Hi,thanks for that.Was Larry Joyce from Frampton Cotterall near Bristol or is that another Joyce that is featured in the f88/f89 at work Patrick Dyer book ? Cheers Dave.
adr:
Endit:
adr:
rward:
hi adr fab pic of saramat love to get hold of saramat 89 any idears regards rowlandHi Rowland,
Sorry meant to reply, as just been said I bet you would probably find there maybe a couple of those old F88s still rolling around, there are a few posting on this thread that still get down that way, maybe they have seen 1 about?
Regards ChrisO.K. Don’t want to be Mr. Pedantic here, adr, as you posted up the photo’s, but what were they? F88’s (240 BHP) -the 290’s were U.K./RHD(Excluding Australia…) only ,I believe, or were they F89’s (330BHP) which I had always been led to believe were what SARAMAT ordered…
Hi Mr Pedantic
I have just read through the article & I can’t find anything that says what lump they had in them, all it says was that they were F89s & they had 80 of them, 2 Tugmasters for un-loading the boats,2 breakdown wagons, & 2 Bessima-equipped lorries to load/un-load the 12m containers!
Regards Chris
adr:
M/E
The normal way to overtake through Turkey, especially for trucks, was up the hard shoulder, mostly just loose gravel. Much easier and safer than the outside, well it was, unless you came across a ditch. 
Thanks, adr and WheelNut. All doubt removed!
Cheers, guys! 
Not a great picture, but someone might recognise this gentleman?
Hi Everybody, just seen that BRS Marathon. Did not the BBC or ITV make a documentary about a trip to Iran with that company sometime in the early seventies?
Anyhow, for some of you former Astran subbies have finally finished a piece on Kuwait. Sort of Long Distance Diary. Don’t worry, it oozes praise. It also mentions dear old Billy Russell who in 1991 was 67 years old driving the late Andrew Wilson Young’s Merc 6x4 or was it 6x2. That was 20 years ago so Billy would now be 87 if he is still with us. Does anybody know what happened to him? He did say in Saudi that he’d sold his 141 and bought a yacht, I believe.
Here is the link for the LLDs
http://www.laurencekiely.co.uk
Cheers for now
Laurence
Hi Everybody, just seen that BRS Marathon. Did not the BBC or ITV make a documentary about a trip to Iran with that company sometime in the early seventies?
Don’t think so Laurence-don’t think enough of them ever got there to qualify!
I remember that Pat Seal and I encountered a clutch of them in a Hotel in the East, hilly part of Romania one winter trip in the 70’s. Always game for a new story we stopped to asked them how they did. It seems they had stopped some days earlier for a little food and some Pivo and during the night, for some unexplicable reason, the diesel had frozen and the mighty Leylands would not start. Being BRS men not long off the night trunk to ■■■■■■■■■■■ they did the right thing and sent for a fitter. He was dispatched from somewhere like Worksop in the Sherpa service van and it took a day or two for him to arrive and when he did he, too, wanted to enjoy the hospitality of the happy Romanians (and the various young ladies who had heard the news and traveled there to share in the bounty).
On the way back some couple of weeks later we noticed that they vehicles were still parked in the Hotel car park but of the drivers there was no sign. Eventually we found out from the now depressed young ladies that by the time the fitter had the motors running again all the running money had gone, like it did, and fearing some kind of financial unpleasantness they did the sensible thing and all piled into the Sherpa and went home.
Unfortunately BRS had to learn the hard way that to make a middle east company it was not enough just to buy some ‘fully equipped’ motors. You still needed the right drivers to sit in them!
David
Laurence:
Hi Everybody, just seen that BRS Marathon. Did not the BBC or ITV make a documentary about a trip to Iran with that company sometime in the early seventies?
Anyhow, for some of you former Astran subbies have finally finished a piece on Kuwait. Sort of Long Distance Diary. Don’t worry, it oozes praise. It also mentions dear old Billy Russell who in 1991 was 67 years old driving the late Andrew Wilson Young’s Merc 6x4 or was it 6x2. That was 20 years ago so Billy would now be 87 if he is still with us. Does anybody know what happened to him? He did say in Saudi that he’d sold his 141 and bought a yacht, I believe.
Here is the link for the LLDs
http://www.laurencekiely.co.uk
Cheers for now
Laurence
I’m sure someone posted about the brs marathons been on blue Peter. There was a guy who posted on here who worked for them doing Iran.
kr79:
I’m sure someone posted about the brs marathons been on blue Peter. There was a guy who posted on here who worked for them doing Iran.
Sshhh. It was that which caused such a split in this forum a couple of years ago.
Do a search for Nottingham and Bus
I vaguely remember now .
David Miller:
Hi Everybody, just seen that BRS Marathon. Did not the BBC or ITV make a documentary about a trip to Iran with that company sometime in the early seventies?
Don’t think so Laurence-don’t think enough of them ever got there to qualify!
I remember that Pat Seal and I encountered a clutch of them in a Hotel in the East, hilly part of Romania one winter trip in the 70’s. Always game for a new story we stopped to asked them how they did. It seems they had stopped some days earlier for a little food and some Pivo and during the night, for some unexplicable reason, the diesel had frozen and the mighty Leylands would not start. Being BRS men not long off the night trunk to ■■■■■■■■■■■ they did the right thing and sent for a fitter. He was dispatched from somewhere like Worksop in the Sherpa service van and it took a day or two for him to arrive and when he did he, too, wanted to enjoy the hospitality of the happy Romanians (and the various young ladies who had heard the news and traveled there to share in the bounty).
On the way back some couple of weeks later we noticed that they vehicles were still parked in the Hotel car park but of the drivers there was no sign. Eventually we found out from the now depressed young ladies that by the time the fitter had the motors running again all the running money had gone, like it did, and fearing some kind of financial unpleasantness they did the sensible thing and all piled into the Sherpa and went home.
Unfortunately BRS had to learn the hard way that to make a middle east company it was not enough just to buy some ‘fully equipped’ motors. You still needed the right drivers to sit in them!
David
Norman Ingram:
Dave when on Carlsberg we never used to touch the wheels, when we had new tyres fixed, we used to call back to later to had the wheel nuts retorted, if we had a tyre problem the firm would send a tyre company out to us. This was a total shock to my system after comming off of BRS Overland and doing everything under the sun to keep the Marathon & trailer running and changed a few tyres then.
I am reading a really great book at the moment - The Long Haul Pioneers: A Celebration of Astran: Leaders in Overland Transport to the Middle East for Over 40 Years. I have read a number of trucking to the middle east books but this one is in a league of its own. The author must have spent a lot of time putting it together with the excellent collection of photos. ‘Progress’ has meant those days will never be experienced again. When one reads about the equipment they had and the roads and weather conditions they experienced - life is a tad easier these days.
I recognised some of the names of people I have seen or mentioned on here. A big thank you for your contributions to the book.
Does anyone know if the Turkish winters are still as severe as back then? Is there a way to avoid Tahir these days?
Johnny
Can i put a cheeky link on here about a driver who done a bit of middle east work back in the 80s. He has given me a load of photos to upload . Some of you hopefully will remember him
I thought this thread had died, along with many of the great blokes who did the job.
The hard winters experienced by you guys in the 70s without a cab heater must have been quite something - I’m not jealous. Stuck up a mountain in your non insulated, draughty cabs at > -30 C. I know you sometimes left the engine running, but I can’t images that was enough. Trying to fit snow chains couldn’t have been much fun either. I can’t image you had feeling in your fingers for too long. Did nobody die in such extreme weather conditions?
Johnny