A week in Norway (Diary)

Well here’s a little diary of a week “Up North”.

After a few days off in the UK sorting out some personal things and fixing my van it was time to head back to Trondheim.

Took the train from Nottingham to St. Pancras and then caught a connection to Brighton that dropped me right into Gatwick airport and boarded the late flight arriving at around midnight local time.

It just so happens that the boss was out driving my regular motor a few miles from the airport on the night shift resurfacing the E6 so I got a £30 taxi into the village of Hommelvik and bunked down in a bus stop until around 1:45 am when he drove past to pick up his last load of asphalt. Apart from a few pesky teenagers out drinking it was quite a peaceful spot and being middle of the Summer it never really gets dark in this part of the World.

Heard the rumble of the German V8 and got my suitcases loaded up into the cab and was riding shot gun for the last trip which took a bit of time as we ended up doing a slip road onto the E6 which wasn’t easy for the paver to hit in one run so we finally ended up back at the yard at around 6 a.m. Got told I was back on the hiab/lowloader division for a week whilst one of the regular guys was on holiday and then back on the tarmac job for the following 3 weeks before most probably having to head back to the U.K. for Summer holidays as a lot of Norwegian firms close down and things usually go very quiet.

So late on Friday morning I finally get up and head down to the yard where I need to do a bit crane work and general tidying up.

A call comes through and I need to head about 20 minutes down the road to Støren to load some building material for a big housing project in Kjeller on the outskirts of Oslo for delivery on Monday morning.

Finally get loaded in the pouring rain and head back to the yard.

Saturday morning and the Norwegian Summer arrive simultaneously and it’s my day off!
Head into Trondheim on the train and have a great day out, went to Rockheim, the musuem of pop/rock music in Norway and took in a few other historical sights like Kristiansten Fort and Namsos cathedral. Also had a quick visit to the English pub but it’s just as well I rarely drink as at near on £8 a pint I don’t feel really thirsty.

On Sunday it’s a nice steady ride down to Oslo, departing at about 12:30 as there’s no great rush.
I breifly see one of the other hiab drivers who is giving his motor a quick spruce up and hit the road.

I head down the E6 as far as the Statoil station at Berkåk where I fill up with jungle juice and was hoping to try out my Statoil cup for the first time. For those of you that haven’t been to Norway let me explain. If you buy a cup for about £30 you get free tea/coffee/cappucino/espresso all year, as often as you want and as much as you want!

Unfortunately tourist season has begun and there are camper vans, cars and caravans parked everywhere blocking the diesel pumps and being a general ■■■■■■■ nuisance. An Eastern european driver finds his way to the pumps blocked by a Swedish camper so gives it a blast on the air horns. The camper driver comes running out but only to retrieve his wallet that he’d forgotten and heads straight back into the shop and orders another hot dog!! So I decide ■■■■ this, I don’t need a coffee I’ll keep going until I reach Alvdal just over an hour or so down the road.

The reason I pass the town of Alvdal is that we don’t take the E6 all the way to Oslo via Lillehamar and Hamar. Although it is a better road it takes around 30 mins. longer and is full of tourist traffic compared to route 3 which joins the E6 about 10 km from Berkåk and heads straight through the Norwegian wilderness to Elverum. Elverum is roughly 4-4.5 hours drive from the yard so I stop for a little picnic at Svingen rest stop before cutting across country on route 25 and then back on to route 3 which joins up with the E6 again below Hamar. After several hours of being bounced around on the single carriage way and the odd arse clenching moment I’m glad to see a bit of motorway even though I’m not a huge fan of them and I give the the old girl a bit of right foot treatment as I blast past Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norway until my progress is slowed dramatically by the roadworks and sheer volume of traffic heading back to the capital just north of Gardermoen airport. Still, I eventually pull into Statoil Berger at a resonable time, refuel, take a shower at the trucker’s club and watch a dvd before departing at 8am on Monday to deliver in Kjeller which is no more than 10-15 mins. away.

Part 2 of the diary will be uploaded shortly, thanks.

Get unloaded pretty quickly in Kjeller by a large crane onsite and head back to the Statoil in Berger where I wait for info. about a reload for Trondheim or wherever…

And… I wait and wait and wait…

Finally by 3:30pm it’s obvious that there will be no reload today and as depression starts to set in I have a brainwave!
I realise it’s only about 3-4 kms to the train station in Frogner so I jog all the way and catch the 4:20pm train into the middle of Oslo.

The train ride takes less than half an hour and I learn a valuable lesson. If you want to move to Oslo and go bankrupt you should definitely open a tie shop. You might sell one a year if you’re lucky! How do I know this?? My tongue was hanging out like a lapel! Some seriously beautiful women on display!!

After a quick look around and a visit to Peppe’s pizza it’s back to the truckstop ready for a 5:15 start to beat the traffic to the Sandvika area on the West side of Oslo where I have to go for the first item on my reload list.

Things start to go a bit wrong when I get 1km from the place and all of a sudden the road disappears! I end up on dirt tracks and go through a village with a 1 in 6 hill and about 2 inches of clerance on either side before the road comes to a dead end and there’s a turn around point!

Oh ■■■■! What do I do now then?? Maybe I’ve got the address wrong?? I check and double check and no matter how many times I go over it there simply isn’t a road to this place! After another hour of driving around in the middle of nowhere I finally pull up in a farm yard and try to ask for help but nobody is around. Then a car pulls up behind me and it turns out that the driver works at the place in question on a part-time basis and is on his way there now so I can follow him! Thank ■■■■ for that but how his he gonna get past me to show me the way on such a narrow lane! I forgot it’s Norway we’re talking about…He revs the ■■■■■■■■ off of the engine on his little Citroen Saxo drives straight throught a ditch on opposite lock and flys out the other side like Petter Solberg before squeezing through a small gap in the hedge and in front of my cab. Now he’s got a flashing beacon out and he’s my ■■■■■■ vehicle! This is what you call customer service! It turned out that he was an ex HGV/bus driver from Trondheim and knew the lorry and the company well. He lived in Newcastle for a while and could speak English better than me, then again so can most Norwegians.

At 7am the forklift driver arrives and after getting excited about having to load some equipment with the crane that has just arrived from Fort Mc.Muarry in Canada and needs to be delivered all the way up to a mining project near Tromsø I am quite dissapointed when I end up with a small pallet containing some breathing apparatus for underwater welding activities. Oh well never mind, it’s time to get off to my next pick up now at Celsa Steel on the other side of town not far from Ulleval where Norway’s equivalent of Wembley stadium sits.

I head back to the E18 from Sandvika and find it’s totally grid locked in the Monday morning traffic before joining what is known as “Ring 3” around the outskirts of town to the collection address.

There’s a Statoil right outside the steel factory so armed with the magic Statoil cup I head there first to ■■■■ some free coffee when I feel a bowel movement coming on. Oh no! This one is gonna be close! I make it just in time but my relief is short lived when I realise that there’s no toilet paper! ARRGHH!! I ■■■■■■■ hate it when that happens!!

I just about escape from the fuel station with my dignity intact and set about the task of loading some rebar for delivery to Trondheim.

All loaded up and refueled by around 11am so it’s time to head North again. I get about 90km North of Elverum and stop at a Kro just outside Koppang. A kro is kind of like a transport cafe but a bit better, the first example I can think of in the UK might be something like the Farm Shop cafe on the A17 at Holbeach/Gedney. Kind of place where a coach party would stop for a cup of tea etc.

I end up with beef pieces with chips and a strawberry pie. Hmmm, nice!! I lost 15kg in the gym since last year and now I’m under 70kg so I don’t feel guilty…

When I head back out of the Kro I notice this large tractor on the front of the trailer is only attached with 2 chains. One on the front counter weight and one across the back of the trailer hitch, it doesn’t look too secure at all and the only thing I can think of is that as it’s a new machine maybe the customer doesn’t want it scratching so the driver couldn’t chain it down differently. I came across that mentality quite a bit whilst working in New Zealand so we used to carry some large straps and then tried to to put the chains through them so at least the load was a bit more secure.

At the end of the day the guy must know what he is doing so after a 5 min. chat I jump back in the cab and resume the journey to T-town (Trondheim).

Will try to get part 3 up soon…

Nice one duck. Norway certainly looks a lovely place and as for those Scandinavian women, well…

Looks interesting.Thanks for taking the time.

So by Tuesday night I end up back at the yard near Melhus just South of Trondheim and get a call asking if I can go around the corner in the morning at 7am and pick up 1 pallet of electrical cables if I’ve got room. More through luck than judgement the breathing apparatus on the swan neck had been loaded on one side as I half expected to need the room for the load at the steel factory in Oslo so there was more than enough room left.

I get to Betonor concrete works not far from Rosenborg’s football stadium just before 8 and after finally getting hold of a shovel driver who speaks bokmål (Oslo dialect and “normal” Norwegian that I speak) instead of pure “Trøndersk” I unloaded the circular rebar and drop the 2 pallets off at a distribution centre in Heimdal for onward travel to the North of the country. Kind of wish I could have taken them myself but never mind.

No other work comes in on Wednesday so it’s an easy day chilling in the cabin until I get a message around mid-afternoon informing me of a local steel job for in the morning at 9am.

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I thought I was on to a winner, nice little local job and I’d be done by mid-morning! WRONG!! It’s a long load so I need to extend the trailer, get the “LANG LAST” sign out, set everything up and check all of my chains and binders as I haven’t used them for a while and don’t want another ■■■■ up like I had on my first day in Norway when they were all seized solid and I ended up looking like a prat. Actually I look like a prat most of the time so I suppose in that respect it was no big deal.

Things were going pretty well and I was ready to depart at around 12 noon with some large beams when there was a communication issue or in plain English a total ■■■■ up. Bjørn the foreman in the heavy engineering workshop said, “Du må nå kjøre rundt til verksted nummer 3 fordi vi har litt mer utstyr å laste men det er ikke så mye, ikke tenke på det”. Now I presumed that he was telling me that I must drive around to workshop number 3 because they’ve got a bit more equipment for me to load but it’s not much so don’t worry about it. I thought it must be going to the same place in Ranheim on the other side of town but actually it’s was a ■■■■ load of steel pipes that needed going to a zinc-ferrous factory on the way. Neither Bjørn nor the foreman in the next workshop spoke English and by the time I figured out what was happening and got telephone numbers and addresses I was seriously late. Plus I had already chained down the first load but needed to get more chains on it to secure the second load of ■■■■ and then there was no way I was gonna make it in time. A guy from the office who’s overseeing the Ranheim job comes out and asks me why it’s taking so long. He doesn’t realise that I’ve got a 2nd load on for the zinc factory but after I punch the side of the trailer and start giving him some back in Norwegian he soon gets the picture and ■■■■■ off. I’m a very polite person but everyone has got a limit and I’d had a enough. When there’s a ■■■■ up it’s easy to blame the driver but I wasn’t going to stand for it.

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Part 4 should be up later. Hope some of you are finding it interesting.

i enjoy reading this, keep it up

A great read duck. lookin forward to part 4

Duck:
Du må nå kjøre rundt til verksted nummer 3 fordi vi har litt mer utstyr å laste men det er ikke så mye, ikke tenke på det

Come again■■?

Great read Duck, thanks for posting and nice to see what’s going on elsewhere.

P.S. Love the pics and looking forward to part 4.

Great read/photos Duck

Keep em coming

A very interesting read so far Duck. Keep them coming please!

Thanks for sharing duck

I love sharing Duck Seth. Bit of cucumber & Hoi sin sauce …yum.

So, finally loaded up like an iron-clad I set off from Skanska steel with a few flashing beacons and a remote control in hand for the trailer steering in case I find myself in a sticky situation. I head a few miles down the road to the industrial estate in Heimdal, briefly rejoining the E6 and labouring up the hill towards Sandemoen kro at about 25/30 km/h until I reach “Statens Vegvesen” (a.k.a. state highways dept. or Norwegian VOSA) and then peel off of the main road and go and look for the zinc factory. Thankfully the Scandinavian vostapo have gone fishing, hunting moose or making a fire (or whatever else these strange folks do) as the weigh station is deserted and although you can run at 50 tons gross in Norway without any special permits my load feels rather ■■■■■■■ heavy!

I arrive at the zinc place just before they close at 3 and encounter a few union men who adopt the royal stand back position whilst I attempt a few blind side reverses around several obstacles and into what I thought was a loading bay. With no more than a half inch of clearance on 1 side and a forklift right in the way on the other side and my mirrors virtually useless due to the relentless rain they finally spring into action. The forklift gets shifted and an old timer guides me back another 10-15 feet until I’m almost touching the back wall of the factory. Slight problem, my motor is nearly 21 meters long and there’s no way we can get all the load off with the overhead crane as a third of the trailer is still sticking out of the front door! I end up covered in ■■■■ from the steel and sweating like a pig whilst slinging the various items and attaching them to the hook of the crane for the few bits that we can reach. I also had to load 2 pallets at Skanska with some small reinforcing plates but they wouldn’t fit so we broke the pallets down. You’ve guessed it, handball on, handball off. Then I pull back outside and the wheeled-loader driver comes over to unload the rest of the stuff. Now the poles on the swan-neck are very tight and won’t come out as the load my have moved a fraction on the road. A quick ram with forks does the trick and we manage to unload the remaining items in no time. It’s nearly 4 o’clock by the time I’ve re-tensioned my chains and the place in Ranheim has closed now so there’s no choice but to head back to the yard with the large beams and try again tomorrow.

After a ■■■■■■ day at work there was only 1 thing for it… Fish dinner and some poetry!
“Duck can drive, he can also cook, but it’s been so long he’s forgot how to ■■■■!!”

Friday arrives and we get a message saying don’t bother delivering the steel until 7 am on Monday. The crew at the marina in Ranheim are having a day off today.

That means I end up going out on a tarmac shift at night. I haven’t got any photos of that particular job but I’ll use some older ones from a while back to show you all how it works. Pretty much the same as you’d do it in the UK. Just gotta remember the steering wheel is on the wrong side. Oh yeah, these prats drive on the wrong side of the road too.

I get down to the yard at around 9 pm and find out that I’m in the R620 because the big Actros is out on another job and is going straight to the garage in the morning.

I arrive at Veidekke asphalt works by 9:30pm and go and spray some lube in the back of the trailer to stop the tarmac sticking when it’s time to unload.

My loading time is 10:15 pm so I end up sitting in the office and listening to a load of lorry driver ■■■■■■■■ in Norwegian. Thankfully I didn’t understand all of it as they were droning on in Trøndersk and it’s a bit difficult for me to catch every word. Mainly owner-drivers moaning about rates and foreigners taking all the jobs… Hehehe… Whoops!!

So now we’re all out on the job and waiting for our turn to get on the paver. You have to remember with these Carnehl trailers to slide your axles forward again and lock the steering before trying to unload.

When it’s your turn to back on the paver try not to hang about. These boys like to keep moving! Wait till the front “mouth” of the machine opens up and back right upto it until the rear bumper of the trailer “hits”. Then the machine pushes you along although you need a bit of footbrake as well to make sure you don’t run away from the machine. The last thing you ever want to do on this job is dump the load on the floor in front of the paver. The operator will get seriously ■■■■■■ off!!

On some of the newer Vögel machines they’ve got an LED sign to tell you what to do with the tipper body in relation to how much product they need feeding. Gotta remember not to focus too much on the mirrors because you also need to consider the “shape” of the road in front of you and try to keep everything square. Also gotta look out for bridges and tunnels whilst the body is up there. It sounds obvious BUT… It’s happened before to people and it’s not hard to see how…

After you’ve dumped it all in the paver ( now then, keep it clean ) you normally pull out of the way somewhere, lift the body up a bit, open the back door and get to work with a scraper and some magic spray removing the remaining pieces of stubborn asphalt before returning for another load.

I did a grand total of 3 loads but as the firm get paid by the hour it’s not really like hell drivers so it doesn’t matter so much about how many loads we get in, it’s all about the crew on the road, they’re the ones under pressure, the more they lay the more they pay! They get about 900 tons down on the night in question but have to be off the road by 6 am so I head back to the yard at around 5:30 and encounter a “snutebil” (bonneted truck) as I am parking up in Ler.

So that concludes a week on the job in Norway. I hope some of you found it interesting and if so I may try and do a few more diaries in the future.

I have since had a dispute with the company in question over money and I’m not working there anymore unfortunately but I had a great time and hope to move on to something else that pays a bit better now that I’ve shown I can do the job on foreign soil. If it’s not driving a truck, it might be a mobile crane job instead but we’ll see what happens.

Well I reckon you’ve proved yourself. Good luck with a job and let’s have another diary soon.

Great read, I really enjoyed that.

great diary!

sorry to hear about the falling out with the company, but shouldn’t be any trouble finding a new one, speaking the language and all

Hi

I picked this up as its to do with Norway, which is where I moved to 6 months ago from UK. Now comes the problem, so I have been through immigration and have been given a 5 year temporary residency which I can then apply for perm in 5 years.

Originally I was working for a UK telecoms company but after 14 years of endless stress my business partner did the dirty on me!

So now I need a job and without any formal qualifications finding a job in Norway is near on impossible, so I’ve decided to get into the trucking world as I have always enjoyed driving long distances etc…

I contacted Statens Vegvesen about doing the courses required to get up to Class 1…they informed me that I need to do a CPC but that can only be done in Norwegian, which is a real problem as I don’t speak Norwegian.

I then asked if I could do it in the UK and would it be valid in Norway. They said YES, but I would have to be in the UK for 185 days in the year I take/pass my test…I can’t do that either as I have moved to Norway, so I can’t go back for 6 months…

Anyone got any advice or help as I just want to get started straight away and make some money.

Thanks

do the cpc in the uk and get a job in norway after that - there is no way to prove that you haven’t been in the uk for the required time even if somebody asks. vegvesen obviously go by the book with their answer but in real life there are many many foreign drivers in norwegian companies who struggle with english, nevermind norwegian and they have all done the cpc in their respective home countries

milodon:
do the cpc in the uk and get a job in norway after that - there is no way to prove that you haven’t been in the uk for the required time even if somebody asks. vegvesen obviously go by the book with their answer but in real life there are many many foreign drivers in norwegian companies who struggle with english, nevermind norwegian and they have all done the cpc in their respective home countries

Hi

I hear you but my confidence is pretty low at the moment after losing my business and I need to earn money quickly…knowing my luck someone will find out.

Cheers for comments though

What a great diary , & very interesting, thanks for taking the time & trouble to tell us all about your travels