My first trip to Moscow was in 1981 when I was driving for Pro-Motor. In 1990 I was asked to work on a one year contract for Rank Xerox, taking trailers full of office machinery from their European Distribution Centre in Venray Holland. These were destined for Klyazma, 20 kilometres North East of Moscow. Klyazma was Xerox’s Russian distribution centre.
I was subbing to David Croome, who had got the work from Kepstowe Freight.
Myself and Johnny Dicks, the other subbie on this contract were due to load on alternate Thursdays and then run to Russia. However, Xerox sold much more equipment into Russia than they had imagined and we were taken off of Xerox work and put over onto Kepstowe’s groupage service.
Kepstowe had identified that if I ran back to Poland, changed trailers and then returned to Russia, that they could save money that they would have spent on Soviet visas, for other subbies. So that is what happened and when the work expanded to take in destinations miles from Moscow, I began to run to all of these exotic places as well. Such as Kishenyev, Odessa, Leningrad and Volgograd.
Having met my future wife Elena in Moscow, we lived in a flat in the North West of the city, near to Voikovskaya Metro station. Our daughter Margarita was born in Moscow in 1992. Due to this and the fact that I spent most of my time in the ex-Soviet Union I learned Russian.
I was in Moscow throughout the whole of the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, in fact being the only British driver who was there for it. I went to the White House and saw how it was defended against the coup plotters.
There were a whole host of interesting occurrences during my time in Russia, which people may be interested in reading about.
As the amount of work built up more and more British drivers and companies became involved and were going out far into Russia and the other republics.
I ended up spending the last 14 months of my time based permanently in Moscow and acting as a shunter for Kepstowe. I was the local shunter because I only went out to about 1,000 to 1,500 miles from Moscow.
Kepstowe increased their fleet and were running 6 trucks and around 20 subbies. They also sent unaccompanied trailers to Turku, in Finland which were brought down to Russia by Finish and Russian subbies. I also had to make trips up from Moscow to Turku to swap trailers.
Some of the firms that were involved in Russia were ;- Kepstowe, David Croome, Eurotrux, Ralph Davis.
Some of the Kepstowe drivers were Pete Newlyn, Mick Packham, Gordon Jones, John Mantle and Mike Mudie.
Some of the Kepstowe subbies were ;- Alan Johnson, Alan Bremner, Stevie Clark, Nicky and Richard (Fleetwood’s).
If anyone has any stories, memories or photos of Russian work then please feel free to add them to the site.
