hodgeturbo:
a BOMB not a real bomb a big metal ball collected from a foundry in wolsingham and delivered to millom quarry when they get a piece of granite too big for the crusher they lift the bomb up with the digger bucket and drop it on to the stone to break it
That dosen’t look so safe if its come all the way from Wolsingham to Millom in the back of a tipper! Bewick.
oh its alright dennis us maryport lads like an adventure now and again!!!
There’s some famous last words marra!Eh! “It’ll niver move” !!! When I was running McGuffie Transport one of our drivers loaded a pig iron magnet at Workington,shaped like a bell and wieghing about 4 ton.It was going for re-conditioning to Birmingham IIRC,anyhow for reasons best known to him he didn’t think it would move so he didn’t bother chaining it or even nail some skids round the base.He got down as far as Rydal and slung it off on one of those sharp bends!made a dent one foot deep in the road eh! He got done £250 and we got done £50 for permitting the useless b****** for doing it!!!If he’d rung Milnthorpe we wouldn’t have let him leave the Steel Works until it was secured properly.And prior to me buying McGuffie Transport in 1974 John McGuffie had an artic throw a bundle of Bridge rail off at Broughton Cross on top of a Mini and killed two I think.I think it was proved that the chain or dwang was defective but I think it was a sad accident.I often thought how lucky we were at Rydal when the magnet came off the trailer as it was 2 or 3 times heavier than a bundle of bridge rail eh!Cheers Dennis.
When I drove for Fed Ex on the Matchbox contract work dropped off every new year due to toy sales falling after christmas.
I had to take my matcbox trailer down to Calvin Cline depot in Crick and load 22 pallets for P&O Ferries and deliver to Southampton, I was told “DO NOT STOP ! DO NOT PARK UP ANYWHERE BUT FEDERAL EXPRESS DEPOT IN SOUTHAMPTON OVER NIGHT”
I was even given a route, not down the A43 as expected but down the M1 and M3 out that way very strange
On the M3 I got a blow out and headed in to a service area and phoned in, within minutes I was in the presence of two patrol cars and 4 cops who stood guard for some reason, as tyre repair truck turned up and the service area manager came out to compain the company had no permission to do work on the service area. The police sent him packing and my trye was repaired.
On arrival in Southampton I found Fed Ex and was backed inside the warehouse for the night and giving a company car to go out on the town etc. Next morning I drove half a mile to P&O and got offloaded. I asked why all the fuss ? I was told I had over 17 million pounds worth of Obsession concentrate on my trailer
This was when 17 million was a lot of money
240 Gardner:
12 church bells from Burnley to near Lichfield, on a 40’ tri-axle flat behind an Atkinson Viewline - delivered to a private house down a track marked ‘Unsuitable for Motors’, and was unloaded by a fork attachment on the back of a grey Ferguson tractor and driven by a chap who couldn’t turn round in his seat because of his neck brace…
Also, the Shap memorial stone, collected out of Shap Granite Quarry and delivered to the stonemason at Troutbeck Bridge.
240 Gardner:
12 church bells from Burnley to near Lichfield, on a 40’ tri-axle flat behind an Atkinson Viewline - delivered to a private house down a track marked ‘Unsuitable for Motors’, and was unloaded by a fork attachment on the back of a grey Ferguson tractor and driven by a chap who couldn’t turn round in his seat because of his neck brace…
Also, the Shap memorial stone, collected out of Shap Granite Quarry and delivered to the stonemason at Troutbeck Bridge.
STRAIGHT EIGHT:
Russian Mig Jet fighter from north Wales to the Arms proving ground at Shouburyness in Essex.
Hiya straight eight…was that mig from that quite narrow lane near the huge airbus building at broughton.■■?
i saw them come to Liverpool in the 70,s and stood on the dock for ages.
things went quiet then about 5 years ago i saw 2 along with a electric lightining parked as above.just wanting to keep a log on them HA HA.
i think someone else started to mention them a few months ago on TN saying they had seen them on the liverpool dock.
if i remember a chap bought them and was going to do displays. but when they arrived most of the dials or control switches was missing.
someone will know more out there.
John
Hello 3300, no, it was from Chester Airport with a couple of Russian helicopters we were meant to move, but never did. Not sure where it came from, but we know it was in the hands of the British Air-force, then sold to the specialist scrap buyer Hanningfield Metals, who we were doing the job for. Then sold to the Arms proving ground for target practice (this now being run by a private firm for the MOD) , it was totally complete, but not in the best of nick!.
I picked this one up last monday whilst doing an odd day for a mate in his artic. I had instructions to collect 7 pallets of “cosmetics” from a factory in Hastings, only going to Henfield for re-packaging. I got there and the 7 pallets came out (like heavy-duty IBCs), 1000kg per pallet. I went to see the (rather good looking) woman at reception to get my notes. I looked to see what the stuff was, and I kid you not, “strawberry/chocolate/orange oral gel”!! . I had to ask if it was what I thought and yes it was! Apparently a celebrity is launching a new range of products destined for a famous ladies lingerie and “accessory” chain of shops! I asked the receptionist if she could demonstrate with a sample, but she was too busy
Pat Hasler:
When I drove for Fed Ex on the Matchbox contract work dropped off every new year due to toy sales falling after christmas.
I had to take my matcbox trailer down to Calvin Cline depot in Crick and load 22 pallets for P&O Ferries and deliver to Southampton, I was told “DO NOT STOP ! DO NOT PARK UP ANYWHERE BUT FEDERAL EXPRESS DEPOT IN SOUTHAMPTON OVER NIGHT”
I was even given a route, not down the A43 as expected but down the M1 and M3 out that way very strange
On the M3 I got a blow out and headed in to a service area and phoned in, within minutes I was in the presence of two patrol cars and 4 cops who stood guard for some reason, as tyre repair truck turned up and the service area manager came out to compain the company had no permission to do work on the service area. The police sent him packing and my trye was repaired.
On arrival in Southampton I found Fed Ex and was backed inside the warehouse for the night and giving a company car to go out on the town etc. Next morning I drove half a mile to P&O and got offloaded. I asked why all the fuss ? I was told I had over 17 million pounds worth of Obsession concentrate on my trailer
This was when 17 million was a lot of money
hiya,
And i used to think 20 tons of the “golden distill” from o’er the border was worth a few bob, must have been peanuts by comparison.
thanks harry long retired.
a load of frozen tinned egg whites. in a tilt from leith cold store to luxembourg, when going on the boat the ships engineer asked where he was to plug in the frozen eggs. hence the reply if you can find a socket on a tilt plug away guvenor. by the way it was mid january and the weather was bloody cold. so the egg whites didnt melt.
Having worked on opencast cast sites for 15years you get some odd shape of things to carry most engine’s transmission’s axle’s and drag line bucket’s.at the time i was driving scania 82m 6 legger with hiab on the back boss come’s up take sides of wash body go to big house near spennymoor pick a picture up .Away i go to the house near page bank spennymoor it turns out to be Bobby Shaftoe’s old house and the picture turns out to be oil painting of himself.Looking at the painting thinking how much is this worth and why send an opencast waggon for something that should have been moved by the pro’s in the job.All loaded slowest trip i ever did to Bishop Auckland
council office’s and very pleased to get the job done in one go.
Here’s one no one ever believes, but mushrooman can back me up.
Me and Steve (mushroomman) loaded 2 trailers ,one with beer and one with whiskey for baghdad, and we got them there with dover seals still intact.
When we had tipped we where given a bottle of this whiskey each and like a pair of idiots we drank it. we found out after it had been specially brewed for this particular project, and would have been worth a fortune to a collector.
That reminds me of a quick tip I did. Loaded a full load of shopping trolleys , ( they loaded on the floor and then overlayed them with plywood and stacked another lot on top ) at Clares Equipment at Wells to go to a new Toys r Us in Toulon ,the instruction was I had to be there at 0600 on the Saturday as the store was opening that day. On arrival I was told they wanted them on the loading bay, the bay had a slope down to it , I opened the doors and slowly reversed down the slope ,their was a roar as 2 levels of trolleys unloaded them selves.
I don’t believe this!!!
For a lot of years I’ve dined out on a very similar tale. I picked up a load of shopping trollies at the docks and took them to a Tesco (or whatever shop it was) in Sevenoaks. Loaded exactly the same. two layers separated by sheets of cardboard and the area behind the shop in Sevenoaks was on a slope facing down to where the customers cars were parked. The trollies were held in by some rope and you can guess what came next… yep they cut the rope. Avalanche of shopping trollies all down into the carpark. This being sevenoaks, it was all Beemers and Mercs and Porsches. Scratches and ■■■■■ all over the spot! Man what a mess.
When I was running a couple of 8 wheeled tippers round about the winter of 1990 I had a job for the 2 of us (me and Timmo) to run from our base near Salisbury down to Bude, Cornwall to collect 2 x 20 tonne loads of loose lead shott (yes the same as in a 12 bore cartridge).
The giant satellite dishes on top of the hills to the north of Bude were being dismantled. The lead shott was used in the counter balance weights for the satellite dishes. We had to run the lead shott back to a small smelters near to Botley, Southampton. Having never hauled anything remotely like lead before the odd thing was of course was its weight! To start the lead shott was heaped on the ground when we arrived at the collection point at Bude with only a normal sized JCB digger to load it onto us.
There was frost and snow so the heap was frozen, the JCB tried to drive into the heap to pick up a bucket full but it was solid both with ice and its solid weight. The JCB driver was the 1st to be caught out by this unusual commodity as it was so heavy and hard. He had to load us very slowly using the back acter due to its weight lifting only what looked like a normal hand shovel full at a time. Once we were fully loaded after numerous trips to a local weigh bridge to get our weights right the loads of lead shott we had in the back of the tippers looked the size of a couple of tonnes of normal aggregates, only covering about a 3rd of the floor about 4 inches deep. That was 20tonne!
The drive back to Botley again was unusual and felt odd to drive as we were both used to normally running limestone, aggregates and muck shifting with a much higher centre of gravity. The oddness being that the centre of gravity was so very low, the wagons didn’t roll in the corners at all, it was like driving a 30 tonne go-cart!
When we arrived at Botley after an overnight stop off via Salisbury the next problem arose. Tried tipping the lead shott out but it had frozen to the floor over night and during the journey back. We had to time consumingly chip it loose with crow bars as there was no way a normal hand shovel would touch it to be able to tip it all out.
Had I known what time and aggro it was to load and to tip I would never have taken the job on for the price I quoted. All in all i think it took us a day to load and tip the stuff not counting the driving time. But there that was another day we both learnt something.
If asked to move loose lead shott in the winter try to avoid it!
stingray:
the wagons didn’t roll in the corners at all, it was like driving a 30 tonne go-cart!
brilliant! - think i’d have tried using a steam cleaner before a crowbar to tip the stuff
hiya,
I’d have left the body up and gone to the digs until the thaw, shovels and crowbars are road menders tools, not road users, well i’m bone idle really,
thanks harry long retired.
hiya,
A pal of mine got the job of taking a prepared rigid tipper to collect a female rhinocerous and take her from one zoo to another i believe it was to get the little lady mated, a while later he had to go and bring her back to her home, he swore blind she had a smile on her face all the way back.
thanks harry long retired.
very strange 
