Equitran:
Great reading this, looking forward to the next instalment, Daf 2800 was the first proper truck I bought as well after being seriously impressed by the 3300 I’d driven on the Coke contract for BRS, engine blew on M25 one Sat morning and the guy who towed me in bought it from me for £200 more than I paid
No doubt trying to make the thing go like the 3300 down the M4 to Bristol. 
Laughed at the small villages bit.Thought I’d post an example of how it can all get a bit tight and difficult depending on a few wrong navigational choices even driving a big Jag let alone a 38 tonner. 
maps.google.com/?ieUTF&ll=40.296 … 85,0,7.73
maps.google.com/?ieUTF8&ll=40.28 … 5,0,12.58
And some 80’s Italian on the radio.
Carryfast:
Laughed at the small villages bit.Thought I’d post an example of how it can all get a bit tight and difficult depending on a few wrong navigational choices even driving a big Jag let alone a 38 tonner.maps.google.com/?ieUTF&ll=40.296 … 85,0,7.73
maps.google.com/?ieUTF8&ll=40.28 … 5,0,12.58
And some 80’s Italian on the radio.
DELETE 
WTF
scud:
A great piece of writing the first trip is always a baptism of fire but it,s the trip you always remember, by the way did you load out of barthitaliano up at bassano ?
Yes, that’s the place, I ran out of there for a few years after that
My first Italian trip was also my first journey abroad driving anything let alone a truck; I was working for a company from Buckingham called JMM (Jillian Mary Miles) Int Tansport Services named after the bosses ex girlfriend and partner unfortunately deceased, a whole story on its own but one I won’t go into. He had ventured into international work about 6 months previously including some M/E and most of the trucks were less than a year old, all F88’s and one F89, then Easter of '74 he said to me your going to Italy with Robbie another driver who had’nt driven a truck in europe before.
I was only 23 and at that time if you drove a Volvo or Scania you thought yourself king of the road as most of the trucks on the road in Britain were built in the uk eg: ERF, Foden Leyland etc, so to be going to europe and driving an F88 was the Mutts Nuts, somewhere I’ve got a pic taken outside my house before we left on that trip, I will try to find it and post it. Being a May bank holiday weekend friday the roads were packed as we drove down through London and then took the A2 towards Dover, now I had never been down that way before and was following Robbie like he was towing me in case we got separated.
The thing was we were’nt actually going to Dover but were booked Folkestone-Boulogne so instead of going down the A20 Robbie had decided to go down the A2 until Canterbury and then cut across to Folkestone, now this was when you had to drive through Boughton and Dunkirk before you even got to Canterbury and we had taken about 5 hours so far with the traffic and by the time we got to Folkestone we had missed the ferry that night and had to wait for the morning boat, none of the ‘the next ones in an hour’ in those days. Customs paperwork details I can’t remember, we are talking nearly 40 years ago but I think we had an agent to sort it out, anyway we got the ferry and disembarked in Boulogne muddled though French customs and made our way out of the docks thinking must remember to drive on the right.
At the second set of lights we had to stop and at this point Robbie must have thought he was driving a 100 ft artic as I was following that closely, then we headed off on the National 1 towards Paris; after passing through Abbeville we arrived in Beauvais where we stopped for diesel in a Shell garage as we used Euroshell, imagine my surprise when two lads jumped out of the passenger side of Robbie’s truck, apparently they were French students who had been trying for a lift to Paris at afore mentioned lights in Boulogne and said they would show him the way, and there was me thinking he must have a bloody good map to find the way so easily.We dropped them off just south of Paris after our first encounter with Le Periferique and headed towards Lyon.
Late afternoon we arrived at Macon Nord services where we had a coffee and settled down to spend the rest of the weekend as we knew we could’nt drive until 10pm sunday when several of Howells and Reavells trucks pulled in, asked us where we were going and persuaded us to go with them to a small Routiers known as the Bakehouse (as I have mentioned as being the first one I ever stopped in on a couple of other threads) and they would guide us over the Alps into Italy on Sunday night. After being introduced to the delights of a French Routiers and a certain amount of vino along with a trip down into St Cyr where there was a fair on the sunday, we left at 10pm to do a couple of hours towards Italy, parking up somewhere near Chambery. We set off the next morning and passed through Modane heading for Mont Cenis, thrown in at the deep end but I did’nt know any better then, we did the French customs on the top and I thought the road had’nt been to bad up to that point until we started to go down towards the Italian Dogana with the switchback hairpin bends. After the Dogana had been dealt with I tried to follow the H & R lads but they were lightly loaded for the Ollivetti contract they had and I was loaded with two MF diggers around 13tons so no chance but did manage to overheat the brakes by the time I got to the bottom so I had to sit in a layby till they had cooled down sufficiently to carry on, lesson learnt.
I was clearing customs in Novara and the same agent was supposed to be arranging my backload but unfortunately the reload dept had no knowledge of my truck so the boss asked me to see if I could find a load back with someone else. After I had tipped at a MF dealers down in Reggio Emilia I bumped into one of the H & R drivers on a services who suggested that I could get a load out of Phillips washing machines near Bergamo where he was loading; after confirming this was ok with the boss I loaded there and had an uneventful journey back, this time over the Blanc doing both Italian and French customs at the top as neither Aosta nor Cluses were customs ports at that time and shipped back on the old Seagull line from Le Havre to Southampton where the load was delivered on the friday.
All in all the job had taken a week not including the sunday off at the Bakehouse and convinced me that international driving was the life for me and the rest is history.
Late afternoon at macon nord eh Chazzer you must have had a good motor, from Calais to the Bakehouse was always aminimum of 10 hours actual driving time never mind from Boulogne.Ah well think i ll go and watch Smokey and the Bandit regards, Crow.
Perhaps I should have put evening so as not to upset Mr Crow but don’t forget there were no limiters in those days and we were probably running between 60 and 70 mph, me just to keep up with the other lad, and we had come off the boat around 7 am. We just thought it was’nt a problem to be driving at those speeds at the time, in fact I remember being pulled up by plod whilst trying to keep up with Stan Bourne who later went onto H G Browns doing 75 and he was pulling away from me. There were’nt any tachographs in those days so I told them the speedo was broken and I was just following the other vehicle who had cleared off, and I think the fine was about 60 ff so nothing really.
NMM, How old was you when you did this first trip?
Same age as I am now Chris…twenty one
newmercman:
Same age as I am now Chris…twenty one
Hullo you two,
Do pay attention lads, Charlie has just told you, he was 23 , I say 23
Cheers, Archie.
ChrisArbon:
NMM, How old was you when you did this first trip?
I was answering this question Archie, do pay attention old chap
newmercman:
ChrisArbon:
NMM, How old was you when you did this first trip?I was answering this question Archie, do pay attention old chap
Hullo,
Either I,ve had too many Pivos tonight or I,m losing my marbles. Chris was asking Charlie how old he was when he did the trip to Italy. Yes ?
You then said the same age as me 21. Yes ? So in fact was referring to Charlie being 21. Or that is how I read it.
If you read Charlies first trip again, he very clearly says he was 23 at the time… 
O bugger I,ll pour myself another Pilsner Urquelle, who cares anyway. Bloody Hell Charlie you,ve got me into trouble again. 
Cheers, Archie.
Oh dear, oh dear, SORRY NEWMERCMAN, I,ve just read this lot again and did,nt see that Chris had put NMM, I stand corrected, now I,ve got to open another of this ,orible Hungarian Plonk. 
If you haven’t already lost the will to live, here’s the next installment…
So here I am in Bassano del Grappa, I had unloaded on Monday, done a few hours up the road and stopped for the night. The next day I had made my way up here, but it was after Midnight when I arrived and my instructions were to call in on Tuesday morning. So after a nice meal in a little pizzeria I had found with enough room to park outside, I went to bed. On Tuesday I wake up and go for the first of the day’s Latte Macchiato, in the bar I use the payphone to call the company that’s loading me, they give me directions to their warehouse and I head off to see what’s next. The warehouse turns out to be smaller than I was expecting, it was an old abattoir, although that was a long time ago, I looked around for the office, but it was nowhere to be seen. Just then a seven series BMW pulled in and a bloke straight out of the Godfather gets out and heads in the direction of the big Daf.
Oh my God, here we go, I thought, but then the bloke started smiling and held out his hand, with some trepidation I stuck out my hand and Mr Mafioso introduced himself as Pierro, the boss of the firm that was loading me. My breathing son returned to normal and he beckoned me to his car and in broken English explained that the offices were on the other side of town and he would take me there. My heart started racing again as I got in the car, but I reckoned that as it was a left hand drive car, I could get enough power behind a right hander and yank the handbrake up and get out sharpish if he tried any funny business, unless he pulled a gun!
My paranoia was compounded as we pulled up outside an apartment block, he parked the car and we got out, I followed him up the stairs to the first floor and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the name of the company on a brass plaque on the door. My day was soon to get a lot better as once inside the office I saw that it was full of young, very fit, Italian birds, crazy, noisy lunatics they may be, but for a young man like myself, it was as close to heaven as you can get. I would’ve been slapped black and blue if they could read my mind!
One of the ladies, a slightly older one in her mid thirties introduced herself as Josie, she spoke perfect English, but with a ■■■■ accent, not quite Italian though, it turned out that she was from Montreal, Canada, but had moved to Italy to study and stayed, from what I had seen and experienced so far, I couldn’t blame her, I was falling in love with Italy, Italians and the Italian way of doing things, which so far I had worked out to be doing something as fast and as loudly as possible or doing absolutely nothing at all, there’s no middle ground whatsoever, they’re all or nothing.
Doing nothing was not on my agenda though, I had a collection to do in Carbonara, which was in the next province of Treviso, not too far away, but I needed to get my skates on if I was going to get loaded there and then on to my next collection in Piovenne Rochette, which was in the opposite direction and in the province of Vicenza. I got directions to both and the boss man took me back to the lorry. I filled out a tacho and off I went. It was a very nice drive, the roads were big enough, but only just, especially in the towns and cities I went through, the directions were spot on and I was soon at my first collection.
I was loading boxes of fancy carrier bags and they filled up the step on the trailer, the weight was about seven tons, so I had plenty of capacity left for the next collection. An hour or so later I was loaded and on my way, I retraced my steps, went back through Bassano del Grappa and on to Piovene Rochette, here I was loading pallets of rolls of film, it was going to a pharmaceutical firm, something to do with the manufacture of sticking plasters. During loading I was given a message to call Josie. I used the phone in the office and she asked me if I would also pick up some other stuff while I was there and take it back to their warehouse for them. This is highly frowned upon as it is cabotage, I brought that up, but was told that it is not a problem, nobody will find out. Eager to please I did as I was asked and when I returned to the warehouse the bloke on the loading dock called me over and handed me an envelope. I opened it and inside was a nice crisp 50,000lira note, not bad, I’d be making a point of offering my services again at those rates.
The extra pallets I had collected were taken off and I was given instructions to collect some more stuff the next day, this was a change of plan, I was expecting to be on my way tonight, but I was once again introduced to the Italian way of doing things. The loading point was a factory a couple of hundred yards away, so I stayed on the loading dock and went for a walk around town. Oh my God, this little city was beautiful, it was picture postcard Italy, I wandered around and found a restaurant for some dinner, and boy did I get a dinner, it was amazing and best of all it came with a bottle of red wine. I had already developed a taste for red wine after my weekend with Jack, so I had a good gargle and staggered back to the lorry late that evening.
I awoke the next morning with the mother of all headaches, it wasn’t helped by the red hot sun coming through the windows or the fact that in my drunken state I hadn’t managed to undress myself or close the curtains. I quickly looked in my wallet to see the damage done the previous night and was pleasantly surprised to see that I hadn’t spent anywhere as much as the headache made me think I had. It was time to get moving, so I set off the few hundred yards to the factory, not even bothering to close the rear flap on the trailer.
Next door to the factory was a bar, so I sneaked a quick Latte Macchiato in before I booked in. It did little to stop my headache, but tasted as good as usual, so I felt a little better, for a few minutes anyway, my day was about to start in earnest and after backing into the shed to load, I had to strip down the trailer to load some machines. As it turned out it was not as bad as I thought it would be, the machines were going on the back of the trailer, so instead of a full strip out, I only had to open about 20ft of trailer, the crane operator hooked onto the tilt cover and pulled that back with the jib, so I only had to take out the roof bars and superstructure of the last two bays in the trailer.
The first of the machines went on and the loader jumped into the trailer and nailed some chocks to the floor to secure the machines. The last few machines were still getting their finishing touches when it all started to go horribly wrong, there were some very important components missing from the parts store and they could not load the machines without them. I was told to rebuild the trailer and pull out into the yard. This coincided with lunchtime, so I did a quick cover up job and joined the loader in the staff canteen, a nice dinner got rid of the last of my hangover, but a bigger headache was heading my way, although I never knew it at the time.
The headache turned out to be that I would have to wait until the missing parts arrived and were fitted to the machines before I could get going. The machines were very expensive robot type things and they had to be in England as soon as possible. I was told to go to the company offices, which were a short walk around the corner. On arrival I was told that I wouldn’t be leaving until Friday now as the machines would not be ready until then.
Oh whoopee doo, more hanging around, here I am stuck in a foreign country on my own and with no idea what to do or where to go. To say I was ■■■■■■ off was an understatement. Luckily I was still being paid, I was on a set wage per week, so it didn’t matter if I was working my nuts off or sitting on my arse doing nothing all day, I was earning the same amount. That amount had risen by 5oquid a week now I was an international driver too, so being twenty one I did the only thing I could do in the circumstances and went on the ■■■■.
After that morning’s hangover I decided against the Vino Rosso and stuck with the devil I knew and loved, ice cold beer, the perfect drink on a warm summer’s day, I had some dinner too at some point, although I have no idea what or where as I was on a mission and have no recollection of the rest of the day. I had taken the precaution of closing the curtains on the Daf before I went out and was dressed in shorts and a t shirt, so it wouldn’t be a problem if I was unable to undress myself when I got back home that night.
On Thursday I awoke shortly after lunchtime, I had managed to get undressed and I still had a decent chunk of change in my wallet, my head was a little heavy, but nothing like the previous day’s wine induced throbbing, so I set off in search of a Latte Macchiato. I went to the café/bar next to the factory I was loading from and decided to pop in to see what was happening, the news was the same as the day before, domani, domani. The most common phrase I’d heard so far in Italy. I decided to go easy today, not that I wouldn’t have a few cold ones, but not as many as the day before, I wanted to hav a wander around the town and see the sights properly.
So that’s what I did today, just wandered around, window shopping and eyeing up the crumpet, I had a nice late lunch in a little café/bar and even had a Coke to wash it down. I spent the rest of the day in the cab reading a book and generally lazing around before turning in for an early night.
The following day was time to get out of there and make my way home, but first I had to get the trailer stripped down again, this was a five minute job as I had only done the bare minimum in putting it back together. I spent the rest of the morning drinking Latte Macchiato and lounging on my bunk. Just after lunch I felt some movement and jumped out of the cab to see a new machine in the trailer, at last I was making progress, I’d soon be on my way.
In no time I was loaded, had the paperwork in my hands and was back at the warehouse, here they added a few cartons of groupage to fill up the empty space in the trailer and then Josie from the office turned up with a massive envelope full of paperwork. She told me that I had a choice of Customs to clear on the way out, usually it would be Vicenza which was just down the road, but as it was now late afternoon I had missed that, so the choice was between Novara and Vercelli the following morning. I elected for Vercelli as it was closer to the border with France and would leave me a little bit less to do once cleared. I was also given a Mont Blanc tunnel ticket and a voucher for the ferry from Calais. I phoned the boss back in London and told him about the tunnel ticket, he asked me to check the T-Forms as the route I was to take would be marked on them, as he expected I was indeed coming back over Mont Blanc.
I wasn’t that bothered about coming back that way, for one I had heard loads of stories about the Blanc and wanted to see it for myself and secondly and most importantly, jack had told me it was the boy’s way and I was very much still a boy, that suited me just fine! First I had to get to Vercelli and do customs, I took the little roads back to Vicenza where I picked up the A4 which would take me all the way there, passing through places with unpronounceable names was quite a buzz, some places I had heard of, like Verona and of course Milano. I drove on with the sun going down in front of my eyes, thankful for the ridiculously low windscreen in the Daf as it shielded my eyes from the glare.
I stopped along the way in a service station and had a bite to eat, it was remarkably good and not at all what I was expecting, I followed it with the obligatory Latte Macchiato of course. The sun was well below the horizon when I pulled off the Autostrada and followed the helpfully placed signs to the Dogana (customs) I found somewhere to park and settled down for the night.
Early next morning I was awoken by the alarm clock, the gates were not yet open, so I sat around waiting for signs of life. I didn’t wait long until a bloke in a fancy uniform opened up the gates and then it all went mental, I heard a lot of revving diesel engines, then there was a big cloud of dust, some blaring of horns, a lot of shouting and then it all went quiet again. I made my way into the compound and was followed by an English registered Scania. By chance the other English driver and I were using the same agent to clear our loads, so we got talking in the corridor outside the office.
I was quite pleased to bump into this driver as I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing, he looked pleased to see me too, we put our papers in and carried on chatting in the café next door over a Latte Macchiato. He introduced himself as Graham (Bloxotric off this site) and during the conversation I asked him which way he was going home and was relieved to hear that he was also going via Mont Blanc, my plan was to follow him so I never made any big mistakes or get lost. Fate had other ideas though…
It turned out that he was also on his first trip, so it was going to be a case of the blind leading the blind, just my bloody luck!
Chazzer you are of course right no tachos individual control book with for we Brits a280 mile limit, that encouraged a loty of fiddling my ex Sammy Williams Scania did nt even have a tacho fitted. Speed limiters came about after a horrific bus crash going down Besse in direction of Chalon killing alot of French school children. Don t understand why you used Vercelli instead of Novara we ll put it down to inexperience and you must have been awash with Latte Machiatti , regards Crow.
Vercelli was very quick import and export. Signor Rizzotti being the best, 30mins papers in hand for export without any pre-notification.
Equitran:
Great reading this, looking forward to the next instalment, Daf 2800 was the first proper truck I bought as well after being seriously impressed by the 3300 I’d driven on the Coke contract for BRS, engine blew on M25 one Sat morning and the guy who towed me in bought it from me for £200 more than I paid
.
Good Memories
I was going to do a similar write up to a baptism of fire, but then realised I had already done one
Even NMM commented on this trip when he had to take a head gasket to Jack.
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=70329&hilit=frag+brindisi
I will have to do a story about my days in the Transcon and later the several DAF lorries I owned
It will be entitled Green Card with a Yugo border guard rolling his rrr’s
Behave Gazzer no Italian Doganas were very quick certainly not Vercelli your last resort on a saturday was Cenda at Aosta. 10 yearssolid on Italy from Aosta to Reggio Calabria, Ventimiglia to Trieste tut Italia every town with a Dogana and some that had nt. Crow.
Got to agree with you there Crow, there was, in my experience, no such thing as a fast clearance in Italy, even when clearing on site at customers the import was never cleared until lunchtime and the exports were never cleared until the late afternoon and as an Englishman you could guarantee to be the last one through the exit gate
Nice one Mark.
I regret turning down a trip to Italy out of North Devon Meats back in 1990/91.
However, that load was hi-jacked, but the driver was ok. I had got settled in to running France and Spain, Italy sounded a little more exciting though, especially the tunnels and more so the women.
Had I stayed on the road I probably would of made it there, but spent the last nine months in the office, prior to immigrating.Sounds as if I missed out here! Great read, keep it up mate.
Regards Paul.