sandway:
Another little anecdote.
As I said in an earlier post we were doing a lot of food aid to Poland and I think all of it was delivered to religious establishment whether Cathedrals, Churches or whatever. Sometimes it was stored directly inside the church, sometimes in adjacent buildings. Now all of these large establishments that I delivered to had living accommodation attached, to house no doubt, the large number of priests and laymen required to run them. On one such trip I was down in the south at either Katowice or Krakow. I think it was the former.
Upon arriving at the outskirts of any town or city we had soon learnt to stop someone in a car to get directions as we knew full well they would lead us directly to our destination. No need to know your left from your right in Polish just follow that car. On this particular trip I had parked up late afternoon and undid the tilt (canât for the life of me remember what happened about custom clearance but it may have been done at the border). We never got involved in unloading and I was immediately invited in to the main living area. There was a group of people (aid workers but not drivers) already there. German, French a few other nationalities and one American woman. Now this woman was one of those self important, domineering types who couldnât or wouldnât stop talking and I could see most of the people in the room were already pâ off with her. The reason for everyone being there was that one of the top men in the catholic church hierarchy in Poland, Archbishop whatever his name, was to make a visit to thank everyone for their help.
A little later on in the evening we were all invited into the dining room for a simple but adequate meal as the Top Man had still not arrived. There was definitely an air of excitement in the room that evening and maybe thats what was playing on the American woman. She was getting louder and more vocal as the evening went on. And then just as we had finished our meal news came through that the Top Man was in the building and he would be with us shortly. We all stood up as he finally entered the room with white and purple robes flowing out behind him, he was by this time doing a good impression of Roger Bannister as he broke the 4 minute mile record. He swept around the room thanked everyone profusely and was gone in the blink of an eye. It was not quite what I or the others were expecting. We thought he would be staying to chat with everyone but I think----- he had been warned in advance of the American woman!!
I did a trip with food relief to BiaĹystok in Poland - the sea was frozen I remember - and I stayed at a convent where I was delivering for the weekend. During the day I sat in a common room and read a book (too cold outside) and every so often a young and rather pretty nun would come and offer me a sweet. In the evening I ate with all the nuns and the same young nun asked me a question (in Polish) and all the others laughed⌠The Mother Superior translated and asked âdo you have pictures of ladies with no shirts on in your lorry?â Apparently a German truck had delivered food the week previously and had a huge â â â â pin up in his cab and this is something that they hadnât seen before. Afterwards they got out the gramaphone and played Karel Gott records and sang and danced. It was quite an eye openerâŚ
sandway:
Hello Danne. Glad you like the Promotor thread. I didnât start it. Steve Lacy started this particular one. About eight years ago Ronnie Harts wife tried to get one started. It just so happens that I have a lot of time on my hands now and a few photos and stories that I want to share whilst I still can. I do find Micky Tâs Russian escapade interesting as you do.
What happened to Ronnie? Very likeable fellow (though he smoked far too much).
I know he had his own truck/trucks after Promotor?
sandway:
Do you remember in the early 80âs when, if you hadnât had the time to get your Iraqi visa in London you got it in Belgrade. Quite a simple procedure. We use to park at the National. Get a taxi downtown, do the biz and get back early afternoon. Then the taxi driver, an enterprising bloke, I think he had a Mercedes car, offered us an even better deal. He collected all the passports from the drivers at about 0730hrs. Shot off to the Iraqi embassy and returned just after midday. This gave us time to either go back to bed, a bit of chinwagging or even do some maintenance on the lorry. Most of us paid him in DM but canât remember how much.
On one memorable trip after he got my visa I poodled off to Iraq without a care in the world. Little did I know what lay ahead of me. I had to join the queue as usual but it was only about 8 km long and I entered Habur border compound just after noon. I passed through the Turkish side ok and then started doing the paperwork on the Iraqi side. I had parked up near two other British drivers. We all entered the passport control office together and handed over our passports. The Iraqi official picked up the three passport with mine on the bottom. He looked at the three of us and asked where we had got the visas. I thought this a little odd and was immediately suspicious. The other two drivers both said London and the Iraqi official stamped their passports. I thought it best, on hindsight I made the wrong decision, to also say London. He looked at my visa and his eyes lit up. âYou lie, you lieâ he said. I could see this was his big moment in life. He had caught out one of these infidels entering his country. He was like a demented whirling dervish. By this time his vocal cords were really taking a bashing, again he screamed âyou lie, you lie, you got this visa in Belgrade from a taxi driverâ. At this point he grabbed a rubber stamp and proceeded to attack my passport twice with the words, cancelled, cancelled right across the visa. He then took great delight in telling me that the taxi driver had a brother who worked in the Iraqi embassy and had stolen the stamps and they were issuing forged visas to lorry drivers. It was at this point the other two drivers, both looking rather shaken, thought lets get out of here before this demented official attacks our passports. They grabbed them from the desk and made a very speedy exit. Now, I thought I gotta problem here! My visa had been cancelled and I cant proceed to Baghdad but it was going to be equally difficult to go back to Turkey. I thought best thing I can do is go back to the lorry and have a brew up. After an hour or maybe a bit longer I decided I must go back to the passport desk and try and sort something out. There werenât many people there but the official, who I could see had calmed down, made me sit down in front of him for another half an hour. Finally he beckoned me to come forward to his desk, which I did and I took the opportunity to apologise most humbly. After a good dressing down he gave me back my passport in which of course the visa was cancelled. I pointed this out to him and he brought out a plain bit of paper upon which he wrote and then rubber stamped it. He handed it to me along with my passport. I looked at him quizzically and he said the magic words------
âyou can go to Baghdad now. What I have written on this bit of paper cancels the cancelledâ.
I had one of those Belgrade visas too⌠At Zakho they gave me a âpolice paperâ as receipt for my passport which they threw into a cardboard box and sent me on my way to Fallujah without it. On arrival at Fallujah my passport was demanded and I handed over my âpolice paperâ which the gentleman screwed into a ball and threw onto the floor⌠On returning to Zacho without a passport I was told they no longer had my passport⌠I smiled and said calmly âIâm tired and Iâd like to be on my way home pleaseâŚâ. The customs officer/policeman gave me the âslow downâ hand signal, smiled and came back with a cardboard box full of passports and I was invited to select the passport of my choiceâŚ
sandway:
Micky T. Not all my loads were for the exhibitions in Baghdad. On one trip, John Preece and I shipped over on the Koper ferry, cleared customs in Falluga and had to drive way up north to tip in Sulamania, Kurdistan. We were loaded with 3 JCBâs and spare parts.
Tell me, what did you do to upset Staggie. Not that you had to do much I know. I didnât think I was his blue eyed boy, far from it but I used the ferry a number of times.
One night, coming down from Scharding to Wells, I was climbing up a steep drag, in the snow. Approaching a right hand bend a cement mixer overtook me and cut me up. I pulled to the right and then slid through the snow towards a sheer drop. Eventually a wrecker came up from Wells and pulled me clear. I drove down to Wells and paid for the tow, which cost about ÂŁ500. It was about 10pm in England and I phoned Dave at home to tell him what had happened. He swore a lot and then there was a loud crash. The phone went dead. When I phoned him in the office the next morning he said âYou caused the biggest row that there has ever been in my house, last nightâ. Not overly bothered I said, âwhy was that thenâ. Slagg replies, âBecause I became so annoyed with you I threw the phone across the room and it smashed against the wall. Then I had my wife on my case all bloody nightâ. So I replied, âWell it was your fault for not being able to control your temper, thenâ and hung up. After that our relationship was not all that friendly.
Staggie used to live on King George V Road in Tunbridge Wells. This is known locally as âPig Hillâ and when I was called to the job interview at his home and he was explaining on the phone where find his address and I said âoh, you mean Pig Hillâ and there was a very long silence on the end of the phone⌠I thought Iâd blown my chances. He was very put out and was in a bit of a huff and said he had heard it called thatâŚ
It was hard when two of us were dragged into his office for a telling off but as his eyes pointed different ways we didnât know to whom he was speaking to⌠When I answered him he shouted âAm I so boss eyed you donât know who Iâm talking to?â
We were never the best of friends, alas, but he certainly had a well developed sense of humour despite his strange likes and dislikes.
mushroomman:
Hickâs had some great drivers, Dai Blunt, the three Hobbâs brothers, Denis Macarther and talking about characters how about Peter The Plater.
I.I.R.C. the girl was from Holland and I often wonder if she was travelling with Hutpic.
I used to meet up with the Hobbs and John Houlding (John? Brain going - canât remember now) in Yugo quite a lot, probably Iraq too. I think it was Dai Hobbs died in his truck at the Londra
bestbooties:
Strangley enough, no, although the 16/5th is a North Staffs Cavalry regiment, this area was a strong recruiting area in '62 for The Household Cavalry and I signed up for The Royal Horse Guards, (The Blues), long before they became The Blues and Royals. Did seven years and never sat on a horse.
You know what they say Ian, if you canât take a joke then you shouldnât of joined.
Now then Sandway, maybe you can answer this question that I asked on another thread over four years ago.
Was the guy with the beard on the right in this photo a Promotors driver in the early eighties. You might remember a hotel where we used to stop in Austria which was between Salzburg and Vienna in a village called Saint Valentine, it wasnât far from the Mauthausen concentration camp and I am sure that I met up with him along with a few other British drivers but I canât remember any of their names.
I think that the guy driving the Brighton Van Hire was called Lawrence and he told me that he was from Hastings. Many years later when people started putting Long Distance Diaries on here I often wondered if this was Lawrence Kiely.
Youâve got me there mushroomman. I donât ever remember Promotor hiring in lorries from Brighton VH. Can you tell the year from the reg? Nor that kind of load on what are, I think, a couple of our stripped down supercubes. As for drivers. I donât recognise anyone but I have a few names who drove for us at that time with beards. John Preece.(Hmmm). Clive (not Newman) from Maidstone. Tony Grainger (beards to dark for him). John Mantle (possible). Brian Holmes (donât think so). John Barclay (definitely not). We did have part time drivers on from time to time. I donât seem to have helped there much but maybe Micky T can help.
Does the Promotor lorry have the Promotor name on or is it our Afro Camion painted one? Difficult to tell with my poor eyesight.
The guy on the right in the photo looks like John Mantle. He was working as a fitter on Proâs when I left in 83, but he went on to drive and I met up with him again when he went onto Kepstowe as a driver. So we met up many times in Moscow.
Clive, from Maidstone, was Clive Turner, also known as the Arab. His hair and beard were jet black.
The Yugo car factory was at Kragujevac. There is a museum there which holds the artefacts of the schoolchildren and teachers, who were killed by the Germans during World War 2. They were shot in reprisal for a German patrol, who were ambushed and killed by Partisans. Pam and I were taken there by a woman from the Yugo factory, who showed us around and explained the history to us.
We used to deliver the car parts in Reading. The cars were shipped over to Reading, left hand drive and the staff at Reading changed them to right hand drive. New dash etc. We then took the L.H.D. parts back to Kragujevav.
I did a few trip to Kragujevac, it was the Zastava factory where they made Yugo cars but was also an arms factory. The Americans flattened it in 2005.
I was weekended there once and, at a loose end, wrote a postcard home with the message written in English but in cyrillic script (just for fun). The card took 6 months to arrive so I presume someone somewhere was poring over the cypher trying to find out what was writtenâŚ
Good nightlife in the town where I went to some huge hall with live music and met up with some of the locals for a pivo or two (piva). Always interesting to fraternise with the locals.
mushroomman:
Well done Mick, Kragujevac is another place that I have never heard of for nearly thirty years and the car parts did go to Reading.
The only time that I can think of when I met you and Pam was in The Dolphin Bar in the passenger terminal in Dover Eastern Docks in 1980. I was with Ken Singleton and Lee Marland, you came over to say hello and Pam went off to buy a newspaper or something.
After having another look at that photo I am wondering if they were Baily Bridge sections. Dow Freight did a couple of similar looking loads, we used to load them in Stockport from a firm called Thomas Storie or Storie Brothers, bridge builders. I remember once running down to Ankara with a Whittles driver from Preston who was delivering some bridge sections down to Basra when the Iraq/Iran war was on and he had also loaded in Stockport.
Another place where we used to backload out of Yugo was in a little town somewhere near Celje or Kranji with large rolls of newsprint for The Sporting Times in London. I remember meeting up with an English O.H.S. driver with a Seddon who gave me directions of how to find the place as he had been there before.
Regards Steve.
Kragujevac was where I once arrived on a Thursday expecting to load Friday⌠All day Friday I waited and at 2.50pm they said âMondayâ. I was really mad being stuck there for the weekend (again) and said I wasnât available on Monday and I told them that after consulting my diary I might be available to load next Wednesday and that Iâd think about whjether that was convenient. 10 minutes later I had the side up and was being loadedâŚ
sandway:
Donât know where or when this picture was taken but at a guess Iâd say it was 83 and could be a delivery to the Steel mill at Smederavo, 50km south of Belgrade.
I did a few Smederevo but also did a far more interesting job⌠I took a gold minting machine - to make the gold medals for the Sarajevo Olympics - to somewhere on the north side of a river the road following a deep ravine. I think it was to Majdenpek
There was a very nasty road by a sheer cliff on the way to Majdenpek and one bend with an overhanging rock where you only had one chance of getting round the bend and that was by leaning out of the cab and putting the front wheel right on the edge of a sheer drop⌠No reversing if you got it wrong. The Yugos had even warned about this road in the UK before I wentâŚ
Felt quite sweaty going round that particular bend. Worse coming back because I had a right hand drive truck
sandway:
Promotor Driver John Preece and Promotor partimer Tim the Aussie travelled down to the Baghdad Fair together in October 1981. John was driving his Scania lorry whilst Tim was driving a 6 wheeled Coles crane. Somewhere in southern Turkey the counterweight fell off the back of the crane. John, who was behind, managed to swerve out of the way but just clipped it with his bumper bending it back but not enough to cause any other damage. John got the crane working and lifted the counterweight back onto it where it was lashed down as best possible. They continued onto Baghdad hot tired and fed up.
Now the British Pavilion wasnât far away from the Swedish one where Scania had a big stand and they were in the process of washing the trucks down. They had hosepipes and a big tub. As soon as John and Tim saw it they immediately dived in much to the amusement of the Swedes. No doubt the water needed renewing once John and Tim had finished.
John Preece married a second time to a very nice woman in Shoreham. I went to his wedding. It didnât work out but they remained friends and he went off to Australia and I never heard from him again. He liked a drink or two and was endlessly amusing. Not fun sharing a cab with him - as I had to once - as he used to have nightmares and wake up screaming.
sandway:
Promotor Driver John Preece and Promotor partimer Tim the Aussie travelled down to the Baghdad Fair together in October 1981. John was driving his Scania lorry whilst Tim was driving a 6 wheeled Coles crane. Somewhere in southern Turkey the counterweight fell off the back of the crane. John, who was behind, managed to swerve out of the way but just clipped it with his bumper bending it back but not enough to cause any other damage. John got the crane working and lifted the counterweight back onto it where it was lashed down as best possible. They continued onto Baghdad hot tired and fed up.
Now the British Pavilion wasnât far away from the Swedish one where Scania had a big stand and they were in the process of washing the trucks down. They had hosepipes and a big tub. As soon as John and Tim saw it they immediately dived in much to the amusement of the Swedes. No doubt the water needed renewing once John and Tim had finished.
John was a bloody good bloke. I had some really good laughs with him. Last I heard he had moved to Shoreham Sussex and was driving fuel tankers at Gatwick.
I heard it was Jumbo Jets!!! Yes, a great bloke.
Preecie always had plenty of advice for Lord King on how to run BAâŚ
sandway:
As I said a few days ago Promotor drivers sailed on the Koper/Tartous ferries a number of times in 1980 and that Wikipedia says one of them, the Zenobia sank off Larnaka in June on her maiden voyage which is wrong. I have attached two photos. The first one shows Ned Kelly who may have driven for D & M McCrae (spelling) of Darlington with Promotors John Preece on board in March 1980. The second photo is of a" Do not smoke in bed" sign removed (oh the shame) from one of the Zenobiaâs cabins.
I have been thinking back to that trip 36 years ago. Trying to kickstart the little grey cells. Looking at the very bad quality photo of Ned and John. Perhaps the Zenobia had already sunk! Perhaps they are ghosts, they certainly look strange. Who else would stand out on deck to have their picture taken in a raging storm!!! Well it had been rough the day before. NO no no! that canât be the case. Thats my right arm showing in the photo above the Zenobia lifebelt and I still have it (my arm not the lifebelt).
I did a trip to Baghdad before I joined Promotor in 79 with a guy from Crowborough, Chris Taylor of Star Transport (owner driver). He was on the Zenobia and, after being rescued, he was airlifted out by the Royal Navy because someone said he had small pox (he had chicken pox). There were some very nice photos and an article about the disaster at the time.
sandway:
Knowledgable ex Promotor drivers or others. Is this Gordon Jones? This lad was on the company mid 80âs and was on the Tripoli and Benghazi double exhibition event we set up for medical and pharmaceutical companies in Libya around that time.
Not Gordon Jones⌠This fellow we nick named after one of the TV flying squad actors⌠I think he lived at Flimwell and when he went out in the evenings wore a velvet suit
sandway:
Knowledgable ex Promotor drivers or others. Is this Gordon Jones? This lad was on the company mid 80âs and was on the Tripoli and Benghazi double exhibition event we set up for medical and pharmaceutical companies in Libya around that time.
Not Gordon Jones⌠This fellow we nick named after one of the TV flying squad actors⌠I think he lived at Flimwell and when he went out in the evenings wore a velvet suit
His nickname was âLewisâ from the Professionals cop duo and I think his real name was AlanâŚ
Welcome to Trucknet Efes and thanks for all the brilliant input, have you got any old photos.
I canât remember many of the Promotors lads names now but I do remember meeting one in Chrisâs restaurant at the Greek/Yugo border at Evzoni. We ran up to the National in Belgrade where we decided to spend the night and about an hour later Rocket Ron turned up in a Ford 4 wheeler. He said that he had driven up from Athens that day and wanted to try and get up to Szeged. I have a feeling that Ron said that he didnât drink for some reason but you have to admit that Athens to Szeged would of been at least two very long days work, certainly for everybody else who I met back then. I recon that Ron would of been about 25 or less in the mid eighties and I can understand how he got the name Rocket.
B.T.W. I have just finished reading a book called Top Deck Daze by a bloke called Bill James, obviously I canât show any of the photos because of copyright laws but you might remember some of the names of their buses. Belch, â â â â â â â â , â â â â â , Crunch, Flaps, Grunt, Knackers and Rags are some of the ones that stick out in my mind for some reason.
Hi Sandway, I mentioned a couple of pages ago that I had an old photo somewhere that I took circa 1980 of a port on the Dalmation Coast. Well I have finally found it but I canât remember if it was Split or Zadar.
Has anybody got any ideas about where it is.
mushroomman:
Hi Sandway, I mentioned a couple of pages ago that I had an old photo somewhere that I took circa 1980 of a port on the Dalmation Coast. Well I have finally found it but I canât remember if it was Split or Zadar.
Has anybody got any ideas about where it is.
Regards Steve.
You got me there mushroomman. Never did either of those towns.
mushroomman:
Hi Sandway, I mentioned a couple of pages ago that I had an old photo somewhere that I took circa 1980 of a port on the Dalmation Coast. Well I have finally found it but I canât remember if it was Split or Zadar.
Has anybody got any ideas about where it is.
Regards Steve.
Hello Steve, I would take a guess on it being Split. I got a ferry to and from Split / Zadar a couple of times.
and thanks for all the brilliant input, have you got any old photos. 
