Colonel:
I might add that I went to the USA a second time and re-took the CDL in a different State (Missouri) at the age of 65. The first time was in 1997 when I was 60 and I took the CDL in Little Rock (Arkansas).
I see you live in Spain, as I did in 1980 to 1983.
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And you never lived abroad ?
Colonel:
Well, well, well, I have obviously hit a nerve with some of you. The cap must fit, is all I can say. Funny how most of you have left these shores of ours to hide amongst europeans.
maybe colonel you might think about treating the other members with a bit more respect for what they have also done, as they are only arguing against indescretions in your points.
as i know a bit of background behind some of the members posting on this thread i would back them everytime over your few months here and a few years there.
Jessicas, Dad, perhaps if you go back to the start of this thread you would see for yourself that it is I who was attacked initially. I have only responded in the way I have, because of this assault.
Now please don’t get me wrong, as I am quite capable of putting up with this level of abuse and just treat it with the contempt it deserves.
This is my first post and there is nothing contentious in this statement.
Colonel:
That journey can be done in a legal day, it is only 489 miles.
MY mothers favourite expresssion was “Do as you would be done by” and this is how I react to any response from anyone.
That was the start yes
and then went on to the way you cloud the issues so that others get confused or do not even notice so that you can try and put them down, pathetic really much like posing for a foto with the Ryder Cup, but then again every one to their own thing 
Vasco, can I call you that? I had no intention of causing any friction at all by my initial comment, I just used the day and a half to Toledo as an example of how I think about the job from an operators point of view, as I was one myself for many years before I retired to Spain. Yes it is almost two shifts to Esquivias, but can be done in a day and a half by taking minimal legal rest period. In fact this is the way transport is done in the USA, so those who cannot run like this would not make any money out there.
The cut off time to get tipped was 1300 hrs and I was there in time the three occasions that I did this particular job.
It is not my fault if others cannot understand what I have written.
So who is attempting to extract the urine now, with that comment about the Ryder Cup. I don’t hide anything, I am proud of my lifes achievements, as you should be of yours. Now expecting some rude comment on my guestbook, now you have looked at my site.
One thing about Toby’s posts,they can sometimes be a bit weird,but they certainly provoke comment .(keep it up Toby )
But back to the case in point, I don’t know what period Colonel is talking about in his whirlwind adventures,but I started doing Spain and a little bit of Portugal in the late 70,s ,the road from Cherbourg to Bordeaux was nothing like the road it is today ,and then St Genis was a full shift , it was all single carriage way to La Rochelle and then there was a bit of duel carriageway past the Aire De Marin south of La Rochelle,so if these trips were done before the early/mid 90,s it would have been impossible to have done Colonels trip in the stated times.
On another note,he states he worked for John Davis in Soton for a while ,there is a thread running on this site about Davis ,funnily enough there is no mention of Colonel or his real name on that thread , but Davis did have a very experienced Portugal man working for him, the driver concerned had done Portugal for 17 years before joining Davis, so maybe he will be along to make comment.
Earlier on I said it took me 2 days to get to Barcelona,the Colonel retorted military fashion that it could be done in one and a half days,not if you cleared at La jonquera it couldn’t.
Kerbut, I habe no wish to get invloved in a slanging match with you either, but as you wish to know when I drove for Davies’s it was 2001 and to be quite honest I thought it was a great job. I had a good motor a 460 Volvo V 22 GEL and they had some great work. I spent most of my time there doing the RAF Bruggen to Banja Luka, Bosnia job. I did about three Wrigleys, Plymouth to Esquivias. I also did the Vita Cress job down to their farm at Odemira. Algarve.
The job was three weeks away and then three days off and my only gripe was that I wished to stay out much longer, but the Office did not seem to be able to handle the way that I ran. Once my visa came through for another bash at the USA I left.
I never made any contact with the other drivers at Davies’s as I was the new boy and their circle was pretty hard to crack, so I did not bother. Billy Mallin was the driver who got me the job in the first place and I then reciprocated by getting him a job in the USA.
I have not posted on the Davies’s thread as they have enough photos of their trucks on there and as I have said, I did not associate with the drivers there in the few months I was there as I always run on my own. I am not a convoy driver, I don’t drink, so to some drivers I am therefore not in the clique, so to speak. Fine by me.
It would appear that my forum name “Colonel” is upsetting a few of you so I will only say that this name was given to me by my peers on the Greek run in 1989 at a restaurant in Ancona when I paid for dinner for 12 drivers to celebrate my birthday. I became known by that name and as everyone called me by that name I have used it ever since.
If you had said that you cleared at La Jonquera before tipping in Barcelona, then it would not have received a response from me, so your vague wording was easily misconstrued.
To actually get to Barcelona in a day and half(36 hours) is relatively simple and that is not Military speak at all, just a fact.
Colonel:
Now expecting some rude comment on my guestbook, now you have looked at my site.
not my way of doing things
Thank you, Vasco, I am pleased.
kerbut:
Earlier on I said it took me 2 days to get to Barcelona,the Colonel retorted military fashion that it could be done in one and a half days,not if you cleared at La jonquera it couldn’t.
a lot would depend upon the year in question as in the late 70´s early 80´s many of the motorways that are now taken for granted were stil being built
Colonel:
Thank you, Vasco, I am pleased.
If I have owt to say I say it up front
Life is too short to worry too much about things but I do believe that one should go through it with a certain amount of decorum and respect for the acheivements of others be they greater or smaller than ones own
Thanks for the PM Kurbut…But to be honest I’m not sure its worth the hassle,as you say i did do Portugal for 17yrs before joining Buzzer(Davies)in '95 to 2000.This guy had not arrived when i left(M1&R1GEL).Re Billy or geordie Billy as he was affectionately known was a guy who liked to do his own thing most of the time BUT would mix when the need be,also he did Bosnia allot more than the rest ,so also got the name Bango Billy,most of us done the rest.IFOR,SFOR and the 3 or some times 4 Legger’s.I still talk to the Davies boys and from time to time Billy.
As for the Porto to Irun thing the very best i could do in the last years of my time out there was Alsasua and that was with 7ton on and a truck with no limiter and a dam good run other wise it was Burgos,Which was excellent cos in the late 70’s and 80’s we couldn’t even make Salamanca. Its possible that today Porto & Lisbon to Irun can be done,but not in the early 2000’s
Also we all know that to go to Madrid that you could go via Pampalona-Soria but this dint benefit anyone unless tipping the NII side, to pass through Madrid made no difference ,it just became a personal preference… 
shady:
Also we all know that to go to Madrid that you could go via Pampalona-Soria but this dint benefit anyone unless tipping the NII side, to pass through Madrid made no difference ,it just became a personal preference…
so long as you still had to use the M30 to get anywhere there was no real advantage to going via Soria unless as said you had to be in Coslada or such like.
But having dais that when you had to go through the middle of Soria there were some ■■■■ good bars/restaurants to stop at.
shady:
As for the Porto to Irun thing the very best i could do in the last years of my time out there was Alsasua and that was with 7ton on and a truck with no limiter and a dam good run other wise it was Burgos,Which was excellent cos in the late 70’s and 80’s we couldn’t even make Salamanca. Its possible that today Porto & Lisbon to Irun can be done,but not in the early 2000’s
these days it can be done quiete easily but as far as I can remeber back then if you hit the wrong stretch of road at the wrong time there was some serious reversing that needed doing
Vasco, of course it depends on many factors but even by the late seventies there were 5000 kilometeres of motorway in France. Spain was not my market in those days as I covered the Middle East the whole of the seventies, spent three years living in Spain but managing a contract in Lebanon bringing trucks from Kuwait to Beirut loaded with containers full of scrap copper. I then loaded these on ships in Beirut and the cargo was discharged at Istanbul. I used to then arrange for turkish hauliers to take the containers to Adapazari, where the copper was reconstituted.
After the three years in Spain and my wife wishing to return home, I went back working for OHS on the Middle East work again and eventually I became Operations Manager at Rainham. I then had a break from the transport industry for a few years but the urge to drive trucks again pullled me back and I started work for Anglo Greek, whom I worked for on and off for ten years till 1999.
So you will see that the Iberian peninsula was not a regular run for me from the UK, even when on Davis’s after tipping in Bosnia I would load from Italy to Portugal and usually loaded at the farm in Odemira for Vita Cress.
Colonel:
managing a contract in Lebanon bringing trucks from Kuwait to Beirut loaded with containers full of scrap copper. I then loaded these on ships in Beirut and the cargo was discharged at Istanbul. I used to then arrange for turkish hauliers to take the containers to Adapazari, where the copper was reconstituted.
I had 9 months in Saudi and Kuwiat running oilfield supplies around, usually the big stuff in clapped out old Kenworths that would have been considered as scrap eslewhere
Vascoingles:
shady:
Also we all know that to go to Madrid that you could go via Pampalona-Soria but this dint benefit anyone unless tipping the NII side, to pass through Madrid made no difference ,it just became a personal preference…so long as you still had to use the M30 to get anywhere there was no real advantage to going via Soria unless as said you had to be in Coslada or such like.
But having dais that when you had to go through the middle of Soria there were some ■■■■ good bars/restaurants to stop at.
That i can not disagree with!!! But then there were some dam good Bars/Restaurants and etc. all over Iberia…
I had friends who worked internally in Saudi, he had about five trucks working there, perhaps you came across him. His name was Granville Myers and recently was operating to Kosovo under the name of Warisa, a combination of his childrens initials I believe. He attended my weddng in 1976. The only internal work I did was spending six months in Iran running from Tehran down to Korramshah and Bander Abbas.
Colonel:
I had friends who worked internally in Saudi, he had about five trucks working there, perhaps you came across him. His name was Granville Myers and recently was operating to Kosovo under the name of Warisa, a combination of his childrens initials I believe. He attended my weddng in 1976. The only internal work I did was spending six months in Iran running from Tehran down to Korramshah and Bander Abbas.
you will never see me mention a name on here.
Not everyone wants all their past plastered over the internet