newmercman:
just to add to the Ray Larcombe story, I bumped into Lee Hannington (another old boy from the Italian job, he had a 3300 space cab with a Merzario stepframe) last week in the circus tavern & Ray is doing a bit for him, mostly boxes out of Dartford at night, he aint ready for next years marathon but he’s still going strong.
Nice to see the Jock Hastie pics, last i knew of him he was on a royal holiday for a couple of years, one of his drivers had a load of rastafarian old holborn on & got a tug at Dover, he was running a lhd F12 globey & a 95 Daf at that time.
Good news about Ray glad to hear he can still do a bit, i did hear that
Jock Hastie was serving his country but it was rather sketchy so i
thought better than to post it on here without being sure (unlike some) .
and as for the marathon plumb tired me out just watching it on the box.
Crackon As to the whereabouts of Steve Ersser he’s now back working for DHL running the contract vehicles in Hapag Lloyds office in Barking.Not sure the reasons why he left EFS tho as he weren’t there that long.
Was the Billy Moore you mentioned the one on Sammy’s? Great guy and hard as hard could be.
Do you remember an idiot we all called Olio 'cos he was trying to earn Italian. What a bore he was. I wonder what happened to him
Regards
Steve
I first met Bill when he was on Sammy’s. He was always going on about the wonderful Thames Trader with Eaton Two Speed…
Bills name was mentioned on one of these posts as having passed away but as is the nature of these things I hope to read that Bill is alive & well & living in Italy. ( Keep the fingers crossed ) Mick Olio drove for Rawlings of Hook .He came off the road & opened a cafe in Hampshire somewhere then came back to Rawlings as a fitter. Micks French was excellent BTW.
Mick got famous when he took his boss to Milan airport & managed to book him a flight to UK by speaking Italian by putting ’ io ’ on the end of every word & it worked !
I saw Mick later & he said it was a myth ;everyone at the airport spoke English.
I first met Mick on the Le Harve /Sotton crossing .He was doing Italy for Rawlings in a Big J non-sleeper & I was on for Malta X doing containers to Marsielles with a 3 ax F88 with full Swedish spec ;lifting 3rd ax ; grit boxes & loads of other things ;plus we stayed in a nice hotel ( paid by the boss ) on the Quay de Belge while the customs & boxes were sorted out.Good old days.
And we parked our units on the promenade with no probs.People thought it was an exhibition of some kind.
And the same to you Lenny (WHAT A RUDE BOY)
Loosechange 1992 is that coat a snide nice mohican
Geoff Hoey and his wife Erin she came from New Zealand and was a
cracking girl she mixed with the lads ok and could drive that super Scania
as good as the rest of us ,they split up some time ago and Erin went back to
New Zealand where i believe she still is. i last saw Geoff at a funeral in
1994 and shortly afterwards he told me he was going to America buy a
Winnibago and do some touring and have had no contact with him since
i hope he is well and gets in touch soon
A few more pics of George Barclay he was a really funny guy and you
never knew what he would do next what he is doing in the second photo
the mind boggles
Gary Glitter (Unitrucs) 1989
Brian Bows the guy in the forefront worked with us on JCW in the 1990s
and in 1992 decided to go to Australia with his girlfriend Sue to live, well after about six months in Aussie he told us he was getting married and said we was welcome to go out to Australia for his wedding and myself and Peter Wisdom said we would fly out to be with them on the big day, so he told us he would send the wedding invitations and would look forward to seeing us.
well as you can see we got the invitations to the wedding for the 26th March
no problem but the trouble was we did not recieve them until first post
Friday 25th March,( he who drinks Australian thinks Australian)
Driver in the background is John Cane (Smurfie)
Was going through some old stuff in a briefcase last night and found these
and thought the younger drivers on this site might be interested in
the old car licence we used to have, the pass for Dover was if you was in and out every day with containers it just made things easier for the Police
rather than issue a new pass every day
Robinsons (Centre Routiers Chalon) January 1996 the driver is
Tony Warner and he was not happy it was freezing cold i had been
stuck there for three days waiting for the fitter to come out to me
with wheel nut problems and on the first day i was stuck there i
filled up with deisel and put some petrol in the tank and was the
only driver with a engine that was running, Tony had popped in to
see me on his way down to Spain with some money and ciggies
and then could go nowhere his self ,Tonys trip got worse after he
left Chalon as a Spanish Driver skidded in to him on Black ice
which really ■■■■■■ him of.
A varied selection of photos all taken in the 80s
coming down the old Cerdon
the bridge at Genoa
the ski slope and various snaps of trucks Collisons,Hastie,Robinsons.
the photo taken on the M2 in January 1986 was on the sunday going
down to Dover first trip of the year it was snowing really bad and i just got
to Dover two of our drivers who were two hours behind me spent 36 hours
in the sevices at Harbledown and when i arrived back in Dover 10 days later we was told we could not leave the dock after a rather nasty row with the
Police they let about 5 lorries leave together and when we got to Dartford
the old bill wanted to know where we had come from and when we told them
Dover they did not beieve us it took us 5 hours from Dover to Rainham
essex and it then took me another 3 hours to get home to Orpington Kent
in my car and i might add knackered
Harry you can cross yer fingers all you want because Billy has been
gone quite some time and there is only one way you will meet him
again and you dont want that.
CRACK ON TO MACON:
Harry you can cross yer fingers all you want because Billy has been
gone quite some time and there is only one way you will meet him
again and you dont want that.
jacko22:
Happy days eh! Wot was the name of the boss at Jayat (was he an ex Gendame)
Was it Jean Paul?
The best ham & eggs to be had though!
yeah, jean paul and his wife, dont know how its spelt, marise, something like that.
does anyone remember christine who had jayat before jp, she ran it with her mum, had a thing going with an english driver and got pregnant, christine that is, not her mum, i believe she went to live somewhere near lyon after she sold up.
Just to clear up Mick ‘Olio’ Cairns worked for A S Rawlings with the likes of Polly. Brain Damage and Nick the Greek to name but a few, out of a farm in Medstead near Alton (not Hook) a lot of whose work was skins and hides to Italy. I believe he did open a restaraunt near Fordingbridge Hants but that didn’t last long and he went driving again for Comptons of Poole. I remember one trip over Cenis with him and ‘The Captain’ Sean Moran, Mick was telling stories non stop my sides were aching!
Also yes he was fluent in both Italian and French languages.
Don’t know what he is up to now last I heard he had slipped on the back of a tractor unit and very badly gashed his hand on the Eminox shield.
