robert1952:
Appeal: a lot of you ex-North Africa drivers are enjoying this site. I know this because people keep emailing me! But do get your happy snaps and a few memories on here. I know some things don’t have to be said - so don’t say them. Also, I also know from experience that all that cowboys-and-indians stuff mixed in with a fair bit of James Bond driving at 2:00 in the morning on Takkadoum with herberts climbing up the side of your cab, hanging on the mirrors, cutting your air-lines on the move, smashing their way into the trailer; mobbing you with motorcyles and forcing you to drive up the wrong side of dual-carriageways and roundabouts to escape you; fights defending your back doors - every single trip, year after year - is met with disbelief. Like you lot, I don’t even attempt to recount these stories because no one believes them and thinks they are a load of bull. So we never tell them. Fine: the same happens in war. But we can tell the ordinary stuff. We are a generation of North Africa drivers for whom Tangier port with its character, its mafia, its civilised yacht club with beer and its marauding hoards of wannabe stowaways no longer exists. It’s gone forever chaps. So are the old routes we used to take to Casablanca, Fez and all points south before the motorways came. Peanut hill. Watermelons by the beach before you hit Larache. ‘Last basket…’ A sailing ship off the old shoulder in Tangier. The Marco Polo. Seamen’s mission, Casa. Think, boys, think. Drivers have already gone: Happy Dave, Stuart (‘the animal’), Billy King, Allain, Jogger John… Don’t leave it too late! Every driver is now a happily married grandfather so no need to rock any boats. The life-and-death adventures we can keep among ourselves - no body ever seems to understand those anyway. So let’s feed the punters with a diet of truth about the happy party side of that life, in which we all knew each other, no matter what nationality, because we were all regulars on the North Africa Run. Robert
It wasn’t just North Africa that was like that Robert. I had a few adventures with out even leaving the UK, however some of the things that I experienced over seas was remarkable.
To everyone on here I think it’s imperative that you tell your tales. What ever you do don’t hold back on them. I know there are many on here that can write fantastic accounts with in depth details of what they went through, but no one should should feel they can’t contribute something even if it’s just s few lines here and there. After all they if they can’t relate an adventure here to fellow driver than who can they relate them to. Please don’t take your stories with you, it’s our history and if you don’t tell it, then it’ll just fade away. We were all part of a very unique part of time and history, that will never be repeated, and not just on the North Africa thread but all the other threads and subjects as well.
One of the things that got me was when I started Inter-stating here was that I could go 5- 6000 k’s traveling 900+ per day and there wasn’t any kind of customs officer or official to bribe in sight. 6 days hard drive in any direction and the people spoke the same language and used the same money.
Even in America, when I was there there were often state line inspection station which made if feel a bit like you were going somewhere different.
robert1952:
Cultured drivers on North Africa work didn’t stop at the Posh bar on the Pride of Bilbao: oh my word no! I remember one morning - it would have been in 1998 or 99 hitting the main road to Tangier having loaded in Sale. By sheer coincidence five drivers who had loaded in other cities like Fez, Meknes and Casablanca all converged on the same stretch. Furthermore we were all driving for Breda. Roger Barnard (‘big roger’) was at the front. The CB crackled: ‘Narrow in the rapids, five letters.’ He’d got a crossword spread out on his steering wheel. All the way to Tangiers port - a full morning’s shift - we unravelled that crossword between us by CB. It was fantastic. Robert 0
my record was casa to tangier 3hrs 35 minutes 1998 , had some good laughs on that motorway
You’ll remember that the motorway only went as far as just south of Larache in those days, so it was still a fair old punch up the old ‘national’ to Tangiers via Assila. The road that joined the end of the motorway with Larache was always lined with dozens of melon stands. If I wasn’t in any hurry I often missed the motorway altogether and went on the ‘national’ via Souk el-Arba’a. Same with Fez, even after the motorway from Rabat opened I sometimes used to take the parallel ‘national’ or even go the wibbly-wobbly back road from Kenitra truckstop via Sidi Kacem. As everywhere in the world, they had more ‘heart’ than the motorway, with all the goats, the donkey carts and the smoke from cooking-fires blowing across the road. The Casa motorway was useful though. Robert:)
harry:
You say Alain has passed? Alain Un or Deux? Un was the mustache Ex-Foreign Legion Military Police Sergeant,used to do Casa to Moscow regular.
It was Glyn the Belgian Breda driver who told me about Alain. I met him by chance at a routier-stop in France after Breda had finished. Apparently, he had spent the weekend with Alain having a beer and catching up on old times. When Glyn left, they shook hands on the door step and Alain keeled over with a heart attack. Glyn was still quite shaken when he told me.
I remember Alain’s last Morocco trip. He told me that a haraga (stowaway) had pushed him or shoved him and Alain had just stopped short of doing serious damage. He explained to me with more regret then bravado that in the Foreign Legion they were trained to react instantly and to take no prisoners; and that he was terrified that he’d end up in Moroccan nick for killing someone.
An aside here: we had all sorts claiming to be SAS, Legionaires etc on the Moroccan run and we soon learnt to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Alain was the real thing, and so were a small handful of others.
Glyn had been a commando man in Belgium. On one trip we had both loaded on the notorious Ben M’sik industrial zone in Casablanca; then picked up more goods in the dreaded Takkadoum industrial zone and finally in Tangiers. I’ve seen Glyn defend the back doors of his trailer with a stick against dozens of fit youths who seemed instinctively to know that he was more dangerous than he looked. Being a mere slip of a thing myself, and having spent much of my life in classrooms I had to rely only on my wits, on a bit of dare-devil lorry driving and some beguiling Arabic!
Later that trip I parked up with Glyn in Loja, in Spain, going home. ‘What a trip!’ he said. ‘I’ve had three fights’. So I said, 'Glyn, we loaded in the same dodgy places and dealt with the same scary people this trip; so how come we’re in two different films: I’m in Swallows and Amazons and you’re in Bloodbath Two! Glyn looked at me shrewdly, grinned and spread his arms; ‘Because i like a fight!’ he said simply. I fell about laughing and Glyn had to get me more beer to quieten me down. LOL. Robert
Glynn was a good mate of mine. His wife was a waitress and started to work on Sundays . Glynn knew she was having an affair. So one Sunday he said to his kids,‘Today we will eat out.’ And went to his wife’s restaurant, she wasn’t there. He suspected she was having it off with boss of the place so he called a meeting of all his old army mates. They went round to the restaurant ,beat up to owner and smashed the place to bits. Found out later that it was another guy that was doing the deed. The owner refused to press charges or let Glynn pay any damages. The club that Glynn was in had a bit of a rep in the town that Glynn lived!
Heck, this has got me going again. Do you remember Mildred the dog in the ‘import parking’ in Tangiers? She unfailingly howled loudly, every time the muezzin in the port mosque called the faithful to prayer, in revenge for the gassing of her puppies by the port authorities.
And what of the ‘export parking’ on a Saturday night? Haragas crawling under the trailers; customs men sealing and checking; agents and runners dashing from truck to truck with paperwork. The port was full of activity and the Spanish fridges were roaring into the fierce heat of the evening. Drivers stood about in vests and shorts clutching cans of beer in little groups or pairs. The more subtle among us would drink from Coke cans, so as not to upset the customs officials; these cans would of course be half-full of bacardi, but don’t tell anyone. Others sat in their cabs with their feet up on the steering wheel with the curtains half-drawn, watching previous episodes of soap operas on tiny, flickering screens recorded for them by their wives. A heady mixture of diesel, drains and seawater odours filled the air. Every now and then, a driver would give a shout and pull another stowaway from under his trailer, but the old hands would observe where they hid and have them removed later on the link-span by the police. By the time we got on a ferry, usually at midnight or long after we had already become de-mob happy and the free Meknes red vino collapso ensured a cheery crossing to Spain. It’s all coming back now… Robert
Do you remember those litre bricks of Don Simon table wine we used to buy in the Continenti supermarket in Algeciras (before it was taken over by Carrefore)? You could get 3 of those for under a quid in the '90s. I remember one gloriously sunny morning on the dockside in Tangiers waking in the ‘export parking’ to the sound of Cornish Jerry setting out the garden chairs for breakfast in from of our wagons. While he was frying eggs and bully-beef, he asked me about coffee and I produced a brick of Don simon and two glasses. He looked at the Don Simon and he looked at me and said, ‘It’d be f***king rude not to, wouldn’t it?’ And a very slow, blissful and pleasant morning ensued. Sorry I’ve nicked the picture of Cornish Jerry below from somewhere else on TruckNet but it deserves to be here with a story. Robert:)
In general, the more disaffected wannabe stowaways were much more likely to attack the wagon than the driver (either to break into the cab or stow away in the trailer) but there were some nasty incidents nonetheless. Many of these occurred late at night in Tangier. But in the early hours of Christmas morning '98 Tim, Punchy Pete and I (all Breda drivers) were parked outside one of the factories on Sale zone. Suddenly I heard banging on my cab door and there was Tim, face covered in blood - he had been attacked with an old sword and his nose was all over the place. Punchy heard the commotion and raced round to see what was up. Tim didn’t want to go to a local hospital, but just get to Tangier as fast as possible. He was badly shaken so we patched him up a bit, arranged for him to be met in Tangiers and I escorted him out of Sale and onto the motorway before returning to get some more shut-eye before dawn. I wrote this tale up in fuller detail in one of my last (or possibly the last) Long Distance Diary I did for TRUCK magazine. Breda wasn’t very happy with me because of the adverse publicity, though I did them the courtesy of showing it to them first. I remember spending the rest of that week parking up for a leisurely wait for a re-load outside the rural factory, Fit-Fashion. Robert
Who ever planned to have three trucks stuck in Sale waiting for reloads on Xmas day? I would have headed back to Tanger & Marco Polo until a load was ready. Deisel cost peanuts in those days & Xmas is a special time for long distance drivers - the boss seldom fires you. ( & with Breda it was flat money- no extra for Xmas)
harry:
Who ever planned to have three trucks stuck in Sale waiting for reloads on Xmas day? I would have headed back to Tanger & Marco Polo until a load was ready. Deisel cost peanuts in those days & Xmas is a special time for long distance drivers - the boss seldom fires you. ( & with Breda it was flat money- no extra for Xmas)
As I remember, we did get a token bonus for working xmas. All three of us had been multi-dropping round Sale all day, Punchy was inside the gates half-loaded and we were parked across the gates outside. I was empty and there was no back load ready and Tim was ready to go. We stopped together to see Christmas in, perched in my cab with the carols going and the wine flowing. It had been a very pleasant evening - a sort of in-cab Marco Polo job. A lot of the kind of freedom you describe had been curtailed by then and Breda had become one of the tighter ships. I was far more creative on DTS work!
To be honest, I used to volunteer to work at Xmas to get away from the manic version of it in UK. The following Xmas ('99)I took John Chivers’s wagon and DTS trailer down there while JC was celebrating the other JC’s birthday. I tipped and loaded in Tangier and just as the dark was falling I rolled into Offshore Parking, pulled the cab curtains and prepared to uncork a drop of Xmas joy. There was a banging on my cab door and one of the Dutch drivers (not garments, frigo I think) said ‘Come on, we’re having Christmas dinner!’ We went into the scruffy shed that passed for a bit of a cafe, and you could have knocked me down with a feather. There were tables placed end-to-end, heaving with roast turkey, bottles of wine and full of smiling German, Dutch and Swiss drivers (and a few local girlies thrown in for good measure). They had created their own full-on celebration with a little help from the proprietors. Needless to say, it was a cracking evening, all the more so for it being so unexpected. Robert
I remember being in the Seamen’s before one Xmas & Dutch driver Little Case came in looking all worried. He was empty & his wife was going to arrive in Tanger in the morning to spend Xmas with him. Holland had gone on holiday & put the Maroccan office manager in charge of things (young punk) who told him to stay put. I said if it was me I would get back to Tanger to meet the missus & then ring up the office & tell them he was in Tanger. He asked if he should leave his trailer behind ,told him to take the trailer because its unlikely they would send him to Casa to load. He shot off to Tanger ,met his wife & had a great Xmas & no come-backs. ( funny thing is that I told him if anyone asked who gave him permission tell them it was me. ) He was eternally grateful.
robert1952:
Do you remember those litre bricks of Don Simon table wine we used to buy in the Continenti supermarket in Algeciras (before it was taken over by Carrefore)? You could get 3 of those for under a quid in the '90s. I remember one gloriously sunny morning on the dockside in Tangiers waking in the ‘export parking’ to the sound of Cornish Jerry setting out the garden chairs for breakfast in from of our wagons. While he was frying eggs and bully-beef, he asked me about coffee and I produced a brick of Don simon and two glasses. He looked at the Don Simon and he looked at me and said, ‘It’d be f***king rude not to, wouldn’t it?’ And a very slow, blissful and pleasant morning ensued. Sorry I’ve nicked the picture of Cornish Jerry below from somewhere else on TruckNet but it deserves to be here with a story. Robert:)0
So was I,but I only met him the once coming back on the St Malo boat.A very entertaining character .Moved to DT I believe
I’ve never done North Africa,but John Mann drivers were starting to get a mmtm reputation for being the Southern Murfitts.I met a tablefull of them in the Shell routiers in Bordeaux,and was invited to join in. No aggro,no hassle-just a nice evening.I did catch a couple on the CB once going down to Portsmouth -Morocco1 & Morocco 2. Was that normal,or were they posers?
So was I,but I only met him the once coming back on the St Malo boat.A very entertaining character .Moved to DT I believe
I’ve never done North Africa,but John Mann drivers were starting to get a mmtm reputation for being the Southern Murfitts.I met a tablefull of them in the Shell routiers in Bordeaux,and was invited to join in. No aggro,no hassle-just a nice evening.I did catch a couple on the CB once going down to Portsmouth -Morocco1 & Morocco 2. Was that normal,or were they posers?
did my 1st ever run with jerry, lost count how many runs i did with him,they where p1ss taking (the norm lol)
There were some good lads on Manno’s, some of them ex-Middle-East men. It’s true they acquired a bit of a reputation towards the end, but as in all walks of life it only takes a handful of silly-billies to let the side down.
I was thinking about the stowaways again this morning. They were all disaffected youths from the poor areas of the cities and it was too easy to regard them as ‘the enemy’ because of the cost and hassle they caused when they fouled up a trailer load of garments, but they were just trying to escape impossible lives. One lunch-time I arrived at one of the smaller factories round the back of Takkadoum. I had a Davies Turner trailer and was already part-loaded. As I alighted from the cab a pack of big youths, 19-23 sort of age, emerged from nowhere. I nipped to the gates and banged hard while the youths gathered menacingly at the rear doors of my trailer. The ‘guardian’ opened the gate, took one look at the dozen or so youths and shouted ‘I’ll call the police’ and slammed the gate shut and locked it.
So I stood there in my little shorts in the baking mid-day sun surveying these sullen characters. I knew the police wouldn’t come for hours if they came at all. I didn’t dare go to my cab for fear of them getting in as soon as I opened the driver’s door. I didn’t dare open the trailer for fear of them stowing away in the load. So I relaxed, squatted down flat-heeled in the dust and casually produced a packet of Marlborough. The men came closer and I handed ■■■■ round. By this time I had picked up enough Arabic to start a conversation, so I asked what they wanted. It was like opening the floodgates. They squatted down round me in a circle and told me that there was no work, no hope of work, no hope of any kind of support, no hope of a proper life; and that the streets in Spain and England were paved with gold. I pointed out that there were people living in cardboard boxes under railway arches in Britain but they knew that there was no need for that if you played the system right.
When the police turned up, they found a little discussion group smoking their second Marlborough in the dust, and the youths just melted away. There you go! Robert
You may remember Maes trailers on North Africa work - and here’s a pic of me actually shunting one (lucky old Robert!). But the Maes trailer below was buried deep in the docks in Palermo, Sicily… Now I’ll bet that trailer has a tale to tell!
harry:
Moroccans ,except for the criminal fraternity are mostly non-violent.
That is correct. It is also why, when they cut my air-lines to disable my trailer, they wouldn’t bash me up when I climbed onto the cat-walk to repair the damage. Strange but true. Robert
As Jeff pointed out a couple of days ago, UK could be a bit hairy at times. Here’s a picture of brand new tilt canopy I pulled on traction - maiden voyage. I woke up next morning to find it in ribbons: the Tipton Tilt-slashers had done their worst. Robert
1998 
, had some good laughs on that motorway
) He was eternally grateful. 
Was that normal,or were they posers?
