I recall being on for Silver Roadways at Silvertown. We carted sugar and foam rubber among other junk. I remember being sent to Tilbury Docks to load tea-chests onto an 8-wheeler during the cold winter of 1964. I had a two-stroke Foden 8-wheeler with a trailer. Bloody hard craft what with the loading and sheeting!!
The crane diver lifted the tea-chests out of the hold of the ship and lowered them onto the deck of the 8-wheeler. I had to stack then three high or was it four■■? Any- old-how, I got frozen solid by the freezing wind and decided never again to accept an invitation to load at Tilbury where the unruly docker’s had ruled the roost. Those docker’s just left us drivers standing there when they went home.
at least the exercise would have kept you warm…and at least you could have wrapped your ears in the foam rubber…your 2 stroke was a tad on the noisy side was it not?
Demented memories come from people who try to remember back in time but may make a few mistakes.It is sometimes possible to recall what one did yesterday but not 50-years-ago. However, an event 50-years ago can sometimes be at the forefront of the demented mind and explainable too.
Retired or working lorry drivers are not exempt from memory-loss. This forum enables some older drivers to peruse the activities and memories of their co-workers who had all been men on the long and winding cold and windy roads and who had not been subjected to too much scrutiny by their respective bosses.
airproducts73:
I recall being on for Silver Roadways at Silvertown. We carted sugar and foam rubber among other junk. I remember being sent to Tilbury Docks to load tea-chests onto an 8-wheeler during the cold winter of 1964. I had a two-stroke Foden 8-wheeler with a trailer. Bloody hard craft what with the loading and sheeting!!
The crane diver lifted the tea-chests out of the hold of the ship and lowered them onto the deck of the 8-wheeler. I had to stack then three high or was it four■■? Any- old-how, I got frozen solid by the freezing wind and decided never again to accept an invitation to load at Tilbury where the unruly docker’s had ruled the roost. Those docker’s just left us drivers standing there when they went home.
You really wouldn’t have enjoyed Liverpool docks back in the day, those fellas were the ‘creme de la creme’ of lazy workshy fiddling scrotes. They ■■■■ near killed me one day. Lazy bar stewards.
This website is a good place for retired truckers suffering memory loss to regain some of their lost memories. I have been pleased to see so much interest and the images posted of old trucks. It is good to know also that many of the old motors have been preserved and are in the hands of carers rather than breakers.
thelongdrag:
Yep same here,only good experience with Liverpool Docks was coming away from. Mike
+1
hardly surprising your average big co union worker had a similar outlook to productivity,hence the demise of britain as a manufacturer with the dockers,and scouser dockers in particular being the laziest and most unhelpfull.however it was always a nice warm feeling driving out the gates with the load all nicely sheeted and tied down,with as much as you could nick tucked away underneath them.
that way,it made parking up with some other trucks more of a swap shop to see who nicked what…there was always someone who would swap a crate of beans for your box of fray bentos steak pies etc…
I remember an extremely funny incident on the M6 southbound one day when CB’s had just become popular and I was doing a change over in one of our motors which had a CB fitted, well not being much of a fan of CB’s I thought well “lets have a listen in” well this Scouse driver was running his mouth about how the union had sorted out a number of bad hauliers in Liverpool in previous years, well I think it was a Scots voice that butted in to say " Aye you once had a Dock 3 miles long now it’s only 300 yards long" well you should have heard Scouse explode it’s a wonder he wasn’t swerving all over the M/way he was fit to be tied down, and I was crying with laughter as it was one of the funniest things I had ever heard ! Cheers Bewick.
I vaguely recall two strips of concrete between St Albans and Crick, otherwise known as the M1 Motorway. I had been a mate working for Hipwood and Grundy. I went up to Crick on a change-over in the fog. We had 727 STD, a Leyland Octopus flat, top speed 40mph. There had been no crash barriers, lighting or emergency phones. I think there had been just one filling station. This had been around 1960.
airproducts73:
I recall being on for Silver Roadways at Silvertown. We carted sugar and foam rubber among other junk. I remember being sent to Tilbury Docks to load tea-chests onto an 8-wheeler during the cold winter of 1964. I had a two-stroke Foden 8-wheeler with a trailer. Bloody hard craft what with the loading and sheeting!!
The crane diver lifted the tea-chests out of the hold of the ship and lowered them onto the deck of the 8-wheeler. I had to stack then three high or was it four■■? Any- old-how, I got frozen solid by the freezing wind and decided never again to accept an invitation to load at Tilbury where the unruly docker’s had ruled the roost. Those docker’s just left us drivers standing there when they went home.
You really wouldn’t have enjoyed Liverpool docks back in the day, those fellas were the ‘creme de la creme’ of lazy workshy fiddling scrotes. They ■■■■ near killed me one day. Lazy bar stewards.
Remember going into Liverpool docks to pick up 15 ton of puffin pilchards,all they did was put a dock pallet on the back off the motor and returned to playing football with 20 plus other dossers,(sorry dockers)whilst I was handballing onto the motor,come 3.45 all I got was hurry up La its nearly going home time.
Yes mate I think many of us had some of that.
One that springs to mind is loading fishmeal in sacks handball off ships pallets onto a flatbed trl.Ask for a lift and what did you get.Sorry drive we are not insured to get on the trl.
regards dave.
Ah fishmeal. I remember loading that as a mate onto AF 66, A Foden FG 8 wheeler. Mum was not happy because my clothes still stank after she had washed them twice.
Hi Air products 73, what depot were you at ,the only one I knew a Carrington that had previously worked for Hipwood & Grundy was a lad called Colin Wolstenholme.
One of the very few times I got one over on Liverpool dockers. Two of us were loaded with small steel plates that could be lifted by hand, we got on the unloading set inside the dock at about 11.30am and was told by the checker that the steel had to be stacked onto pallets, so they put a stack of pallets by the side of our trailers for us to hand ball off, come 11.45am the dockers were ready for away to the canteen and pubs, so we asked the checker if he would sign our notes then we would stack the steel nice and tidy and could leave before they came back which he did, ‘‘Big Mistake for Him’’ as soon as they had gone we started to unload our way, and that way was just getting the load off our trailers, the plates were skimming all over the cobbles because we had our lines signed. We were away down the dock road and over Millers Bridge well before they came back other wise we would have been swimming in the Mersey.
Lazy bar stewards.
