Spardo:
Returning from injury and the strike of '79, this was my first load with a brand new motor. I spent that morning struggling to drag the empty trailer up the snow covered slope between the top and bottom yards at Markfield. It didn’t take me long to realise that the Daf did not have a diff lock.I then went to load this 28 tonne lump near Swadlincote, 15 kms away, which took most of the rest of the day as at one point the road passed through a cutting which was full of snow. Once the council digger had made a path it was all plain sailing.
Tipped it in London docks, the pictures were taken while waiting to unload, with my step-son Stephen behind the wheel. He was about 15 at the time but Econofreight only had 2 casual ‘2nd men’ and, as often as not, merely said to us, ‘can you get someone?’ Steve, though hardly a ‘responsible adult’ did several trips with me. He loved it, and the extra pocket money.
After that, we loaded a large tank near Dagenham for Ford at Liverpool. No ■■■■■■ round the N. Circular
but Bedfordshire Police insisted through their patch so we parked up with several others at Toddington. The first thing the copper, who took no notice of my very youthful assistant, asked was ‘how fast can you go?’ I was used to this question, they always seemed to be in a rush to get back to the canteen. ‘40 mph’ I said and enjoyed the expression on his face. ‘Unless, of course, you are prepared to crawl under the trailer and change the inside tyres that blow’. We proceeded at 40 but I did take pity and run up to 50 after a while. [emoji38]
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As it happened that was about the max. They didn’t tell me but this wagon was fitted with a very early form of speed limiter. I only found out when, trying to pass a slower vehicle uphill the engine suddenly cut with a loud tick. The other bloke was not impressed as I hung him out to dry behind an even slower motor. The unit was the large box that I noticed on the passenger side floor. It didn’t trouble me for long, it ran through a simple fuse and, once that was removed, the rest was history.
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Just had to remember to put it back in at service time.
By this time Tom had mellowed, he didn’t nick the DAF letters off the grill. Perhaps they paid him not to, or perhaps he had other fish to fry, like having a running battle with me to remove the rags on the mirror arms to keep the glasses pristine clean. That model was a terror for throwing up muck, he eventually compromised by giving us giant elastic bands (cut up innertubes) to stretch over the wheelnuts. Helped a little, but nowhere near as effective as my ‘gypsy caravan look’, as he called it. [emoji38]
Thanks for sharing the experiences Spardo. How times have changed, all for the better of course.
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Johnny
