Ive just been going thru the pics on page 39.The one going round the dam was I think taken by steve crewe and if memory serves I was the lead vehicle Ken singleton[RIP] was behind me then Steve,followedI think by Big T[RIP}
Hi, I am brand new to this so I hope I am doing it right.if it aint got a gearbox and 3 pedals i,me goosed,Idrove for a few international companies during the 70s/80s, the most notable for me being DOW FREIGHT. I made some very good friends at DOW,not the least being steve crewe[mushrooman] I read Steves account of the trip to baghdad with me and a lad called Ken[Steve got the name wrong ,he said keith] and he very kindly painted a good picture of me.Another good mate was Alan Morrey mentioned in the S.O.T.drivers section,Alan drove the only left ■■■■■■ owned by DOW it was a foden,It had a twin but that was owned by Stan [Womble] Warmbold.[RIP] I had the distinction of writing it off on Princess Parkway in Manchester.It had just had a sevice and Alan had Taken Mine home and iwas supposed to change over at Sandbach, never made it !!!oops. Alan was the most layed back bloke i have ever known,nothing ever seemed to rattle him, if anyone knows his whreabouts i would love to hear from him again.I was known then as ROY THE BOY[now the old man] but I believe someone is already using that name so I am using Rocky 7 which I was known as years ago.nowt to do with boxing, I used to sign my name roy K.and it became rocky long before sly stallone borrowed it If anyone can help me I would be grateful
Regards rocky 7 :: 
Hi Rocky 7 and welcome to Trucknet 
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I hope that you are not going to pull too many old skeletons out of the cupboard Roy as some of us are no longer single but happily married with Grandchildren. 
I am afraid that you were slightly wrong about the photo, that one was taken when seven of us were on our way down to Diyarbakir in Eastern Turkey and the photo was taken just before Rimnicu Vilcea in Romania, underneath where the big dam is now.
I know which trip you mean Roy, no daubt it was the one with Ken Singleton, Big Tony Gibbons, Terry Smith, You, my self and three other British drivers ended parked up outside that “ posh ” ( Rumanian Posh ) hotel near Rimnicu Vilcea one Saturday night. 
After changing some Deutsch Marks for Rumanian Lei and having steak, chips salad and a couple of bottles of champagne for about four quid, you then asked the group who were playing in the hotel if you could sing an Elvis song with them. I remember that the Rumanian audience went wild and you were persuaded to sing another song ( it was obvious that not so many of them could understand a word of English ).
Terry Smith who was no stranger to singing in the clubs also got up with the groups approval and sang a couple of songs. The manager of the hotel kept sending bottles of champagne ( Rumanian champagne ) over to our table for free.
I do remember that when the leader of the group called you up later to sing another song he announced you as Roy Rogers from England and the manager of the hotel tried to book you for the following Saturday but I think that we had better end that memory there for now.
As regards Alan Morrey, you couldn’t wish to meet or work with such a good bloke, he was so laid back it was always a pleasure to run with Alan.
The Flying Foden ( Jeff ) who also worked with Alan at Brit European sent me a great photo of Alan in front of a powder tanker when they worked together.
The last anybody heard of him was that Alan and Shelia had bought a motor home and went to travel around Spain.
For anybody who ever met Alan here’s a photo of him and I think that the other guy was called Steve who worked for Moorlock’s in Stoke.
Hi Steve, This is good being able to keep in touch at the touch of a button aint it. Its taking some time but ime learning more about the computer every day I am at the moment reading most of whats already been written and by whom, like you say I dont want to open any cans of worms, but like you i remember when Continental work was worth doing and not only for the money,When i retired I lasted a full 3 days before I went back to work but its not the same these days driving, the tackle is good but the rules are mind bending, When these young drivers get to our age their only memories will be how many times they got pulled by VOSA,or how often they had to sign disiplinary forms for tacho offences. remember when we used tacho;s as frisbeesat the end of the day.well steve now that i am able i am going to keep in touch with you and anyone else who remembers me from the old days and wants to. reagards Roy
Hiya Rocky 7, I didn’t use tacho cards as frisbee’s as often as other drivers did but I was guilty of putting a small piece of foam rubber just above the needle in the tacho while running through The Commie Block, then again most drivers did. It didn’t matter if you kept to the speed limit as the Yugo police would just say " tacho kaput , 200 Dinar with a receipt or 100 Dinar and one packet cigarretes and no receipt ". On some days it felt like you were just getting stopped because you had a U.K. number plate but as you know it happened to us all and we took it as part and parcel of the job.
Regards Steve.
Hi Guys
I used to hang a specially fabricated paper clip with a small piece of elastic band in the top of the tacho, it was " calibrated " so that you always did a maximum of 70 Kmh and there was a knack to removing it without being seen when you were stopped and asked for “Tachometry” !!
I used to put a new card in when I left Geiselwind or Herleshausen and leave it in until I got back to Furth or Herleshausen, it was just a big thick black line after a trip to Doha or Kuwait !!
Then have a clean card in with 12hrs off before entering Germany.
GS
We used to hang a paperclip over the needles so the speed trace would not go over 80 clicks.Another trick was to have a legal European card in,with another card on top of it,with a long elastic band threaded through the card and secured to somewhere the other side of the dashboard.
When you were stopped for a tacho check,when the tacho head was opened,the top card would shoot out at an unbelievable speed and disappear in the passenger footwell,leaving the legal card to be removed and shown to the police.
In 1975,before the tacho was law in England,after leaving West Germany you would have only one card in all trip until you arrived back in West Germany.
On one ocassion a mate and myself had just left Czech into West Germany and were bombing down the autobahn heading for home.As we passed a plain Mercedes car on the hard shoulder just as he was pulling away,I saw all too late that it was the filth,just putting their big hats on!
They pulled us over,first thing,tacho check.When they saw the cards that had been in for three or four weeks,they were not impressed.We were relieved of our last 100 DM each which meant no meal in Germany before we got home.
Happy days!
the best thing was to use 90km. tacho,s bought in hungary it showed 20km.below the speed you were doing.in yugo and romania with a daf 75 no tacho just the plastic protector show that and tell them it was a computer press the button and show them all the lights that came. glad to see you have mastered the computer roy
i remember back in the 80;s by then i was driving for DOW at stockport, and we still keep in touch some of us, we have a reunion evry year and spill a bit of diesel and have a few efes,s. i remember when we were young and full of it 
now we are all geriatrics and empty.
but they cant take the memories away.and i have got a few of those, not always good ones
in my time iv,e been shot at, stabbed,beaten up,and locked up but i wouldnt have swapped it for anything.bcause of the climate now the young drivers will never be able to do the things that we did which is a shame cos we had some great times
nice to here from gerry mac. do you realise how many continental drivers started at blue dart at middleton, then went to different firms on the continent?
I dont remember him, but i have heard that the [beast of amstetten] fritzl used to do the paperwork when we had loaded at voest alpine at linz. we went in regularly for dow
rocky 7:
I dont remember him, but i have heard that the [beast of amstetten] fritzl used to do the paperwork when we had loaded at voest alpine at linz. we went in regularly for dow
we still load there semi-regularly with special castings for a firm at middleton - presume he’s off work at present though 
rocky 7:
nice to here from gerry mac. do you realise how many continental drivers started at blue dart at middleton, then went to different firms on the continent?
Hi Roy, I can only remember ten at the moment, there are five on the Trucknet site who are probably reading this 
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The other’s I.I.R.C. were Ken Singleton, Jimmy ( Dormouse ) Walker, Mick May, Graham Harrison who I think drove for Cressida or Red Rose International and Joe Cardona who worked for Tony Febland and Duke’s Transport.
I dont think that any of them drove for Blue Dart European in the eary 70’s as all the continental work was done from the London depot at Enfield, maybe the Stoke on Trent depot did a trip, I dont know.
It would be great to find out if there are any O1er’s who worked at the Enfield depot are Trucknet member’s, I remember that a lot of them were old fellow’s so they have probably passed on by now. Is Alan Gilzean the ex Scotland and Spur’s soccer player still around ?, he was a transport manager there at one time.
I hope that maybe Trucker Ash or Marc The Bubbleman can come up with some old Blue Dart European photo’s as I know there was a picture of a Volvo F 88 going over Tower Bridge on some magazine in the early 70’s.
Regards Steve.
jj72:
rocky 7:
I dont remember him, but i have heard that the [beast of amstetten] fritzl used to do the paperwork when we had loaded at voest alpine at linz. we went in regularly for dowwe still load there semi-regularly with special castings for a firm at middleton - presume he’s off work at present though
Hi Andy, can you or anybody else refresh my memories as regards back loading in Austria.
Is Vorst Alpine in Amstetten or Linz ?, I know the big steel works was called Stahlwerk Linz.
I can remember loading aluminium from the same area but at the back of my mind I thought the aluminium plant was at Amstetten 
.
I have also heard that Joe Fritzl is off work at the moment, he’s doing a loft conversion but dont quote me on that one .
mushroomman:
I have also heard that Joe Fritzl is off work at the moment, he’s doing a loft conversion but dont quote me on that one
PMSL - you can only at such things else you’d - Voest Alpine Grossblech where we load is just off the A7 pretty much in the middle of town, never known alli loaded from there, must be amstetten but i don’t know either i’m afraid
Was it not Voest Alpine?On the A 7 north,enormous factory,just at the exit for Prinz Eugene Strasse,Gebruder Weiss-Davies Turner?Chemie Linz had a huge plant up there also,loaded in both but can`t tell you with what.Sure the alli came from Chemie Linz,possibly ,maybe.
whiplash:
Was it not Voest Alpine?On the A 7 north,enormous factory,just at the exit for Prinz Eugene Strasse,Gebruder Weiss-Davies Turner?Chemie Linz had a huge plant up there also,loaded in both but can`t tell you with what.Sure the alli came from Chemie Linz,possibly ,maybe.
I have just done a search and the aluminium work’s that I was thinking of was at Ramshofen, although it’s further than I thought it was from Amstetten. Chemie Linz was also another popular backloading place and I think we might of loaded at Krems. Can anybody remember the hotel at Saint Valentine with the big truck park, they served great food but it could work out expensive if you were week ending or The Prater in Vienna, there was usually a Thomson Jewit parked up there for the week end.
Hi all, an easier way than using paper clips etc. was to buy 90k tacho card in Austria.They were the same size as 125k cards and were used in in -town delivery trucks. 90-100ks would read as 55-65ks. I used them (outside of the EU of course 
) for years and was told a couple of times bu cops that I should drive faster as I was holding other drivers up
Gavin
ive just gone thru this topic again and it got me thinking.was trucking in the 80,s especially europe as good as the pictures and stories you guys tell make it look and sound.i was a kid in the 80,s i went to italy in a truck in the late 80,s riding shotgun with my then next door neighbour.that journey cemented my plan to be an international truck driver.when i did become a driver and finnally got to go abroad in 99 it just wernt the same as i remembered it or wanted to remember it.i enjoyed it and still do when i go over the water but with no borders as such everything is rush rush.i feel like i missed the golden age of european trucking i drive a top of the range motor all the bells n whistles but i swap it in a heartbeat for an F12globetrotter,DAF3600 spacecab,scanny 142
Carl:
…was trucking in the 80,s especially europe as good as the pictures and stories you guys tell make it look and sound…
Hi Carl, well in a word, YES!!
Things didnt seem half as rushed or regulated. The best (cant believe im saying this!!) part, with hindsight, was customs clearance.
Stop at the border or clearance centre in which ever town / city you were in and do your paperwork or clearances. especially when Imports were cleared in the morning and exports in the afternoon. If you were to late then its “come back tomorrow”. Shame that cos that would usually mean haveing to park up for the night and make use of a bar / restaurant etc!!!..terrible