A lot of people knock Turks for all sorts of reasons,but when it comes to self catering,you can’t beat them.
Ken.
JB:
I generally have a “belly buster” breakfast at a cafe somewhere. I then proceed to eat sweets, crisps and chocolate all day, followed by a kebab and a few pints at night.
hence me being vastly overweight at 17 stone… i cant understand it? must be in my genes?
excellent john you sound just like me.
buying a decent 24 volt fridge was the best thing i ever bought keep stuff fresh all week and just a stash of soups as a fall back,only used cafes on a saturday breakfast or if i was running with someone
Well, when I go out on a tramping run, I usually bulk bought all the drink I needed at a supermarket before I left, plus either made, or bought sarnies pies etc from that same supermarket. They may not be the best you can have, but get them from a supermarket rather than services, you’ll pay half the money for the same thing.
Just keep your eyes open on the road, and take the first decent opportunity every day to top up the stock of food in the cab.
2 quid or more for a sandwich from a services when I can get the same for half that in a supermarket? Yeah, right… I avoided services food like the plague, unless I’d happened to have built up a stock of those food for fuel vouchers.
A mini gas stove (dirt cheap from lots of places) also works wonders. Pop it down under the sunroof, pop the sunroof open to let out any fumes and cook away, you can make your own fry up or boil up a couple cans no trouble.
Never found a good electric kettle tho, on 12 or 24 volts. But a camping kettle on a gas ring works fine, and can have a brew in your hand in under 10 mins, including getting the cooker out. And for a darned sight less than any services will charge you.
Sure, it’s an investment, and more gear to lug around.
But add it up, 15 quid for cooker, a fiver for spare gas, a fiver for a few pans and stuff (get cheap, they’ll get damaged), and a tenner on cans and a jar of coffee.
35 quid, all in. You’ll make 35 cups of coffee or more from a jar, and at the quid fifty they charge in services for a coffee, and you’re saving money already, just on coffees.
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Quinny:
A lot of people knock Turks for all sorts of reasons,but when it comes to self catering,you can’t beat them.Ken.
Not just the Turks, the Portugese and Spanish and now the French are showing the way in Camion Catering. At least they take their time over a meal and will set up shop for a couple of hours siesta as well.
Traz:
me.im a tramper im out all week.
for main meals… im lucky work will pay for parking and meal voucher… but most of the time i carry…
uncle bens boil in bag rice
tin of chicken curry
tin of beef stew
tin of sweet and sour chicken.
tin of potatoes
tin of veg/peas etc.
Blimey that looks surprisingly like my canteen 
But i also carry a cool box, in which I have a loaf of bread for sandwichs or toast, cheese, a few slices of ham or corn beef, a jar of jam, marge, and and plenty of apples and oranges.
In the winter I allways have some porridge in the cab, a bowl of that about 6 ish keeps you going til dinner.
I only eat out when I want to, I never have to, but its good to get away from the cab once or twice a week.
peterq5422:
buying a decent 24 volt fridge was the best thing i ever bought keep stuff fresh all week
I brought my cool box from ASDA about 4yrs ago, £29.99 the fan is a bit rattly now. But its been better value than more expensive one’s that I’ve had in the past or maybe i’ve been unlucky 
WildGoose:
I have fallen back into the trap, I have gotten lazy, I am feeding myself breakfast and lunch from service stations and snack wagons…Sometimes up to a tenner a day on… rubbish basically. Thats a fair whack on your wages each week if you can bear to sit and think about it. I’d fail miserably if I was on nights out.
It’s a common thing, i’m not the only one, I have seen lots of you out there doing it. Personally for me the last thing I feel like doing with the limited spare time I have at home is preparing food for the following day/week.
You are absolutely spot-on.
Some drivers even buy chilled drinks from the MSA at £1.60 a time, four or five times a day instead of buying a £30 fridge and a crate of Coca-Cola at 30p a can.
As for a sandwich, I buy bread, cheese and ham, some tomatoes and an onion or two from a supermarket or even better a farm shop, and make myself a tastier, fresher sandwich for a fifth of the price that Ginsters want for a three-day-old superchilled and tasteless equivalent.
Each to his own. I could spend £70 a week on petrol-station snacks, but I prefer to eat better food for a fifth of the price.
PS Please don’t say “gotten”, we have enough of their appalling language abuse here already 
Being one of those nasty foreign truck drivers I cook out of the trailer box - including when Im in the UK. Having seen the prices in MSAs Im suprised anyone can afford to eat in them. And as for those smelly horrible layby caravans just the thought gives me indigestion.
As for McDonalds - no way Id rather starve!! Everytime I had one of those i get the squits within an hour!!
Hombre:
Being one of those nasty foreign truck drivers I cook out of the trailer box - including when Im in the UK. Having seen the prices in MSAs Im suprised anyone can afford to eat in them. And as for those smelly horrible layby caravans just the thought gives me indigestion.As for McDonalds - no way Id rather starve!! Everytime I had one of those i get the squits within an hour!!
i dont blame anyone for self catering nowadays. when i was out all week i was pretty much like the rest of with the tins of stew and veg. cooler ful of drinks and bowls of bolognaise and mince just ready for heating. the best thing i liked was pasta and then chuck in a dolmio sauce with a bit of salad.
if i did have a brekkie it would be at colsterworth or a subsidised canteen other than that it would self catering.
Denis F:
so are we THIS or THISbtw, you do realise there’ll be a mad woman from Yorkshire along in a minute telling you how she can live in her cab all week on 27pence
PHWAAAAOOORRRRR !!!
I’m definitely THIS
It’s shocking how much you can spend in garages during a month. I got a rude awakening when I tallied it up over a 2 month period - nearly £500 
pasties, sandwiches, sweets, crisps you name it - all of it overpriced and not exactly healthy. I knocked it on the head there and then.
Now, I pop into sainsburys on a monday and get a lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, peppers, new potatoes, big bag of pasta, some sliced chicken and/or ham and some tins of tuna. Never more than £15 and enough to do a different healthy salad every night of the week. add to that a bunch of bananas or a selection of tinned fruit for some pudding and you’re away. Takes hardly any time to knock up and you can’t beat fresh food.
Drink wise, I buy big bottles of squash and make up 2 1ltr bottles and bung em in the fridge ( or freezer in the summer) the night before
If I get stuck without any food, I always look for a chippy/chinese - £4 will get a good hot meal compared with a sandwich and can of coke from the services.
Haven’t touched a KFC,McD’s or BK since before christmas, bowl of cereal every morning and a light cooked meal around 2pm before work at 5pm and the weight is dropping of me purely down to this diet change Now the weathers improving I can start walking to work as well rather than driving the mile to work 