Yay for unemployment! Est-Dk-Est-Pl-Est in a few pictures

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
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Hey everybody, after having a falling out with my gaffer over the fact that he wouldn’t let me have an extra day off after the national holiday (after a month of 80-hour weeks), I handed in my resignation, well more like parked the tipper in front of the base in the middle of the day and told him to shove it :laughing: . Had a week off, the national holiday and then some and made a few calls. As there is not much work going on this time of year, only my old acquaintance Aare had a job to offer me. he runs 9 trucks and is always short of drivers, probably due to the amount of cash he is willing to part with for the work done :smiley: but otherwise he’s a good guy and a job is a job when you’re bored at home

so day 1, monday the 7th of june I head to pick up the R500 that’s three years old and usually pulls trailers out of travemünde. the regular driver is off for a month and it’s just been sitting at DSV Tallinn. it’s got a microwave and a fridge, a good inverter and a coffeemaker as well. the garmin navigation is having problems finding the satellites, radio reception is also quite bad and the interior smells of dirty socks and cheap cigarettes but it should be ok for what I planned to be a five-day trip. hook up to an empty curtainsider and head towards Jõgeva to pick up a load of furniture bound for the DSV terminal at Horsens, DK.

plenty of trailers waiting for loads

just short of 30 mins of driving from tallinn, the motorway ends

some local roads after loading

had to do some shopping as the scania also has an aux-connection for the stereo that I was planning to use with my laptop but didn’t have the cord, really exciting long-haul euro tramping stuff you know

done for the day in the town of Valga, stones throw from the border with Latvia. sorted out the new-for-2014 road tax for Latvia online, 11 euros for 24h and had a chat with Ivar, who had the same load as me and some russian car transporter drivers who were heading to St.Petersburg after delivering in Kaliningrad. apparently the border crossing at Narva has a three-day queue thanks to the bridge being repaved.

around 6am we depart towards Klaipeda, Lietuva, slow traffic not a rare sight in the baltics

the beautiful dam of Riga

through the sweltering heat all day, 30+celsius all the time, we made it to Klaipeda at 3pm. sorted out the tickets fast as Ivar goes there couple of times a month and straight onto the DFDS ferry. as it uses a first in - last out loading system, drivers were actually queueing to not embark until the last minute.

the port is huge

and they pack you in pretty tight

this one going to Fredericia, Denmark

although we were packed in 4 to the cabin they don’t mix nationalities and everyone snored anyway so had a good meal (free) and shared many an interesting story of warehouses, border crossings and urban legends. the oil rig should be polish

the next day, had a hearty breakfast and a big lunch as well before getting ready to disembark in Kiel at around 3.30pm, so a 24h break had been completed.

heading to Oslo I believe

took an hour to get out of Kiel

to get to the wide open spaces

“Now you listen here, Elyzaveta, this is how I park, for I am the man, and they will see, that it must be JACEK who parks there as if there were no other trucks allowed into this layby by the law of the Rzeczpospolita!”

back up to the gate in Horsens, unhook and head to little bucharest. papers should be available to pick up at 4am

keep your country clean! start with your lorry.

this evening entertainment provided by this gentleman plus three other fellows with dark complexion as they managed to unhook the daf from its trailer in mere 40 minutes. the basics of how a fifth wheel works were truly beyond them. the operation was completed by looting the trailer of the straps.

next morning, wednesday I guess, got the papers from the office, Ivar left towards Skive and I got my first address in Middelfart, some 45 minutes away.

all of Denmark in one picture

long story short, next loading was a dud as the cargo was some 150km away instead, so loaded in Skive as well, a load of ventilation products to a customs warehouse near Tallinn for delivery in Russia somewhere, dropped the loaded trailer in DSV Horsens and picked up AJ4894, a TIR-certified curtainsider. first pickup was 10 pallets of some special sheetrock in Knauf Hogro

lots of small roads today

some windows picked up here

I’d hate to see this road in the winter

after 5 pickups, drop AJ4894 in Horsens, pick up the estonian trailer to take to the Port of Fredericia

where I am met by MSC Eyra, with whom we shall meet again later that day

I have no idea why I took this picture unfortunately

back in Horsens I am met by a cursing Claus, who obviously hates his work and especially fridays. while the cargo that should fit in the trailer is not astronomical by weight nor volume, he cannot get around to loading it with proper haste, so when I close the doors it’s 8pm local, the absolute latest one has to leave Horsens to catch the 17.45 ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn the next day.

oh look it’s eyra again!

got here just short of 15 hours on duty, still on schedule to make the ferry. which is good news as the next ferry to Estonia would be sunday morning from Kapellskär which would ■■■■ as I have a trailer waiting for me in Tallinn to take to Poland.

enough for today, more tomorrow I guess

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Good story - nice pictures :smiley:

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Good pictures and a good story keep us posted .

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yeah same here, it’s interesting to see where the trailer’s i inspect over here end up going…

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Nice pictures! :smiley:

milodon:
"Now you listen here, Elyzaveta, this is how I park, for I am the man, and they will see, that it must be JACEK who parks there as if there were no other trucks allowed into this layby by the law of the Rzeczpospolita!

Haha!

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thanks everyone :slight_smile:

so last saturday, started driving about an hour west of Copenhagen with a lot of ground to cover. alas, roadworks galore all over

in an hour and a half I was in the port of Helsingor

three departures every hour with a crossing of 20 mins

weathers nice all day, passing Jönköping

quite a few FBN trucks heading south, saw the first two just before Copenhagen and the last ones somewhere around Norrköping I think


looks like I’m going to make the ferry in good time

soon the shortcut tunnel to the port will be open in Stockholm, until then one has to drive through the old town

the ferry was good as always, a nice cabin with a flatscreen tv, that you never have to share (albeit without a window), free entrance to the sauna, dinner and breakfast buffet for free. they had finally changed the menu and it was delicious. drive off at 10am straight into some more roadworks

drop the trailer in DSV as they are already waiting for it

bobtail home, the ferry closest is the one I arrived on

stock up on fresh clothes and some grub and get a farewell from the family

next stop - Alpi Estonia, 969YHP with two drops of steel products around Wroclaw, no straps and two bald tyres. got some straps from another truck of Aares parked in DSV and the tyres would just have to do.

so which one of you loaded the trailer and told nobody about the tyres?

sunday evening traffic towards Tallinn is constant


called it a night at the border between LV and LT on the E67. upon arrival at the fenced parking lot I didn’t see the caravan that had been there before to house the guard and I was not happy, seeing as Lithuania is no place to park up outside a guarded compound. Fortunately a guard soon came along to charge me 4 euros, as a payment for parking means you’ll be ok.

monday morning towards Poland the traffic is light, not so heading north

takes me about three hours to drive through Lithuania, after a call from Alpi I have to stop to count the amount of pallets on board. so I’ll have a break as well when this nice new tanker on LT plates pulls next to me

and old volkswagen soon turns up with a boot full of canisters, the driver lights a cigarette and then they start filling the canisters with diesel

Poland now has an electronic box so no need to stop on the border anymore, unless you’re unlucky

there’s a ZAJAZD for every few miles the first 100km or so into Poland. food is good, showers are clean and price is reasonable.

and they sell beer and vodka as well, which would be the only reason I could think of for this situation :smiley:

followed her for half a mile, the queue behind didn’t seem to bother her

it’s stop and go in Poland, you’ll be lucky to drive on the limiter for more than a few minutes at a time - if it’s not a tractor, it’s a village

three kilometers stau on road number 50 - the ring road of Warsaw. you can drive through it but not during the rush hour on monday evening.

another casualty of the mechanical sorts

650kms in 10 hours, made it to the first services on the motorway towards Czech. As there were big signs up claiming that parking is 25zl for 12 hours I went to the station and paid for it. as they didn’t even ask for the number of my lorry I’m pretty sure that I was the only one to pay. should’ve asked the latvian parked in front or the belorussian next to me first. not my money fortunately but still.

woke up an hour before I had to thanks to some moron who thinks it’s a laugh to blow the horn while passing the services at 5am.

traffic and more traffic…

not supposed to be here but the garmin is totally useless in poland and the road it put me on was just closed with no detour posted. so through the center I went and there is always a good chance of a low bridge or an impossible turn. luckily there was a way out, a narrow one but still.

first drop was Autoliv, second a powdercoating facility in the ■■■-end of nowhere. the pallets had collapsed due to the cargo not being secured to the pallets, luckily the forkie was not too bothered that we had to handball most of it.

a very noisy plant next door

with the trailer empty, promptly received the first loading address in Tychy, near Katowice, some 180km south. many crappy cars from the netherlands were in attendance on the motorway heading east from Wroclaw

ok for now, gotta go mow the lawn

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love it :sunglasses:

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Enjoyed reading that! Truck looks the business aswell!

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Nice diary milodon, i think you must have finished mowing the lawn by now, so… more please!!!

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thanks for the kind words, lawn unmowed but almost finished me compost bin, ran out of screws unfortunately :blush:

so this wednesday morning saw me wake up in a service station somewhere on the motorway between Wroclaw and Katowice and a few hours of driving got me to Tychy, plot number 403 on a street called Oswiecimska, leading to a town that’s called Auschwitz in german. VoestAlpine Steel was supposed to provide me with 10 tons of steel and they did so after three hours of waiting. and it was a bloody hot wait. next door is a huge Fiat factory

finally done in Tychy, strapped the coils down with some straps so ancient that the only use allowed for them by the BAG would be to hang myself with them and head to Lodz on a road where I have driven countless times on my way back from Italy, the E75. it’s a lot nicer than six years ago when I last used it so to give motorists a chance to try out the limitations of their Polski Fiat, these signs are everywhere

just before the junction towards Warsaw, a green van with some ominous words on the side passed me and the lithuanian car carrier in front of me and pulled the lithuanian into a layby. just as I was passing the both of them, the driver of the van used his lollipop to signal me in as well but as luck would have it, I was looking to the left at the time and didn’t see it happening. didn’t see them again so in a couple of minutes I was in Lodz

got to the ABB transformers factory at about 5.30pm and inquired about my loading. the only information about the load I had was it was 1 pallet going to Riga, which was about equal to “go and load some cargo in Lodz, going someplace else”. It’s a pretty huge factory with many different subdivisions so in at 5.30pm, out with a 4ton transformer at 1.30pm the next day.

love the trams in the commie block

next stop - Plock and their very own cancer alley. the smell was a dead giveaway from a mile away that health shouldn’t be your first concern when you plan on living here, a huge refinery with many offspring like Flexpol, where I loaded 6 pallets of plastics for Tartu.

trailer half-empty but as the transformer was supposed to be in Riga by noon tomorrow, better let the R spread its legs a little. here’s an Autosan, a marginally newer reincarnation of LAZ 695 from 1945. in the soviet times, being drunk at the garage was the norm, not an exception so sometimes after repairs the transmission would go in backwards on these, all well until the driver came to pick it up to find he had a bus with 1 forward and 12 reverse gears.

this huge Stora Enso factory in Ostroleka I had the pleasure of visiting early 2007. I had unloaded humanitarian aid somewhere in the now-troubled parts of eastern ukraine and had driven empty for more than a thousand kilometres to load cardboard here. a polish driver was surprised at such a long distance to be driven empty, as we were outside smoking cigarettes waiting for the forkie. I told him the only loads coming from Ukraine towards Estonia are rooftiles, they are heavy, pay less than what my gaffer was getting for the cardboard load and you have to deal with the customs as well. yes, pretty often I wonder why my brain takes precious care of totally useless information like this and then only gets me 20 out of a 100 points in my math exam during high school finals.

between Lomza and Augustow, there has always been a weight limit. it used to be 8t total, then 8t axle, now it’s 30t total. the weigh at Flexpol saw me leave at 30460, but as the liftaxle is up on the trailer, I’m pretty sure I won’t be stopped to check the weight.

but I would be stopped just because I drive a foreign truck, if I was driving the other way

these made up 80% of polands rural traffic when I first went there in 2004, now you might only see a couple a day

legs on the wall at the Kalvarija border with Lithuania, it’s free and the border patrol keeps it safe

scales in operation between Panevezys and the Latvian border

the E67 - Via Baltica was reconstructed almost entirely in Latvia about 6-7 years back and between Riga and Iecava it’s extra wide, so you make your own lane when you need to overtake

like this…

have they all gone to work in western europe as well? saw only about 6 of them during the entire trip

ok, time to get the transformer off after an hour and a half of waiting for the crane

these old girls still earning their keep, shunting in the plywood factory

almost home!

from the russian radio I learned that it’s the weekend of Positivus festival, Ellie Goulding and Bastille etc etc, so heavy traffic was to be expected in the small town of Salacgriva, just south of the Estonian border

dig the token “creepy middle-aged guy” in the lamborghini convertible, followed by another one in a porsche. both estonian, we are a vain nation.

latvian police out en force of course, but as the festivalgoers were more into uploading their selfies than drinking and fighting, they got bored and went to catch speeders at the border instead.

after a hard day, a shower, a meal and some sleep at Valge petrol station. shower- great, sleep - fantastic, dinner - bad. breakfast even worse.

not an uncommon sight on our roads as the forests are inhabitated by moose, bears and wolves, among others

oh look! I worked here just a few weeks ago. the Case in the middle belongs to my former boss, actually repainted it last winter as the driver had rolled it.

not bad for 13 days in mainly eastern europe

and back in the waiting line she goes!

thanks for reading, next week I told Aare to line me up something going south, as the missus says were almost out of olive oil :cry:

edit:almost forgot, had and argument once upon a time with the (no longer I guess) resident defender of all things polish. according to him, most people in Poland speak english well enough to get by, especially the youth. so I did this little experiment and everywhere I went to, english was the language I would speak. the result? TSOO■■? :laughing:
young or old, none of them spoke any english. the exceptions being the management at ABB (well of course) and the dispatch in Tychy. everywhere else, english got me nowhere so russian was what I would speak.

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Really enjoying this and the scenery is good thanks for sharing. Eddie.

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Excellent diary milodon. Well put together with plenty of photos, just how it should be!
Waiting for the next diary, south east west or north!! :smiley:

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Cracking diary milodon, best one for ages, can’t wait for the next one.

Regards
Dave Penn;

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Exelent reading and good pics to Milodon! I used the old road to the harbor in Stockholm 2-4 times a day when i was on the tankcontainers,its all redlights all the way… the new tunnle i going to be great!Keep the gud work up :smiley:

Reg Danne

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Thanks for that I enjoyed reading it.

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Excellent diary there mate and nice weather too. I remember telling you the other year when you gave up Spain that it wouldn’t be long before you were back in the saddle! I’ll keep a look out for you in Brøndby or Horsens depots, go steady

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thanks everyone :slight_smile:

I don’t think I’ll be pulling a DSV trailer to Denmark regularly, as it’s not the most exciting job in the world but there’s not much choice during summer - probably not going to Greece, Italy or Spain this week neither as I had asked for, those lanes are dead quiet

As for returning to long-haul work, I haven’t yet and don’t think I’ll take a regular job before september anyway, so until then I’m just taking it easy and seeing what’s out there. Maybe I’ll be doing body and paint again but I have asked around for heavy haul work, we’ll see :slight_smile:

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That was an excellent diary, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. :sunglasses: :sunglasses:

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Great pics and story Milodon. Looks like the roads are generally quieter over there than in the UK.

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milodon:
edit:almost forgot, had and argument once upon a time with the (no longer I guess) resident defender of all things Polish. according to him, most people in Poland speak English well enough to get by, especially the youth. so I did this little experiment and everywhere I went to, English was the language I would speak. the result? TSOO■■? :laughing:
young or old, none of them spoke any English. the exceptions being the management at ABB (well of course) and the dispatch in Tychy. everywhere else, English got me nowhere so Russian was what I would speak.

Someone pointed me to that before, but I could not be bothered to answer. Yet I just saw some research and then recalled milodon’s post, so decided to come and give some hard data so everyone can check if milodon’s smearing all things Polish has some backing in facts: ef.co.uk/epi/

Yes, we are not as good as Estonia, size obviously matters: “The seven countries with the strongest English are all small European nations, whose size compels them to adopt an international outlook.”