the number of loads on it at the end? Sadly spoilt by environmental bs (sorry, rules) and a few rogues who faked the odd load here and there.
Did anyone have cubic meter markers up the tipper sides? I got quite good at judging my muck weights by these and upset a few health and safety people by standing on the catwalk watching the load go in.
We have 14m3 bodies on 6w so a 15t load actually looked like 10. Had plenty of arguments over it and at one time was banned from a couple of biggish jobs (I dumped the load in the gateways).
I spent a big part of my childhood out with my dad doing muck away round London. Mainly in scammel routemans magirus deutz fodens later on MANs and leyland constructors.
Lorrys were falling apart usually never went to the tip very often either
One modern thing that caught me out was the machine where you pull under the hopper and key in your gross weight and then your tare and it automatically dispenses the correct amount.
Not a lot of good if you have a LHD unit, by the time you run around the front and jump back in the seat to pull forward to spread the load out, the whole lot has dropped into the front of the trailer 
Unfortunately a lot of my friends in the first pic have since passed away but, luckily for them, none of them died from LackofHiViz-itis… 
…and a few site pics. Note the lack of H&S advisors wandering around with a clipboard, desperately trying to look important…
My old mate, George…tis truly a wonder that we’re both still alive! We should have died laughing, with all the arseing about we used to do… 
Piston Brke, is that Sodbury in the second pic? I remember the Sed Atki with the white cab and blue bit above the grille from my days spent as a passenger.
I remember Fatherills (?) tippers, there always seemed to be one waiting for scalps when I went in Sodbury with Dad.
Gore quarry late 1960’s.
Gore quarry 2010. Forty years on with bigger loading shovels,loading bigger vehicles.