I was sent up to Scotland not too long ago with 5pallets of house hold goods. took me and my porter 1.5days to get to the house where we waited for the customer. At the time he was ment to show up he didnt appear so rang in and asked should i wait till the morning for him. Was told to come straight back down and would the load would be sent back with another company who run up everday. so basically porter got paid for doing nothing and id the easiest week iv ever had in my job. why they didnt send it with the other company before is beyond me though.
MR VAIN:
I’m sure i’ve done some crazy loads at times, but i do know a man who collected his 44t outfit and did 5hrs driving and had an hours kip waiting to tip and then opened his curtains on his EMPTY! trailer. A week later a colleague of his was doing the same run, he was an hour away from tip when he decided to check on his load of fresh air! I know of another instance of this, makes you wonder if this kind of thing happens a lot but nobody admits to it. I always open doors and check that the trailer has in it what it should have, i don’t like surprises.
Bloke i used to work with did exactly the same thing. Baglan to Leeds. I was talking to the warehouse guy a few weeks later about it, he said ’ Derek opened the back door, closed it, opened it again but it was no good, the trailer was still empty! He even stuck his head round to make sure 26 pallets weren’t hiding behind the n/s door!’
While working through an agency in Stoke,for TNT,did a while on newsprint out of Knowlsley.
Daftest run,pick up a tractor unit from the Winsford depot,run bobtail up to Knowlsley,collect empty curtain sider,down to the Sentinel newspaper in Stoke where TNT have a lot of trucks running newsprint,TNT foreman tells me to load half a load of newsprint for WH Smith warehouse at Longport,1 mile away!
Tipped,ran empty to Pinvin,(near Evesham off M5 at junction 6),Load half a load of print back to Knowlsley.
Unusual load?20 tonnes of imported bagged wallnut shells from Shorerham docks to Aberdeen.Used in the oil industry to make mud to cool the drill bit!
bestbooties:
Unusual load?20 tonnes of imported bagged wallnut shells from Shorerham docks to Aberdeen.Used in the oil industry to make mud to cool the drill bit!
The only thing I remember walnut shells being used for is blast cleaning of runway lights. 
limeyphil:
He tipped at Bristol 20 minutes from Cwmbran.
Bloody hell, what were you driving
Collect from Coventry 2am…deliver some urgent car parts to Bratislava!
LINE STOPPER!!!
Off I go…
its nothing but cake decorating pipes for Skoda!!! 
just tidied up …'s to make the line fit on the screen 
…Denis F
I’ve had a few, like Hamburg to Dieppe empty to pick up a back load that had already been collected, then had to go to Belgie for a load.
Bob tail from Uttoxeter to Bruggen in Germany to find that the trailers there were 20 feet too short for the load, so bob tailed back to Banbury.
HomoFaber:
Daft load?! has anyone ever hauled beef skins? Then for sure you’ll remember the stink for rest of your life…quote]
First job I did when I got into transport after leaving the army.This was in 1969 with an Albion 4 wheeler flat bed.Had to go to slaughter houses and hand ball full load of salted hides,sheet and rope them well as they were very slippy.
Deliver to a tannery then hand ball off again.When I’d been on that job my wife made me undress in the yard as she wouldn’t have the stink in the house.
DeRooy ; Porto to Milan empty -reload to Barna . ( & it was all 'urry up! ) Lovely .
hiya,
got back to bowkers yard one friday back in the 60s to find several of us had been volunteered to bring the circus to town rochdale back to blackburn cash in hand bonus no log sheets anyway a guy who introduced himself as transport manager still had half the clowns paint on his face bundled us into a van and took us to the old site i was introduced to this ancient leyland octopus (the paint job was worth more than the motor ) got it started told to back up and pick up a drawbar full of big top bits no problem back up some more another trailer added animals, instructions stay in convey in case of breakdowns second man was an arab and in the passenger footwell was milk churn filled with used engine oil and the arab who was a trapeze artist his job as well as helping me with the brakes was to lift the engine cover and add copious amounts of the gunge from churn to the engine whilst on the move, the only words he could say was she alright she alright thanks harry long retired
From Barry to a little town 3 hours south of Alicante with a empty flatbed to load two containers to go back to barry. Sweet little run that was 
Got sent from Paisley to Staffs wth a low loader for a loading shovel, which turned out to be a one ton bobcat this was in the early eighties
Hey Masetheace,
Were you working for Vallance by any chance? I’ve done a few like that for them.
Paul.
1989 Loaded steel coil in a tilt from Scunthorpe, down to Italy, cleared in Florence, …went to tip and all they did was changed the tags on the coils, new paperwork, cleared customs again and off to tip in the UK (can’t remember where).
1992 Empty at Laredo in Northern Spain. Shipped back Santander-Plymouth, dropped empty in Cardiff, Loaded trailer waiting to go back to Felixstowe.
Colin , the seel coil fiddle was to do with EEC grants !!!
Trubrit:
1989 Loaded steel coil in a tilt from Scunthorpe, down to Italy, cleared in Florence, …went to tip and all they did was changed the tags on the coils, new paperwork, cleared customs again and off to tip in the UK (can’t remember where).1992 Empty at Laredo in Northern Spain. Shipped back Santander-Plymouth, dropped empty in Cardiff, Loaded trailer waiting to go back to Felixstowe.
Used to do near enough the same Go to Bremen with coil from a steel stockholder in West Bromwich, tip, reload a coil dropped there last week that had its stickers changed, rinse and repeat.
Empty from Swindon toTorino (40 ft tilt) to collect “special packaging equipment” that had to be at an exibition at the NEC asap.
Get there to find that the machine would have fitted in a Bedford rascal!!
Rikki-UK:
Trubrit:
1989 Loaded steel coil in a tilt from Scunthorpe, down to Italy, cleared in Florence, …went to tip and all they did was changed the tags on the coils, new paperwork, cleared customs again and off to tip in the UK (can’t remember where).1992 Empty at Laredo in Northern Spain. Shipped back Santander-Plymouth, dropped empty in Cardiff, Loaded trailer waiting to go back to Felixstowe.
Used to do near enough the same Go to Bremen with coil from a steel stockholder in West Bromwich, tip, reload a coil dropped there last week that had its stickers changed, rinse and repeat.
Used to do that with Pampers nappies. Load P+G Trafford park, tip Frossinone(spelling?) Italy, then reload out of same place with pampers back to UK - tax dodge or what?
yes indeed…I was only eleven!
Not really ‘daft’ more splendid!!
A next door neighbour’s husband Les, drove for Robertson’s Haulage. An aged Bedford rigid four wheeler. I’d already been with him to Edinburgh, where we’d delivered four machines stamped with the Guiness logo. An overnight run. Unsheeted…new and pristine but I’d not a clue what they were for…beyond a seemingly key role in the brewing process. AN overnight run…I didn’t know it at the time but our first brew and food stop was the Jungle Caff near Shap about midnight. Teemed with gadgeys in flat caps and mufflers.
A few weeks later I was thrilled to be offered the passenger seat in Les’s wagon once more.
The load…a replica of a Viking galleon/long boat. unsheeted (yes!) to some address in Nottingham (bizzarre) it was a great run, everybody stared as we drove through Macc and Leek ! The Derby ring road was a hoot.
Thanks for reminding me…I have had little to rival the long-boat since.
fox
Last week, 15t Axor. Ran Edinburgh to Dunbar, about 30 - 40 miles distance with 1 bag of cement and 2 bags of sand what had been missed off the load on the 7.5t curtainsider!!!