UK-Middle East-Russia-UK round trips

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS EURO DRIVING FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
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This is an open post to anyone interested in long distance truck driving. I’ve seen on the forum that plenty of drivers like to swap stories about the M/E in particular so I thought you would be interested in this anomaly.

In the early 1990’s a few Astran sub-contractors made a UK-Qatar-Russia (Moscow)-UK round trip. From my recollection the drivers were, individually or in pairs, Athol Addison, Ron McNulty, Mark Stewart, John Harper and David Hogarth.

It worked like this. The drivers left a blank TIR Carnet with Wattar Co, Astran’s agent, at Bab-El-Hawa on the Syrian-Turkish border on their way down. The drivers tipped in Qatar and ran empty to the Jordanian-Syrian border. At Derra, on the Syrian side, the Wattar Co agent called Nasser gave the drivers instructions to join the convoy to Aleppo. On arrival at Aleppo they were met by Wattar Co’s agent and taken to load. This could take up to a week to complete. Once loaded the trucks started their journeys to Moscow via Istanbul, Romania and then to Moscow through the Ukraine or through Moldova and then the Ukraine to Moscow. After tipping in Moscow the trucks headed for home picking up a load on the way.

Some of the trips did not go smoothly. Mark Stewart’s Scania 141 blew up in Russia and he had to exit into Finland. Mark then bought a new engine out of an ex-logging 141 before reaching home. Athol Addison had an ex-Gilder drawbar Scania 142. It threw a piston in the Ukraine during one winter trip. He was taken to a prison (I kid you not!) and a heater was placed inside the cab with the electric lead running out of his sun roof. A prisoner was then brought before the truck and not only stripped down the engine but remarkably balanced and welded the piston back together. Athol took the prisoner on a test drive, dropped him back at the nick and carried on. When he arrived at Scania’s in Aberdeen (near his home) the mechanics could not believe the workmanship! It was perfect.

I did my trip in April-May 1993 with John Harper (my boss at the time). The trip was over 20,000km long and took 44 days in total. Athol Addison no longer works for Astran, as does Mark Stewart. I don’t know about Ron McNulty. John Harper does the odd seller and I don’t drive any more. I hope this sheds some light on the subject. I have a picture of John with the trucks outside the Hotel Sport in Moscow (how can I post it on this thread?)

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David H:
From my recollection the drivers were, individually or in pairs, Athol Addison…

I recognise that name…isnt he a scottish chap…he was featured in Truck magazine sometime in the early 80`s…he had just ordered a brand new black scania left ■■■■■■ truck and A frame drawbar rig…was running to M/E with it, I remember one part of the report saying that the reason he ordered a drawbar was the flexibility it gave him in making deliveries…Did he go to Isreal in it as well?

Im sure that someone on here must have a back copy in their collection and could scan and post it.

Dig out those pics David…someone will tell you how to put them up on here before long. :wink:

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An interesting post that David. The name Ron McNulty rings a bell with me. But from an earlier time, maybe the 70’s. I think he was an OD and seem to have some recollection of associating the name with Anglian Concrete, the oversize stuff. If you’ve got any pictures of him, I would be very interested, it’ll bug me for some time to come now. :confused: :blush: :cry:

Salut, David.

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Athhol use to do a lot of work for Davies Turner, didn’t know e ever did anything for Astran
sdj

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Biggles:
Athhol use to do a lot of work for Davies Turner, didn’t know e ever did anything for Astran
sdj

I was thinking the same although the last time I saw him he was doing Northern France with Bob Westwell,

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Welcome to TruckNet UK and a very interesting first post. Please share some other accounts of your trips with us as many people enjoy reading about these journeys, I know I do.

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My post appears to have attracted a lot of attention but not much discussion!

From what I’ve been told after Athol finished for Astran (circa 1997) he drove a MAN on a garment job from the UK to Nizhniy Novgorod in Russia. I was on the same job, driving for Les Naylor out of Northampton. Athol and Bob Westwell are good mates. Bob is a terrific chap and used to drive for Athol at one time.

I’ve read a lot of posts about China. I think that the glamour of driving to China is overshadowed by the difficulties in filling the basic requirements needed to see the job through.

I visited China in September 1998 as a tourist travelling from Moscow to Beijing by train. At that time China only had about 40km of three lane motorway (from Beijing to the Great Wall). The only trucks I saw were double manned scruffy Steyr’s with roped and sheeted loads. I find it difficult to believe that a UK truck had delivered a load into China before this time (and now if I am honest) for the following reasons:

(1) I had trouble enough obtaining a tourist visa. I would think that the Chinese would struggle to, or not be prepared to go to the trouble of issuing a special working visa for foreign truck drivers. They would prefer to, and several Ralph Davies drivers can attest to this, tranship the load at the border. Right hand drive trucks may pose an extra problem as they have begun to in Saudi (a friend of mine, Steve Houlding, has just returned from Qatar and told me about this development).

(2) China has not been a party to the TIR system yet as highlighted by the The European Economic Commission in the following quote:

‘Even with the extension of the European Union the use of the TIR procedure is likely to increase, particularly once the countries of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia start applying the TIR procedure and China has acceded to the TIR Convention.’

Even as late as 2005 China had not become a member of the TIR Carnet system as shown on the IRU website:

iru.org/TIR/TirSystem.E.htm

Therefore I am not sure if it would be possible to find a translator at the border that would translate the Carnet into Chinese and transfer it on to a Chinese manifest, never mind finding an agent who would be prepared to guarantee the Customs duty etc.

During the early days of Middle East driving it was easier to get things done as most Middle Eastern countries were former colonies and had good English or French speaking agents. The countries also needed and relied on the goods arriving so the cooperation at the borders was good.

China has only really emerged as a market since the September 11th attacks. I doubt that much will go to China by road that cannot be shipped, flown or sourced closer to home from a more obvious trading partner. Generally speaking if two countries buy or sell weapons to each other then other goods follow. The UK does not sell military hardware to the Chinese…

(3) I am not sure who would insure a UK truck in China, or whether the Chinese would pay for any damage they did. The risk might be too great to send a truck.

I conclude that although China is accessible by road the bureaucracy involved in trying to enter it would probably preclude a UK truck from delivering a load within China.

I drove for Fransen’s from 1994 to 1997. During that time I took a lot of cheap and free pharmaceuticals to Russia for the Welcome Foundation. As well as doing the Russian’s a service the exports were also aimed at attracting a new market. I get the feeling now that a lot of commercial activity at the time was speculative and involved sending trucks all over the place in search of new customers. Now that the situation has calmed down simple economics has taken over. There is not the rush anymore to get goods from A to B and secure customers with quality service alone. In other words, once you have your customers, the cost of transport is negotiable.

Incidentally I knew a Kepstowe driver called Gordon who took a Motorola mobile phone exhibition trailer to Irkutsk in the early 1990’s. The trailer was then loaded onto a plane and flown to Vladivostok. Gordon drove to Moscow truck only and met up with the trailer on its return from Vladivostok. Finally, Rod Scholes (I think that’s the spelling) took a medical heart monitoring trailer to Beirut for Ralph Davies a few years back. Then he moved to Denmark.

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I somehow missed that question at the end of your post David, (about posting pics), sorry.

The pic needs to be in an on-line album site.
Like :-
TruckNetUKs Photo Store, with full instructions at that link.
or
Image Cave, is another one.
There is yet another one, but I can’t think what its called at the moment.
These are both free to use. TruckNet UKs has 3Mb of storage space (and if you are a member of an MSN group with photos stored there, they are also part of your 3Mb of space). Image Cave give you 10Mb, but there is a download limit.

When your photo is stored on any of these, you put a link to that photo in your post with the (Img) tags on either side of the link, it should then show up as a photo in your post. The best size for posted photos is 640 x 400 pixels(I think it is). There’s a link to a photo resizer in the photo forum. Image Cave have a resizer on site, so you can adjust your photos after uploading them. (don’t forget to delete the oversize pic if you do it there).

I hope this helps, also, have a read in the Photo Forum.

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Keep these tales coming David,

And say Hello to Bob and Atholl from Holty, Simmo and Malc :smiley:

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It looks like you might have sussed it then David H :question: :question: :sunglasses: :sunglasses: .

The other free pic storage site, that I couldn’t remember earlier, is
Photo Bucket.

Where was that Photo taken by the way?

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if we are playing "where am i? " then i reckon its in kiev

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I would guess “The Hotel Sport, Moscow”.

Mind you, check the bottom of his first post in this thread Harry.
As I should have before asking the question. :unamused: :unamused: :smiley: :smiley:

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Simon:
Mind you, check the bottom of his first post in this thread Harry.
As I should have before asking the question. :unamused: :unamused: :smiley: :smiley:

I’ll get me coat…

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Harry Monk:

Simon:
Mind you, check the bottom of his first post in this thread Harry.
As I should have before asking the question. :unamused: :unamused: :smiley: :smiley:

I’ll get me coat…

Sorry Pmsl :laughing:
P.S. I ididn’t read the bottom of the first post either until Simon pointed it out. :blush:

David have you got any more pic and stories you’d be willing to post. I love hearing about these long distance jobs and seeing the pictures of far flung places. :smiley:

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The picture was taken on May 12th 1993 in the car park of the Hotel Sport in Moscow. We hung around Moscow for a couple of days after this before setting off for Hungary where we both reloaded from the same factory with plastic granules for Scotland. I was only home for a couple of days before I set off for Italy where I loaded for Qatar again.

I’m not sure that I always shared your interest in trucking to far flung places. The adventurer spirit can backfire. I hope that I will not upset the moderator with this true story. I remember taking a phone call from a friend of mine asking me if I had eaten any shashliks while I was in Nizhniy Novgorod. I replied that I hadn’t and this was met with sigh of relief. My mate went on to explain that while he was delivering a Coca Cola truck (for Kepstowe) to Nizhniy an Irishman working for Coke told him that a pile of mutilated corpses had been discovered among a mound of scrap metal in the MIG Sokol aircraft factory there. They were cut up because some ‘parts’ had found there way, by one route or another, in to the hands of roadside vendors to be used their kebabs. It was a serious as that in Russia. In those days the former Soviet Union was a place where you had no choice but to accept the unexpected…

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David H:
I hope that I will not upset the moderator with this true story.

:open_mouth: :open_mouth:

Rather a gruesome story, that one David. But, if we only hear the “nice” stories, we’ll get a rather skewed idea of life on the road, heading for those far flung places.

I think the interest is partly fuelled by the idea, “I wish I could have done that”.

We’re interested in all the stories about those trips, not just the “rose tinted spectacles” type ones.
You must admit that even European transport is a fairly mundane job these days. UK haulage can be even more so, and really, its very safe.
We half expect hauling loads to these places to be pretty much more of the same. A bit more remote maybe, but pretty safe really. Stories like this, that hi-light how unsafe these trips could be are just as welcome.

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David H:
My mate went on to explain that while he was delivering a Coca Cola truck (for Kepstowe) to Nizhniy an Irishman working for Coke told him that a pile of mutilated corpses had been discovered among a mound of scrap metal in the MIG Sokol aircraft factory there. They were cut up because some ‘parts’ had found there way, by one route or another, in to the hands of roadside vendors to be used their kebabs.

See this and this (second paragraph on left)

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Yes. These posts sum up the mood. I know Sitev well, he is the mate who phoned me! I think that it’s safe to say that most Russian cuisine at the time was not quite what it said on the label.