It’s got to be done , the ubiquitous and notorious Scottish man on the Paris Peripheral ring road who apparently had a ginger beard and was a Gendarmerie motorcycle officer, I never saw him once but others swear by it.
Tony the English lad who ran the fuel station and truck accessories shop at Claude’s original restaurant at Saint Genis de Saintonage, allegedly did time for fiddling the pumps.
Correct spelling added.
OK…I heard of the Scotsman on the Boulevard Périphérique… but only stories from guys I didn’t know well. Always second or third hand.
I met Tony at St G, but didn;t know him well at. all Heard some stories but not sure of them.
From St G, Dave K married one of waitresses Chantelle, and moved down that way. Chantelle and another lass set up their own restaurant. Firstly on the A20 then reopened one down from St G nearer Mirambeau.
Blimey Oh Reilly, our faded memory bank is crystal clear, I definitely remember Chantelle, from S-G-D-S , at Claude’s old place ,I would always see the local Gendarmerie lads in there having a meal so we could not be so open about running on the wire or pulling the fuse on the tacho for one hitters.
The amount of lads that would openly brag about a non stop drive from Almeria, Murcia, Alicante, Gibraltar, Milan or Madrid ,was epic in proportions at the pit stops and restaurants all over Europe and on the ferry in the drivers lounge.
These were the ones that literally burnt themselves out from exhaustion and I would not see them again.
They only did for a few months or a few weeks, 21 year old lads that aged 10 years, was it really worth it?
Baggy eyes, with pale and anaemic looking skin in the face.
The mind and body can only take so much sleep deprivation.
You may have seen the tractor unit belonging to Colin who lived opposite the restaurant so it would be parked up outside his house at the weekend?
See the difference with the restrictions in the UK (Operating Licence and the Traffic Commissioner) about tractor units not permitted to be parked up outside the driver’s house in the UK compared to the more relaxed way in Europe where the drivers can take their unit home and the trailer too.
It’s a shame that the government put a weight limit from Cherbourg to Granville to Avranches , so as you disembarked the ferry you could hug the coastline all the way to Le Mont Saint-Michel for an early morning sunrise view of that glorious monastery with the sea mist surrounding it or hovering above it.
But to be honest I can’t blame them as commercial traffic increased when the Eastern European companies decimated international haulage to under cut the rates by employing cheaper drivers on a pittance for long hours and a different attitude to vehicle maintenance inspections and the state of their vehicles on the roads.
With several hundred lorries going through small hamlets and villages, coming off the ferries or heading to the boat, the only option was to use the toll motorway network.
But saying that many UK registered companies used to flag out their motors to send the units to Holland,to get the equivalent of the UK MOT, as the Dutch actually test the strength of the fifth wheel and the UK garages don’t, then register the tractor unit on Dutch plates as the VED was much cheaper than the UK.
At one point I can remember the VED being about thousands per year in the UK, maybe £6000 to £8000 or more.
Yep. Colin “Monty” would often drop his trailer at the Resto, put a pin-lock on it, and then and bob-tail down to his house. He knwe Tony from the garage and all the resto staff of course.
When Claude himself went to Barbezieux the new tenant was an ex pro rugby player wasn’t it? I can’t remember his name. The staff all remeined I think.
I am fairly sure Monty was on a UK O-Licence though, so him parking there was just another night out for the authorities. The local flic were quite uninterested in why a UK reg truck was often parked in a private house I guess.
He retired a couple of years ago I believe.
Here we are Aeroplane Kevin’s incident. I was at the mercy of lorry hijackers | Daily Echo
I think it made the local press partly because Ron’s daughter was a reporter for the Echo at that time.
Another incident I am sure of, and mentioned before was also in the 90’s.
One of ours was in the south of Italy. He parked in a service area, and since they were often small small he was on the side behind another UK truck, a Muppetts wagon and drag. The driver was travelling with hos girl -friend as he normally did.
During the night they were disturbed by a couple of guys wearing masks breaking into the cab. The two were hooded and put together on the bottom bunk. Truck driven off.
From the echoing sound and noise of fork lifts it was clear they were a warehouse somewhere. Later it was clear that both the UK trucks were there being done. Both off loaded amidst lots of shouting…
The couple were still on the bottom bunk when the truck, now empty was driven off again. It was stopped Now the very nasty bit. The driven was coshed to mknock him out before being left alone. Awful.
Anyway he came too with no lasting damage untied hos gorl friend and gto in contact with police etc.
The lass was, apart from being tied up, pretty much untouched. Obviously both were very shook up but carried on with the same company for quite a while afterwards.
It ain’t over.
The load was nappies… a full load of nappies.
But the truck in front was carrying razor blades, a far more more desirable haul. It was thought that the thieves cut a hole in the first truck’s sheet, and assumed that the second one also UK reg was carrying the same, so took both. Once in the warehouse they seem to have just taken the stuff anyway.
There was a driver from Sunderland, the brother of one of the mods on here, @animal, who dropped his trailer for loading pottery somewhere in the hills south of Perpignan. All palletised and shrink wrapped when he collected it and headed for the border.
He was picked for a check and they found drugs in one of the pallets. Despite not being present when it was loaded, and the shrink wraps intact, he was arrested and thrown in gaol in Perpignan where he spent several months. I used to write to him, sending him a stamped addressed envelope so he could reply, until he was released on payment of something or other, never convicted though as far as I know.
This was after I retired so would have been in 2003 or 2004 I think. The suspicion was that he had been ‘dobbed in’ by criminals to draw attention away from a bigger load to get through unchecked. No idea if true or not, but he did tell me that when the customs opened the trailer they went straight to the offending pallet.
Sounds like they knew a lot then.
When coming in from Spain especially the UK Customs would often ask “Were you present during loading?” and “Is it a regular pick-up factory?” Seems like reasonable questions to ask.
But if contraband was inside a shrink wrapped pallet, what chance does a driver have?
There was a bonneted Scania and a fridge trailer impounded in Ouistreham for a year or two. He had been caught with a few pallets of tobacco in with his load of fruit, not much excuse for that I can think of.
That was the name I couldn’t remember, Monty, a polite and well spoken gentleman.
Here’s another one , The Lord who worked for a company hauling boats and yachts all over Europe, it may have been a contract with Sunseeker in Poole, he had very posh sounding accent, long grey hair and a beard, a white man but the hair was in dreadlocks like an African man, he dressed a bit scruffily.
The Spanish owner driver that had sign writing on his trailer of something on the lines of the combined age of the lorry and his age was so many years old, that always made me laugh out loud seeing that, he used Dieppe a lot.
Thinking about it I now recall a load of ciggies in Belgium, some Cognac in northern France, some wine in central France, some ver expensive wine in Bordeaux, all going various ways they shouldn’t have.
I should emphasise that this was far from a daily occurance, and over decades and different countries.
The ciggies were in the early 90’s. A fill taut-liner load from Munich to the UK. The driver parked in a service area in Belgium. Woke up in the morning to find the centre section of his side sheet cut and half a load of ciggies gone. He had felt nothing during the night.
They reckoned it was not a planned raid but a few chancers had cut the side, hit the jack[ot and got mates with vans to handball the stuff out. Police informed etc.
The driver did come for a hard time back in the UK. Police and insurance seemed to think that after loading and driving 10n hrs he would only have been needing a cat nap and that any noise in a service area would have woken him…!
“Quick Draw” was as straight as any driver and I don’t think he was involved in any way at all.
The company were also in the cart because the policy dictated than ciggies had to be in boxes or fridges and they had used a taut. In fact we often used tilts and tauts on that run.
Not wise but you get away with it …until you don’t.
The expensive wine in Bx was from a fridge. It was on a regular groupage run, every week Bx area making multi pick ups of the good stuff. Anything form a few pallets to single bottles.
He parked in a client’s chateau. During the night thieves ripped oped the elctric gates, cut off the hinges on the back doors, and took some very choice stuff.
Later the UK end customer was offered some very nice and very rare wine for his cellar.
Long story short, he was being offered the same stuff that had been stolen from his consignment.
That one ended with no harm to anyone and the wine recovered. I don’t know how any prosecutions went.
As an aside there is a market in fake investment wines. The places that deal with may examine the good stuff to check for flaws in labels etc.
Dunno about being a Lord, but I think he was called “Teddy Bear”.
(Not to be confused with “Huggy Bear” who pulled traction for Frans Maas. Or maybe I am tyhe one mixing them up?)
Moved to the south of Spain with a Russian lady who… ummm… worked… down that way I believe.
Teddy Bear was a more than a little scruffy. I was in a restaurant in Spain with another driver, the excellent Mick Hennessy, who was always a very well turned out gentleman. Teddy Bear came over and asked if he could join us. Mick looked disgutedly at him and said “No, I am trying to eat my dinner”!
I remember reading about that in the UK and French newspapers, I think he said the living conditions in a French prison were absolutely diabolical, nowadays they have more up to date and modern prisons.
Me and a Spanish driver who I never met before both loaded the same consignment of cash machines that were broken or refurbished on behalf of BP at a dodgy looking old warehouse near Madrid, when arriving in Newhaven we were both kept there for hours and the customs went through the two trailers to fully scrutinise the load that was touching the roof, I was asked so many questions , who told me to load there, their names, addresses and contact numbers and so on, did I witness the loading process, have I been there before and so, we were only two trucks pulled in the shed on a full ferry from Dieppe?
That’s the one , the Teddy Bear, and another one was Stuart Smith aka The Animal,a driver for British International in Sholing, as the expression goes , never judge a book by its cover, as the first time we met I was slightly intimidated by his large size and appearance as he came across as quite threatening.
A cross in between Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy the wrestlers.
What a kind man and a true gentleman, the company had a yard they rented from a gypsy family to store empty trailers, it was a summer in Porto, boiling hot, he was dispatched to assist me with a full strip down or a full rebuild of a step frame tilt trailer that was a jumbo trailer with extra cubage loading area, these tilts could be converted to a step frame trailer to load old machines from mills and plants or the whole roof of the trailer rolled back for a crane to load through the roof.
To cut a very long story short, he never complained once, never refused to help, bearing in mind he was a morbidly obese gentleman.
He later worked for a company doing Morocco and back, it may have been Savilles or Savil freight and he crashed in to the back of a broken down coach in Spain and he was killed and so was the driver or mechanic that was stood behind the coach late at night.
He was slagged off big time in the local Spanish newspaper as the Guardia Civil found new watches and gold jewellery hidden in the side of the cab doors and other hiding places, he got the blame for the RTC, but we never know what really happened, it was normal back then for drivers to supplement their income back then so he probably hid his items in case someone robbed the cab.
Another BI driver did the same with gold as had a gypsy girlfriend called Rose or Rosa.
Stuart would do anything to help, I was taking diet pills and he was concerned about my health and driving long distances without a proper meal to say it was dangerous to fall asleep at the wheel.
About 12 of us were having a meal at Victors in Burgos, they had the big hearty meals and opted for a light meal and took my pills, he threw them in the fish tank and said to me you eat that big meal now.
Almost forty years ago, as I was transitioning from being a round town clown to a bit of “decent distance work”, I was tasked with taking an empty 20’ container to Bundaberg Rum Distillery, load and return to the Port of Brisbane.
Ten pallets of various rums and liquors had to be unloaded from the pallets, into the box. Half a dozen blokes congregated around the container doors, waiting on the first pallet. Great, I thought, this will be loaded reasonably quickly. Wrong! All but one fellow was there to check, count and otherwise observe.
At the time I was an avid reader of truck magazines, including UK mags, which seemed to have a story of hijacking and robbery, every month. Every so often we would hear stories of high value loads such as grog and smokes. It was with much trepidation that I headed south, knowing I was on my Pat.
Fortunately, in those more innocent days, my fears were not realised.
I remember being told that he died when deriing downhill, it was said he had brake fade and crashed into another vehicle.
I had dinner with as part of a group at Victor’s. Simon was the boss at that time.
Animal wanted fish but the waitress said they had run out so he chose summat else.
We had our starters, then Animal told us to keep schtum…
The waitress returned with the mains but Animal waved her away saying he didn’t want it now. She was a bit confused but he kept saying pescado and rubbed his tummy. She got more confused, then he pointed to the now empty fish bowl.
Shocked she went to the kitchen to fetch Gloria, Simon’s wife, and said that Animal had eaten the sad little goldfish !
Animal then produced the poor fish stuffed head first into a glass of water.
The fish survived.
I seem to remember a Rosa, who was the Portugeuse girl friend of Trevor S. Trevor died and she than hooked up with Tom F. the brother of “Billy Cotton”
Tom and Rosa set up in Gibralter or La Linea I think.
Gosh, more confusing than East Enders innit !
@star_down_under
We worked a lot with Barbour from Scotland they did a lot of wine back to the UK, so we met up with them quite often. Their main work out was bottled Scotch whisky. That was always a risky load. No serial numbers, easy to sell off in quiet corners etc.
For myself I did a fair bit of alcohol in food tankers. That was about 95% pure, and needed diluting before being fit to drink. One of the few times you will see hazard plates on a food tanker!
Not such a target for casual thieves but not summat to be careless with by any means.
Re tobacco thefts: the company we pulled for in Germany had a really good manager who would give we drivers coffee in hs office while we were waiting to load. He told of a load they had sent to Italy that was hi-jacked.
The Italian Gov wanted his comany to compensate them. Because they had lost duty on the stolen cigs . since they were not sold in shops. They said that the company should pay the duty on the stolen gear. Adding insult to injury they lost the cigs, had to supply more, and give away cash!
Apparently it was a serious claim but eventually went no-where.
I read in a complemation of humourous yarns of exploits on the Melbourne wharves, in the 50s and 60s, before the days of containerisation.
One of the regular consignments was undiluted Scotch, in twenty gallon wooden barrels. The enterprising, but lightfingered, wharfies regularly used to tap a barrel or two with a nail, allowing the content to slowly run down the nail and drip into a strategically placed vessel. They would then dilute and share the spoils, during working hours.
One ship delivered a single forty gallon barrel, simply marked alcohol.
This barrel was tapped also. It sat in the bond store for a few months, continuously dispensing its intoxicating beverage.
Finally a couple of decidedly non-blue collar workers arrived to collect the unusual barrel. The inevitable question was asked, naturally without revealing that nobody could identify the taste, what was in it.
The answer was a shock, a monkey preserved in alcohol for Melbourne University. 
Not from Sunderland he did live in Washington ( but from Newcastle )
John Vasey was in prison for 14 month but never charged did have to pay a fine came back this was back in February 2004
There was a lot in the papers & transport magazines also on here back then
As were mine regularly transporting roped and sheeted loads of whisky from Dumbarton Bond to various English ports. My biggest enemy/nuisance was the police who, everytime we tried to get a bit of shuteye on the road, shunted us on into the next county, for obvious reasons they didn’t want to see our logsheets.
I should point out that this man was not the female moderator on TN who went under the pseudo of @animal. Pretty sure she is no longer on here but I would hate anybody to think she was a tran. 
Still about defo female as well
