whats the oldest truck youve ever driven in your career or do you have fond memories of a good old truck you drove long ago
me its the a choice of two the F reg 143 450 topline and the 143 500 m reg topline we have both great trucks the sound of the 500 is pure ■■■ throught the twin eminox stacks
the F reg is on steel at the back and has a 10 speed but is still great to drive
alix776:
whats the oldest truck youve ever driven in your career or do you have fond memories of a good old truck you drove long agome its the a choice of two the F reg 143 450 topline and the 143 500 m reg topline we have both great trucks the sound of the 500 is pure ■■■ throught the twin eminox stacks
the F reg is on steel at the back and has a 10 speed but is still great to drive
MY 141, but didn’t get any ■■■ out of it though! 
A C-reg (as in 84-ish) FL10 that was knicknamed Miss Piggy due to it’s background.
It had belonged to a (pig) farmer who used to haul his own pigs to market/slaughter house and as such, had very low mileage. It did however, originally stink of pigs but the firm who I did some casual work for (and had bought it very cheap) had done a good job of valeting it (and respray) and was fine when I was driving it regular.
It was not the most desirable truck on the small fleet but it was my favourite truck was well as my first ‘regular’ motor.
Hmmm, I can recall driving an old shed with a 180 gardner to Newcastle upon tyne, from west brom once, and that was enough…
Happy memories? Gotta be the old 110 scanias we had at home, late 70’s & early 80’s. (showing me age now 
) But we never had them new, usually came from ‘up the corner’ in the Scania dealers yard. !!!
My best old truck was a F10 when I started on a tanker company
VNB 544X, except it was only 3 years old then 
My Transcon was a good old truck though, I bought it from Rockware Glass in 1988 and it was 10 years old then, low mileage, full service history & MOT and brand new Michelin tyres
Oldest recently ‘Y’ reg 124/420
In a past life Leyland Mandata FFE 346E was the reg if memory does not fail me.
Generally 02 plate or later 124/420’s, there’s a nice 53 plate FH12 460 in the yard I’d like a go at. Didn’t like the Stralis.
mmm, this thread has made me feel rather old tonight 
Think my oldest drive was a 1977 B Series Twin steer draggin 80’ steel beams around for a steel stockholder. Happy days.
the oldest rigid truck ive driven must have been a bedford rl. dont know what year though.
the oldest artic was a leyland mastiff. i got to drive it a few times in 1986. shortly after it was replaced by a seddon atki 401. at a guess i would say the mastiff was ten year old and made around 75 to 77.
now i do feel old, and im only 37 
thank god i am not as old as u lot my oldest artic is a l reg iveco old git ,s
Well, I’ve only had my C for 2 1/2 years, and my C+E for 6 months, so I can’t claim anything really prehistoric, but…
My oldest was an R-reg ERF. 4-over-4 crash box with range change and splitter, to drive into London. Lovely vehicle to give me for my first artic run after passing my C+E… 
I’ll name that tune in 15… 
The oldest i know of was F43 OTL my first truck when i passed my test it was a Volvo FL7 i used to be away in it all week and loved it.
P.S. the number 43 is still in my lottery numbers every week.
Well, I drove a 1989 Mack R-series day cab that had a 9 speed Maxidyne (aka “Maxi-grind”) transmission and it had 4 million miles on the odo…
In my trucking school, they had a few 1978 GMC cabovers with a ‘big-cam’ ■■■■■■■ hooked to a spicer 7-speed, and a whole bunch of circa 1980 GMC short hood day cabs, former Roadway truck, and all had Detroit Diesel 6V-92T motors hooked to Eaton/Fuller 9 speeds. Easiest shifting trucks I’ve ever driven…
Over there ;- An early 70’s Mandator or ‘Maneater’
Over here ;- An old 86 Mack, (my first when joining this company)
Both were bags of doggy doo, but at least the Mack had power steering 
no such luck with the Maneater.
Old Scammel Tank Transporter. Gawd knows how old it was as it was an army one so no year plate.
When I was selling cars my partner said ‘nip up the auctions and get a bit of stock’. So off I went but didn’t fancy what was on offer and came back with an ex WD wartime Morris Commercial reccer with a straight 6 petrol engine and about 6 gears and transfer box to lock into 4 wheel drive. The crane was handcranked and the batteries were 2x6 volts measuring about 3 feet long each. Starting in the morning involved a half turn of the engine on pulling the button, a heartsinking pause, then roaring into life. Never failed.
I paid £65 for it and £12 later for a WD workshop manual from a specialist dealer. This manual, designed for the thickest of squaddies and describing everything in the minutest of detail, enabled me, a non-mechanic, to split the engine and gearbox and strip and refurbish the transfer box.
We painted it blue and white and, with the addition of some west coast mirrors it looked very pretty.
No power on the fluid brakes meant that going down hill, laden or otherwise, involved forming my body into a rigid bar between pedal and seat back (came in handy later in my old Kew Dodge, see Sutton Bank thread). No power steering involved considerable muscle work (I was younger then), blipping the throttle and pulling downwards with both hands on one side of the wheel.
I even used to sleep in it, across the seats, outside the police post at Trowel services, ready to clear up the tangled wreckage of the night.
We earned a bob or two, plus pulling purchases back from the ‘block’, and then sold it for double the money a year or so later. He sold it on and for some years it was operated out of the Fina garage on the A52 westbound between Sandiacre and the M1 J25. Mean old sod wouldn’t buy the manual though and I’ve still got it to this day, still in its protective plastic cover, might put it on e-bay.
In haulage terms, in the sixties, Hedley Shaw of Stapleford whom I drove for, had a fifties AEC 8 wheeler, 6 wheeler, Guy Invincible 8 wheeler, and an Octopus. I at different times drove them all but, as a newbie, got the relatively modern, but not as good an earner, (paid by %, therefore more weight, more money) Albion 4 wheeler. Non of the old geezers there were artic drivers so when the first new LAD Dodge came, I slipped straight into the driving seat - thought all my christmasses had come at once
Salut, David.
Rigid - My old 10 tonne Fordson Thames 4D (Like a Costcutter, but diesel) circa 1956/7…looked like a longer version of this:
It was powered by a Fordson Major 4-cylinder Tractor engine, with a 4-speed “crash” (and I mean “crash”, not Constant Mesh like the Eaton/Fuller boxes found in ERFs and Fodens today) gearbox which had possibly the world’s most haphazardly designed gate - you just had to push the stick in vaguely the right direction and then stir it like a bowl of porridge until fluke told you it had gone in!
An incredibly challenging but satisfying drive, it only had a top speed of about 40mph when fully-loaded with Landrover spares (my then partner had a Series 2a SWB number which he seemed to have more parts for than working vehicle…fine until you consider he was “horsedrawn”, so had to keep being nice to me in order to move them all… ), but taught me more about driving lorries than any other vehicle since. (I’d say “or before” as well, but the 1960s BMC FG350 that I “unofficially” learnt to drive in, and the 1965 FG550 which followed it, had their parts to play too…)
It had “vacuum” brakes which needed half a mile’s notice in order to do anything of any use, so slowing on the gears was definately order of the day…and woe-betide the fool who thought they could get it higher than 2nd on a hill…or 3rd on a gentle slope…plus the dynamo-charged battery took so long to “cook” that it was a case of stall at your peril, and if you do, then pray there are a couple of hefty blokes around to help turn the crank!!!
It was also on it’s original numberplate - very rare these days - and both myself and the previous owner had researched it’s history so that we could tell you basically where it had been and what it had been doing pretty much since day one…everything from taking apples to market in Kent, to shunting empty bins about on a farm…I even had the original fitters’ handbook and Ford Parts list for it, as well as a lovingly wrapped and boxed spare governer for the engine, which was worth more than the lorry it was intended for!
One of my favourite memories to this day is going into a Ford Dealership in Tonbridge in rather desperate need of a seal for the master cylinder, passing him the book, and watching him punching 40 year old part numbers into their up-to-the minute computerised database, whilst wearing an ill-disguised bemused expression - who can blame him, faced with a 19yr-old be-dreadlocked female wielding a sheaf of yellowed and curling paper and a collie-cross on a string… 
. Best bit of it was when he actually found one, and it was only down the road in Canterbury! 
I had the truck to pull an old 25ft chromey showman’s trailer around with in the days when I was a no-good hippy ( ) doing harvest/farm work on an intinerant basis…the trailer was built in the early 1960s by Vickers of Morecambe, and was very similar to THIS Although the fact that it was still in active use obviously meant it wasn’t quite as well-preserved as the one in the pictures, it still had a full complement of cut-glass mirrors etc. plus all the original upholstery and fittings as shown. Weighed nearly 4 tonnes without all my junk inside as well…
Sadly I have no actual photos of either, as the aforementioned now ex-partner refused point blank to let me have them back when we parted company, and we’ve since lost touch…
The trailer was on a single axle (unlike the one in the picture behind the link) and was as a consequence forever suffering blow-outs…the only reliable source of tyres for it was old Dennis fire-engines, thanks to their somewhat eclectic size (which escapes me now…), and since there are only so many of those left to “pilfer” (with their owner’s permission, obviously - I never went down the route of being an out-and-out thieving ■■■■■ ) it eventually became a liability. I swopped it for a healthy wad of cash and a smaller, lighter Safari (17ft) which was owned by a guy who lived permanently on one of our regular farms in Cornwall…he lived with a Great Dane and desperately needed the space!
I hung onto the Thames for another year, despite having no real use for her, but eventually decided it was time to grow up and settle down, so she had to go - a spell in hospital for knee surgery meant that both storing and driving her became unsustainable. She was sold to a guy who had a Stationary Engine from the same era, and wanted a lorry with which to take it 'round the shows - “It spoils the image having it on the back of a Ford Cargo” . He was planning on extending the bed to a beavertail and fitting an appropriately-aged HIAB, although how far he got I don’t know. I’ll spend a summer touring the Steam Shows one of these years, see if I can track it down…
I do know that I cried my eyes out when I watched “Mabel” splutter and chug off down the road for the last time, with the inevitable clouds of black smoke ( ) in her wake (have you ever tried getting the injectors cleaned on something that age?)…but looking far nippier than usual with only her own spare parts on her back…she’d given me as much pleasure as she had headaches, and if I could have caught her up and given the guy his money back at that moment, I would have done…
Oldest artic was a Scania 142 v8, first artic I drove after passing my test…but since I’ve thoroughly waffled my way off down memory lane in this post (as well as admitting far more about my past than is wise on a public forum ), I’ll spare you the details of that one!!!
"I never went down the route of being an out-and-out thieving ■■■■■ "
Are you sure Lucy? There was a dozen vans just like that camped just down the road from our yard the day before my 2 lovely great big 6 volt batteries disappeared 
The day after a greasy haired character had made me an offer I did refuse for them.
If your conscience is pricking you, you don’t have long to wait to make it right
OK, just done some calculations, if it was you you must have been extremely tiny at the time. You’re off the hook.
Salut, David.
mine was a h reg fl10 and that was a cracking little truck until the wipers fell of on the m5 in torrential rain.
Spardo:
"I never went down the route of being an out-and-out thieving ■■■■■ "Are you sure Lucy? There was a dozen vans just like that camped just down the road from our yard the day before my 2 lovely great big 6 volt batteries disappeared
If your conscience is pricking you, you don’t have long to wait to make it right
OK, just done some calculations, if it was you you must have been extremely tiny at the time. You’re off the hook.
Salut, David.
The two oldest trucks ive ever driven were in the army in cyprus one was a bedford Jtype and the other was called a knocker no idea what make it was as i only drove it a few times the J type was an absolute beast to drive i remember the batteries shorting out on the bottom of the seat and setting on fire at 50 mph on the UN road i just carried on going till i got to nicosia and my mate who was passenger sat on the dash trying to put it out
The few times i drove the knocker i hated every minute of it 4 speed box that wouldnt go in gear no matter how much you timed the revs and double d clutched the ■■■■ thing, my mate used to sit on the engine cover and forse it in gear with his foot i hated driving round nicosia as you used to sweat your [zb]s off with the heat and no power steering.
simon