v7victor:
No comment on this one but its me a few years ago!!!
Hello Vic, was that photo taken at Andy Bartons garage at Throckley? cheers f7sidd
Yeah Sidd it was, and it was taken by Andy,he used to take photo’s and give them to you next time you went, hard job in them days i think he had 5 small underground tanks to top up. Johnnie, its an old photo but not that old i think it was about1985 Vic.
Vic I would say it was in the 90s as it is a “L” reg and please excuse the facetious comment it is senility setting in
cheers Johnnie
v7victor:
No comment on this one but its me a few years ago!!!
Hello Vic, was that photo taken at Andy Bartons garage at Throckley? cheers f7sidd
Yeah Sidd it was, and it was taken by Andy,he used to take photo’s and give them to you next time you went, hard job in them days i think he had 5 small underground tanks to top up. Johnnie, its an old photo but not that old i think it was about1985 Vic.
Vic I would say it was in the 90s as it is a “L” reg and please excuse the facetious comment it is senility setting in
cheers Johnnie
Your right, i was well out, but it was long time back,Vic
ESSO I dont know about any of you lads but there dosent seem to be many of there fuel stations about these days especialy around the manchester area, where have they all gone? They are either supermarket stations or Shell + still the odd small ones like Power etc.Whats it like in other parts of the country?
Stanfield:
Here’s one or two oldies
Shell BP Scammell which could have been a stable mate with the one posted earlier SXC341.432
ESSO I dont know about any of you lads but there dosent seem to be many of there fuel stations about these days especialy around the manchester area, where have they all gone? They are either supermarket stations or Shell + still the odd small ones like Power etc.Whats it like in other parts of the country?10
You probably can’t see the Esso signs now for the Tesco Express which most of them have become !
That Shell/BP Thornycroft, I had one exactly like that in the early 60’s, Thornycrofts own engine, bye hell it was a good motor, I’ve never forgotten it.
adr:
A proper fuel tanker, without a contractors name on the cab door!
I was a Shell customer for many years and when they started using contractors more and more (after the Shell drivers strike) The condition of some of the contractors tankers left a lot to be desired,so one day this bag of ■■■■ turned up in the depot with a full load,IIRC,it was a Hipwood and Grundy motor.So I tells the driver to sit there and don’t try to tip! I phoned the terminal at Stanlow and told them I pay top dollar for Shell product and they have the cheek to send it in a heap like this! Who knows it could have had Red or some other nasty product in it prior to loading our Derv! So I demanded a replacement load PDQ like now and on a Shell owned tanker! One came next morning on a brand new tank with the terminal instructor riding shot gun,for a long time afterwards we got pristine Shell tanks on every delivery!! If I was paying cheap prices for rubbish fuel fair enough but no way were Shell going to take the ■■■■!!! I had a similar run in with BP a few years later when they were using Tankfreight who had transhipped our load in their depot(not allowed) onto some ■■■■■■ subby and our fitters had to repair his PTO shaft before he could pump off.I was told that the Tankfreight MD was on his knees in the BP Head office begging to keep the contract as a result! Served the ■■■■■■■■ right was all I could say,but the company drivers at Shell and BP loved it!! Cheers Dennis.
The bottom picture looks like lorry driver of the year to me.
The driver has his shirt and tie on like a true profesional.
You can also see that the cabs rear windows have been blacked out.
If reversing that 6x4 unit wasn’t hard enough already.
Great pictures.
adr:
A proper fuel tanker, without a contractors name on the cab door!
I was a Shell customer for many years and when they started using contractors more and more (after the Shell drivers strike) The condition of some of the contractors tankers left a lot to be desired,so one day this bag of [zb] turned up in the depot with a full load,IIRC,it was a Hipwood and Grundy motor.So I tells the driver to sit there and don’t try to tip! I phoned the terminal at Stanlow and told them I pay top dollar for Shell product and they have the cheek to send it in a heap like this! Who knows it could have had Red or some other nasty product in it prior to loading our Derv! So I demanded a replacement load PDQ like now and on a Shell owned tanker! One came next morning on a brand new tank with the terminal instructor riding shot gun,for a long time afterwards we got pristine Shell tanks on every delivery!! If I was paying cheap prices for rubbish fuel fair enough but no way were Shell going to take the ■■■■!!! I had a similar run in with BP a few years later when they were using Tankfreight who had transhipped our load in their depot(not allowed) onto some ■■■■■■ subby and our fitters had to repair his PTO shaft before he could pump off.I was told that the Tankfreight MD was on his knees in the BP Head office begging to keep the contract as a result! Served the [zb] right was all I could say,but the company drivers at Shell and BP loved it!! Cheers Dennis.
I’m not sure who or how the story about the Tankreight MD would get into the public domain, but it certainly makes a good story !!
adr:
A proper fuel tanker, without a contractors name on the cab door!
I was a Shell customer for many years and when they started using contractors more and more (after the Shell drivers strike) The condition of some of the contractors tankers left a lot to be desired,so one day this bag of [zb] turned up in the depot with a full load,IIRC,it was a Hipwood and Grundy motor.So I tells the driver to sit there and don’t try to tip! I phoned the terminal at Stanlow and told them I pay top dollar for Shell product and they have the cheek to send it in a heap like this! Who knows it could have had Red or some other nasty product in it prior to loading our Derv! So I demanded a replacement load PDQ like now and on a Shell owned tanker! One came next morning on a brand new tank with the terminal instructor riding shot gun,for a long time afterwards we got pristine Shell tanks on every delivery!! If I was paying cheap prices for rubbish fuel fair enough but no way were Shell going to take the ■■■■!!! I had a similar run in with BP a few years later when they were using Tankfreight who had transhipped our load in their depot(not allowed) onto some ■■■■■■ subby and our fitters had to repair his PTO shaft before he could pump off.I was told that the Tankfreight MD was on his knees in the BP Head office begging to keep the contract as a result! Served the [zb] right was all I could say,but the company drivers at Shell and BP loved it!! Cheers Dennis.
I’m not sure who or how the story about the Tankreight MD would get into the public domain, but it certainly makes a good story !!
Wether it was true or not sniffy thats what the regional manager of BP told me when he contacted me personally,and at the time I wasn’t “public domain” either. Only a valued customer of BP that was spending circa £1 million a year with them! I realise that you were a Tankfreight employee which is I why I can understand your deafening silence critisizing the antics of said Tankfreight shower.Bewick.
I’m not sure who or how the story about the Tankreight MD would get into the public domain, but it certainly makes a good story !!
[/quote]
“Wether it was true or not sniffy thats what the regional manager of BP told me when he contacted me personally,and at the time I wasn’t “public domain” either. Only a valued customer of BP that was spending circa £1 million a year with them! I realise that you were a Tankfreight employee which is I why I can understand your deafening silence critisizing the antics of said Tankfreight shower.Bewick.”
[/quote]
No doubt the story is true then.
I’ll stand corrected, but are BP the last of the big traditonal fuels company still running with their own name on the door of the majority of the fleet, The same Contractor is still the only company still operating directly for them after the best part of 20 years. At the time you mention, with 1000+tractors an 1500 trailers, a large workforce of staff an drivers, its not want you want but things don’t always go the way you want them to,
I’m sure the person responsible for upsetting Bewick thought that it was the best way out of a hole at the time
Sniffy:
I’m not sure who or how the story about the Tankreight MD would get into the public domain, but it certainly makes a good story !!
“Wether it was true or not sniffy thats what the regional manager of BP told me when he contacted me personally,and at the time I wasn’t “public domain” either. Only a valued customer of BP that was spending circa £1 million a year with them! I realise that you were a Tankfreight employee which is I why I can understand your deafening silence critisizing the antics of said Tankfreight shower.Bewick.”
[/quote]
No doubt the story is true then.
I’ll stand corrected, but are BP the last of the big traditonal fuels company still running with their own name on the door of the majority of the fleet, The same Contractor is still the only company still operating directly for them after the best part of 20 years. At the time you mention, with 1000+tractors an 1500 trailers, a large workforce of staff an drivers, its not want you want but things don’t always go the way you want them to,
I’m sure the person responsible for upsetting Bewick thought that it was the best way out of a hole at the time
[/quote]
Thanks for your appraisal of the incident “sniffy” It would seem that you subscribed to the opinion that the customer and how they are dealt with is irrelavent! As Tankfreight at the time was still rooted in the “nationlised” past i.e.BRS I can understand where your coming from! However if i had been buying cheap fuel from,say, the Rotterdam spot market,which would have been of debatable quality I wouldn’t have been able to complain if it was delivered on a Tankfreight motor.But as I was paying premium price for a top product I think I was entitled to “draw BP’s attention” to the shortcomings/failings of their contractor! Obviously you hold the oppoisite view and my complaint should be classed as an irritant as far as Tankfreight were concerned! Sounds like they got away with murder to me.By the by,the best contractors that delivered to Bewick Transport over the years were the Philips ones,Stiller,Saddler? a.n. other,can’t re-call them all though.Only problem was you couldn’t get the same mpg out of Philips derv and to cap it all they dipped our bank account twice for the same load so they “cut their own throat”,but their contractors were their strongest point,as opposed to being BP’s weakest!! Cheers Bewick.
I phoned the terminal at Stanlow and told them I pay top dollar for Shell product and they have the cheek to send it in a heap like this!
This to me is where a lot of the contracting out idea falls down, because this is an example of a customer that doesn’t just want his fuel, he is willing to pay to have it delivered in a tidy wagon, driven by a smartly turned out professional & well trained driver that knows what he’s doing & isn’t a danger to allow onto your premises. I’m not of course saying that contract drivers are all incompetent tossers, most of them are excellent drivers, but the whole contractor label can have a huge difference to their commitment to the product & the company they are hauling for. Certain jobs in tranport have been termed “dead mans shoes”, jobs with not just a good wage but an excellent all round terms & conditions, driving for the Oil companies was always thought of as one of these jobs. I have driven fuel tankers, but the job I can refer to with experience of transfering to being a contractor was driving for Air Products, & being transferred to Wincanton when A.P. decided to contract out, & although I still enjoyed the job I know it didn’t feel quite the same walking up to my Sed-Atki Strato & seeing a Wincanton sticker on the cab door! When employed by A.P. you felt more a part of the company, & although now it sounds corny you felt as if you mattered, & I must say that A.P. was the best job I have ever had for the way you were treated! I was overtaken by a fuel tanker the other day, it was just plain white tractor & trailer & in need of a bloody good wash, it was on for Shell, I only new this because of the small print on the Hazchem board saying ON HIRE TO SHELL UK, the driver was wearing a white T-shirt & looked as if he should leave the windows open if sometime in the future he did drive through the wash cos he neede 1 too! As I have said on here before my Dads last 23 yrs before retiring he was on Mobil, I remember going with him or seeing him leave for work, alright dad was old school, but in the winter he wore a boiler suit with shirt & tie with his Mobil tie-clip (that I still have, along with the Mobil badge off his cap), his boots were always polished, he was always cleanly shaved, in the summer he wore jacket & trousers with shirt & tie, all the uniform had the Pegasus on the top of each arm on shirts & jackets etc, he looked like a professional, its a shame that these jobs now seem to have been de-valued! Regards Chris
Most of the big oil companies who contracted there work out in the 70s/80s to the likes of Tankfrieght.Wincantons.etc also asked that there drivers (those who wanted to) were transfered to the new contractor IIRC.I seem to remember the drivers getting redundancy payouts and then walking straight into a job driving the same lorry but for a new company.(Correct me if I am wrong.)Townson Tankers who I worked for at the time used to supply the likes of esso @ m/chester t/park with motors painted in there livery.Here are photos of just 2 of them
Having run a transport business during the period that the Oil Cos. moved from own account to mainly contractor deliveries I can honestly say that the move was driven more by the difficult labour relations rather than pure cost cutting as the savings were miniscule when measured against the sheer size of the Oil industry as a whole.If the various company drivers had accepted they had a job that was “second to none” and just got on with it there might still be a largely own account delivery fleet in operation which I for one would have preferred! But no,they niggled and “whined” continuously until the oil cos. said ENOUGH! and proceeded to divest themselves of their in house operations,and they also took the opertunity to “screw” the contractors who tendered for the work,and by all accounts are still being screwed even harder at contract renewal time! I re-call a similar set of circumstances in the early 80’s at Ross/Youngs Grimsby when they contracted out their trunking operations w from an in house fleet of 96 tractors they got the same work done with 48 contractor motors supplied by,Transfleet Services,Mitchell Cotts,Harris’s and—Bewick Transport.I wish I’d been able to run 10 motors on the Ross work,do I !!! Cheers Bewick.
Bewick:
Having run a transport business during the period that the Oil Cos. moved from own account to mainly contractor deliveries I can honestly say that the move was driven more by the difficult labour relations rather than pure cost cutting as the savings were miniscule when measured against the sheer size of the Oil industry as a whole.If the various company drivers had accepted they had a job that was “second to none” and just got on with it there might still be a largely own account delivery fleet in operation which I for one would have preferred! But no,they niggled and “whined” continuously until the oil cos. said ENOUGH! and proceeded to divest themselves of their in house operations,and they also took the opertunity to “screw” the contractors who tendered for the work,and by all accounts are still being screwed even harder at contract renewal time! I re-call a similar set of circumstances in the early 80’s at Ross/Youngs Grimsby when they contracted out their trunking operations w from an in house fleet of 96 tractors they got the same work done with 48 contractor motors supplied by,Transfleet Services,Mitchell Cotts,Harris’s and—Bewick Transport.I wish I’d been able to run 10 motors on the Ross work,do I !!! Cheers Bewick.
It happened in lots of other in-house fleets too Dennis. I remember how badly treated we were when we went into Croda Oils in Hull as subcontractors, the company drivers were paid something ridiculous like an hours pay for ever 23 miles. This was in the early 80’s The frozen fleets of Ross and Birds Eye were as you say, nigglers and whiners. They tried to stop the farmers shuttles going in with fresh peas, and they were guaranteed from field to freezer in an hour
Bewick:
Having run a transport business during the period that the Oil Cos. moved from own account to mainly contractor deliveries I can honestly say that the move was driven more by the difficult labour relations rather than pure cost cutting as the savings were miniscule when measured against the sheer size of the Oil industry as a whole.If the various company drivers had accepted they had a job that was “second to none” and just got on with it there might still be a largely own account delivery fleet in operation which I for one would have preferred! But no,they niggled and “whined” continuously until the oil cos. said ENOUGH! and proceeded to divest themselves of their in house operations,and they also took the opertunity to “screw” the contractors who tendered for the work,and by all accounts are still being screwed even harder at contract renewal time!
Hi Bewick.
I am one of those ex Shell employed drivers and still doing the same job today but for hoyer.
It wasn’t difficult labour relations that made Shell contract out their distribution.
Shell did a review of their business worldwide and decided that they had too many refineries in Europe.
hey used to treat the UK as a seperate business to Europe, they changed that and included the UK within Europe. Then they realised that they could close a refinery in the UK and still operate here.
They had a choice to make of which refinery to close. They chose Shell Haven refinery.
They told us drivers, that our jobs were safe. They were, but only for another year. Then they contracted us out.
They picked P&O Transport as their prefered contractor. Then sold them the Shell Haven site, keeping a percentage for themslves, to make into the largest container port in the UK.
DP world bought out P&O and they are the company currently transforming the old refinery site into that port.
We were just a small part of a much larger plan that has changed the petroleum industry in this country.
Still enjoy my job however many do not take as much pride in their job as they once might have.
I could go on all night about the industry but i’m off now to cry in the corner.
