Tapes where i come from, laced just refers to the whole tape/cord setup
ANOTHER COLD TRIP.
Fred had sub-contracted a trailer load of diesel engines to a small London-based haulage company. A month after crossing the North Sea to Belgium, the goods still had not arrived in Istanbul. News had just come through that the company had folded, with the trailer-load of diesel engines stranded on the Hungarian-Romanian boarder. Fred had no option but to send someone down to Nadlac to finish the job. With only Ron Carrick and myself to choose from, Fred gave the job to me. To help cover the costs. Fred arranged to me to take an unaccompanied Bulgarian trailer as far as the Czechoslovakian border. I shipped out of Felixstowe bound for Europort on the Sunday evening.
The Bulgarian registered trailer was destined for Tehran and was loaded with bandages, a frequent export to war-torn Iran. Willi Betz BV organised the loads carried by the state owned Bulgarian trucks — it was one of the communist country’s biggest hard currency earners. First thing Tuesday morning, I dropped the trailer off at Willi Betz’s depot, just east of Amberg. From there, I set off across Czechoslovakia and Hungary with just the tractor unit. All the border officials took great delight in pointing out that I had lost my trailer en route, but the guys on duty at Nadlac, on the Romanian border, knew just what I had come for.
The Archer trailer stood over to one side, still within the frontier compound, so it had not suffered any pilfering and even the Customs’ seal was in tact. At the front of the trailer was a ten year old Seddon Atkinson unit that had seen better days. Eight of the ten wheel studs on the offside drive axle hub were broken and the wheels had been pushed under the unit. The Romanian guards referred to the Sed-Atki driver as Dave; they spoke of him as a good friend. Dave had obviously got to know every one pretty well during the ten days that he sat with his crippled unit, before returning to the UK with a homeward bound British truck.
I put one wheel back on the Seddon Atkinson, but I could not get the engine to start, even with jump leads. In the end, I dragged the unit out from under the trailer with my Mercedes. The Romanians were keen to know what I was going to do with the broken down Seddon, as it was obvious I could not take it with me. I told them to look after it for me and that I would return, once I had an empty trailer, in order to take it back to Britain. There was not much chance of that happening as the non-runner was not even Fred Archer’s property, but my explanation kept the Customs officials happy. After getting the vehicle registration numbers changed on the paperwork for the load, I went round and doled out ten packets of Kent cigarettes to the border guards, in my gratitude for the way they had watched over the trailer. By midday on Wednesday, I was crossing Romania.
The tension between the Bulgarians and the Turks had been steadily rising during the first months of 1986. Things had come to a head during the time of my passage through the two countries. The Bulgarians were trying to force the ethnic Turks in south-east Bulgaria to take on Cyrillic names and renounce their Turkish heritage. While Turkey had given citizenship to an Olympic standard Bulgarian weightlifter who had recently defected. To aggravate matters, the Turkish prime minister had adopted the teenage strongman as his son, which had brought the situation dangerously close to conflict.
There was a great deal of military presence at the border, but the circumstances worked in my favour, as no Bulgarians were crossing into Turkey and no Turks were coming the other way. Mine was the only lorry at the tense, but normally busy, crossing point that had on one occasion taken me four days to negotiate. This time it took four hours. I was in Istanbul by midday Friday.
Just how desperate the truck factory was to receive their engines was shown when the shipping agent implored me to get over to Izmit that afternoon, for Customs’ clearance. He was grateful that I knew where to go and what to do, but it took me some time before I made him understand that I had only left England on the Sunday evening. When the agent realised I had come out to recover the trailer, only then did he stop blaming me personally for the late delivery. Three workers stayed on late at the truck plant and I was tipped on the Friday evening, which just goes to show how Turkish bureaucracy could be quickened up when it suited them. Even Fred was impressed with the speed in which I had done the job - it was the first time I had heard him say “thanks”.
With all the cold weather in late December and January, I had expected it to have warmed up a bit in Romania; but, if anything, it was colder still, as I made my way up the main road from Bucharest to the Soviet border. Just how cold it could get in the middle of February was shown to me one night when the Mercedes’ engine died, just north of the town of Roman. The German made anti-freeze fuel additive called “Long Drive” said on the bottle that it was good for minus 24 degrees centigrade. I could only presume that it was minus 25 when the diesel in the fuel lines froze and I came to a halt in the snowy wastes of the windswept Romanian plains. That night, I went to bed fully clothed, inside two sleeping bags, with my sheepskin coat over my head and I still shivered.
In the morning, I turned the engine over, but it would not fire. Careful not to run down the batteries, I left it and hoped the sun would warm things up. The sun never came through the clouds all day, so I had to resort to filling empty food tins with near solid diesel and lighting little fires under the lorry. At the end of the day, the motor still would not start, plus my camping gas bottle in the cab would not light because it, too, was frozen. Back on the bottom bunk, I shivered through another night, after chewing on a couple of rock hard Mars bars.
Day two was much the same as day one, with only the arrival of a couple of Bulgarian trucks, on their way back to Sofia from Kiev, to relieve the monotony. The drivers obviously thought there might be some handy bits and pieces to be had from an abandoned British truck, but they left empty-handed after boiling me some water for a coffee. The Bulgarians also gave me a swig from a spirit bottle that reminded me of Eau de Vie, as it burnt its way down my throat and into my stomach. My only other visitors were an old couple in a horse drawn sled. I swapped 20 cigarettes for a loaf of bread, but declined the offer to go back to their place. The little fire in the baked bean cans burnt for about three hours at a time, but had no noticeable effect on the frozen engine.
On the morning of the third day, I figured that the wind blowing underneath the lorry was taking most of the heat away from where it was supposed to go. To stop this, I got out the world’s most travelled shovel and built a wall of snow against the front and sides of the tractor unit. With the addition of a couple of extra cans, whose contents I had consumed cold, the little fires started to give off some perceptible warmth. When it was getting dark, the battery spun the starter for the umpteenth time, but with success, as the vee-eight came to life for the first time in 72 hours.
The fourth night was just as cold as the previous three, so I kept the engine running, the fires burning and the snow walls in place. From now on, I would only run in day light when temperatures were, hopefully, higher. It took over a week to go from Istanbul to Radauti. It was the best part of another week before the barbecues were ready to load. By the time I got back to the UK, I had been away for the best part of a month. What had started out with my quickest ever run down to Istanbul, finished up as my slowest ever round trip. As Fred Archer only paid you for the trip and not the time it took, I would have been better off staying at home.
AND THIS IS ME ! [circa 1982]
I said, “Thirty years from now; I’m going to post some of my stories on Truck-Net.”
She said, “You need your head examined.”
fly sheet:
Sir +:
OK then,a bit of a trivia question for all you ‘tilties’ .What 's the proper name for the securing strip
that goes through the eyelets keeping the back flap in place?I always called it a tape but dont doubt I’m wrong & if You know the answer to this then why is a suzie called a suzie?
Suzie is short for suspended or the name of the bird that designed them, it’s one of them anyway 
I always called them tape too
newmercman:
Tony, Carryfast means using the taken apart tilt as a flat and using the tilt cover as the sheet, in which case he is right for onceYou wouldn’t be able to use the tilt cover to hold much on as it has nowhere to tie off onto the chock rail, unless you use the eyelets and anyone who has ripped them open trying to pull a tilt over will tell you they wouldn’t be any good, as you well know. So the tilt cover lays over the load and the ropes and straps hold it all in place
I’ve done it myself, an old Belgian spread axle with a load of plasterboard, it had no rope hooks, so two straps per set and some origami at the front and the back and the job was a good 'un, well I say good, nothing fell off, but it would’ve been easier to load it on a built up tilt by taking both sides out than poncing around trying to to get the tilt cover to bend in the right places, the only saving grace was that it never rained
In Carryfasts posts on php?F=2&t=81921…etc he says that sheets are NEVER there to help secure a load on flat trailer,their only function is to keep the load dry,I think this is not correct,I think sheeting a load on a flat trailer (not a stripped down tilt) has two purposes,it keeps the load dry and also helps to secure it.Or have I got it wrong, carryfast.
Tony Taylor:
newmercman:
Tony, Carryfast means using the taken apart tilt as a flat and using the tilt cover as the sheet, in which case he is right for onceYou wouldn’t be able to use the tilt cover to hold much on as it has nowhere to tie off onto the chock rail, unless you use the eyelets and anyone who has ripped them open trying to pull a tilt over will tell you they wouldn’t be any good, as you well know. So the tilt cover lays over the load and the ropes and straps hold it all in place
I’ve done it myself, an old Belgian spread axle with a load of plasterboard, it had no rope hooks, so two straps per set and some origami at the front and the back and the job was a good 'un, well I say good, nothing fell off, but it would’ve been easier to load it on a built up tilt by taking both sides out than poncing around trying to to get the tilt cover to bend in the right places, the only saving grace was that it never rained
In Carryfasts posts on php?F=2&t=81921…etc he says that sheets are NEVER there to help secure a load on flat trailer,their only function is to keep the load dry,I think this is not correct,I think sheeting a load on a flat trailer (not a stripped down tilt) has two purposes,it keeps the load dry and also helps to secure it.Or have I got it wrong, carryfast.
Ask Bewick. He’s the Master Sheeter. He used to stand outside his yard, with a clipboard, marking his drivers out of ten. His tie had a dolly knot in it. (Just little joke, Mr. Bewick, Sir).
[zb]
anorak:Tony Taylor:
newmercman:
Tony, Carryfast means using the taken apart tilt as a flat and using the tilt cover as the sheet, in which case he is right for onceYou wouldn’t be able to use the tilt cover to hold much on as it has nowhere to tie off onto the chock rail, unless you use the eyelets and anyone who has ripped them open trying to pull a tilt over will tell you they wouldn’t be any good, as you well know. So the tilt cover lays over the load and the ropes and straps hold it all in place
I’ve done it myself, an old Belgian spread axle with a load of plasterboard, it had no rope hooks, so two straps per set and some origami at the front and the back and the job was a good 'un, well I say good, nothing fell off, but it would’ve been easier to load it on a built up tilt by taking both sides out than poncing around trying to to get the tilt cover to bend in the right places, the only saving grace was that it never rained
In Carryfasts posts on php?F=2&t=81921…etc he says that sheets are NEVER there to help secure a load on flat trailer,their only function is to keep the load dry,I think this is not correct,I think sheeting a load on a flat trailer (not a stripped down tilt) has two purposes,it keeps the load dry and also helps to secure it.Or have I got it wrong, carryfast.
Ask Bewick. He’s the Master Sheeter. He used to stand outside his yard, with a clipboard, marking his drivers out of ten. His tie had a dolly knot in it. (Just little joke, Mr. Bewick, Sir).
Actually,carryfast,it was the fly sheet that kept the loads dry.The fly sheet was never roped over except sometimes the back and front. Look at the excellent example in Cooperman’s picture of his roped and sheeted tilt.The reason for that was so that it could “fly,” when moving, the air would get underneath and baloon the sheet slightly so that no water would stay on the sheets underneath.
Sir +:
OK then,a bit of a trivia question for all you ‘tilties’ .What 's the proper name for the securing strip
that goes through the eyelets keeping the back flap in place?
Weell- I phoned the boss to get a replacement ordered,so he contacted the manufacturer and asked for a back flap tape thing.The answer was ‘Ah,you mean a bilata belt’. I have never heard that term before or since,and was just wondering
if any of you more experienced folk had come across it.
Sir +:
Sir +:
OK then,a bit of a trivia question for all you ‘tilties’ .What 's the proper name for the securing strip
that goes through the eyelets keeping the back flap in place?Weell- I phoned the boss to get a replacement ordered,so he contacted the manufacturer and asked for a back flap tape thing.The answer was ‘Ah,you mean a bilata belt’. I have never heard that term before or since,and was just wondering
if any of you more experienced folk had come across it.
The correct term is" balata",it’s made from a non-stretch kind of rubber obtained from the latex of some tree
Good morrow gents i dont know why any one would use a tilt for flat work a load of unneccessary work when the answer is use a taut liner which have been about for many years unless its the only trailer availiable.Tape or lace its the same thing plus the TIR cord all thru the eyelets and the laces.As to Carbons latest offering the problem with diesel is the paraffin wax this is a form of lubricant in the diesel UK disel winter grade has aCFPP cold filter plugging point of minus 15 C. out of civilised Europe different standards apply the Greeks were well known for adding water to the fuel you bought from their filling stations.One trip that stands out in my mind after filling at our favourite P oly kastro on the way home just after Skopje Ragnar is coughing and spluttering added 25 litres of petrol to no avail got the rig off the road in the middle of nowhere and forget about leaving the motor running its not having it. Following morning it s a lovely day not a cloud in the sky but about minus 20c .lit a fire under the tank very dangerous when you ve got petrol in, put the fire out quickly change the fuel filters 2 on an 89 rear of the engine dont throw them away ive only got 6 put them in a plastic bag on the floor passenger side next to the heater. I changed the filters about 8 times in the 12 hours it took to the Nacional. The next day no one is going anywhere its minus 25c and the place is full of Brits and others all with fuel problems even the ■■■■■■■ powered rigs those ■■■■■■■ return a lot of fuel which is hot but when de motor wont run nothing.Those of you who can remember the Nacional will know that there was a filling station there opposite this was parked a master race MAN We were having our breakfast when one of the Georges came running in shouting George, George fire .We all rush out but its not us its the master race MAN bloody hell this thing is well away.the Kraut of course wearing his foremans coat is wringing his hands he had lit a fire under the tank petrol in it with this result no one is going to put this out tyres explode fanning the flames Schmitz Cargo Bull trailer new by the looks of it well ablaze the load was tinned fruit peaches were flying about like discus, 20 minutes later fire brigade to late nothing left they re not bothered save the filling station. Moral to this story once your diesl has waxed up nothing short of more clement weather is going to unwax it Its pointless having agallon of fuel additive in your trailer box start adding it as you go and forget that brake fluid myth. The only way I got going was on the advice of an old hand name ive forgor Volvo metal canister spin on fuel filter take them off and carefully with a screwdriver puch holes thru the paper element dont hole the metal it wont filter the fuel properly but the engine will run properly and it did, good im off to Italy. CU later Crow.Of course the real answer is heated fuel circuit notably filters.
Forgive my ignorance here, but: why did someone not invent a fuel tank heater? A hose tee’d off the top radiator hose, returning to the bottom hose, with a pipe running through the tank (brazed in) for instance? There must have been loads of ways to do it, given that about two-thirds of the energy in the fuel ends up as heat anyway, after the crankshaft has had its share. Did any operators try something more sophisticated than relying on the driver to light a fire under the tank?
[zb]
anorak:
Forgive my ignorance here, but: why did someone not invent a fuel tank heater? A hose tee’d off the top radiator hose, returning to the bottom hose, with a pipe running through the tank (brazed in) for instance? There must have been loads of ways to do it, given that about two-thirds of the energy in the fuel ends up as heat anyway, after the crankshaft has had its share. Did any operators try something more sophisticated than relying on the driver to light a fire under the tank?
Some owner drivers did heat heat the tanks almost exactly as you described anorak,some also had like an immersion heater element in the tank,but for the most part it was left up to the driver to sort himself out.The problem was mostly with Greek diesel,the Scandinavians always had summer diesel and winter diesel,so no problems. I used to think the Greeks watered their diesel (probably wrong) but we seemed to get more problems there than anywhere else.I remember one driver who had modified the diesl tank so that the exhaust pipe ran through it.Some drivers said they liked ■■■■■■■ engines in the winter because the injection system returned a lot of warm duesel to the tank.
I remember that incident well crow.There was a brit driver there with a brand new Leyland -Daf.It had Leyland on the front grill and he was parked facing the German truck.I remember he was really peeved when the heat from the fire melted the black plastic Leyland badge,it looked like a painting by Salvadore Dali.
Another great story Chris keep them coming and it’s good to know that Geoff The Pidgeon keeps returning 
. Not wishing to hi jack the thread but if i can my two dimes worth 
.
Jazzandy:
Concerning rope hooks on tilts, if you think about it the tilt wire linked through all the eyeholes in the sides would have made it almost impossible to dolly up anyway which is why, when it was actually essential we chocked and nailed and used spansets.
However once again on standard loads especially casework and pallets it was not usual to tie the load down.
Hello Andy, there was always enough space to get a rope between the eyelets as you can see on this photo. We used to load bales of textiles from Courtalds at Greenfield near Flint mainly for Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Bitlis. We used to load the bales three high until the 38 ton limit came in and then we started loading them four high and if you didn’t put a rope over them, then you were asking for big problems.
Regards Steve.
Tony Taylor:
newmercman:
Tony, Carryfast means using the taken apart tilt as a flat and using the tilt cover as the sheet, in which case he is right for onceYou wouldn’t be able to use the tilt cover to hold much on as it has nowhere to tie off onto the chock rail, unless you use the eyelets and anyone who has ripped them open trying to pull a tilt over will tell you they wouldn’t be any good, as you well know. So the tilt cover lays over the load and the ropes and straps hold it all in place
I’ve done it myself, an old Belgian spread axle with a load of plasterboard, it had no rope hooks, so two straps per set and some origami at the front and the back and the job was a good 'un, well I say good, nothing fell off, but it would’ve been easier to load it on a built up tilt by taking both sides out than poncing around trying to to get the tilt cover to bend in the right places, the only saving grace was that it never rained
In Carryfasts posts on php?F=2&t=81921…etc he says that sheets are NEVER there to help secure a load on flat trailer,their only function is to keep the load dry,I think this is not correct,I think sheeting a load on a flat trailer (not a stripped down tilt) has two purposes,it keeps the load dry and also helps to secure it.Or have I got it wrong, carryfast.
A stripped down tilt is a flat trailer as in the photo of the example which fly sheet posted it’s just that in that case it was sheeted with sheets not using the tilt cover as in some cases but as I said it is possible to secure a load on a flat without bothering to use any sheets at all and the job of the sheets is just weather protection.
There’s been plenty of arguments on here about wether the sheet/s actually secure a load with some saying that the sheets are there to hold the load on and the ropes are there to hold the sheets on.I’d just answer it the same as in those previous discussions in that no one ever sheeted a load in a tilt or a curtainsider to help secure it. 
In those cases it only needs to be roped/strapped/chained etc.That’s because the tilt cover or the curtains do the job of keeping the load dry which the sheets do on a flat and the fact remains,as VOSA (rightly) says,the curtains on a curtainsider or a tilt or the sheets on a flat have no real load securing abilities in their own right and for all practical purposes a tilt or a curtainsider should be treated no differently to a flat from the point of view of actually securing a load on them and that is the job of the ropes/straps/chains etc.
mushroomman:
Another great story Chris keep them coming and it’s good to know that Geoff The Pidgeon keeps returningJazzandy:
Concerning rope hooks on tilts, if you think about it the tilt wire linked through all the eyeholes in the sides would have made it almost impossible to dolly up anyway which is why, when it was actually essential we chocked and nailed and used spansets.
However once again on standard loads especially casework and pallets it was not usual to tie the load down.Hello Andy, there was always enough space to get a rope between the eyelets as you can see on this photo. We used to load bales of textiles from Courtalds at Greenfield near Flint mainly for Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Bitlis. We used to load the bales three high until the 38 ton limit came in and then we started loading them four high and if you didn’t put a rope over them, then you were asking for big problems.
Regards Steve.
As I said we’re obviously a select few who roped a tilt.
But that issue of the tilt cord and cord seal must have caused a problem if/when the ropes needed to be retensioned on route doing international work 
.
geoffthecrowtaylor:
Good morrow gents i dont know why any one would use a tilt for flat work a load of unneccessary work when the answer is use a taut liner which have been about for many years unless its the only trailer availiable.
The fact is there’s not much,if any,difference between using a tilt or a curtainsider on most jobs like palletised side loaded freight but the tilt has the advantage of being able to be turned into a flat for overhead loading type jobs as in the case of jobs like steel reinforcing bars for the construction industry in which case the tilt had the versatility of being able to do the job of both a flat and a curtainsider.
Tony Taylor:
Hi carryfast,just read your comments on php?F=2&t=81921… ect.you state that a sheet on a flat trailer, or a tilt or tautliner is there only to keep the load dry and not in any way to secure it.I don’t think that is strictly true.We used to ship empty coca-cola cans from Skelmersdale to a new coca-cola plant in Italy.A full load floor to roof,front to back in a tilt,weighing less than 3tons.Assuming that it’s not going to rain and you are going to use a flat trailer without a sheet to ship the cans,how would you propose to secure the load?Put the slightest pressure on these cans and they are ruined.
Hello Tony, once again you have just reminded me of a couple of stories from over thirty years ago (keep it up mate) .
I was told to go to a place in Salford and pick up one pallet A.S.A.P. and to ship out straight away, the freight had been paid both ways and I was told that the bottling machine that I was going to collect would be finished by the time that I arrived at Krones bottling machines in Neutraubling in Bavaria.
I loaded just this one pallet of empty Heinekin tins which I wasn’t really happy about and I managed to scrounge a large sheet of plywood from their goods inward department. I put the pallet against the headboard on the offside of the trailer and wedged the plywood with a couple of tilt boards and a bit of dunnage that I found. Two days later when the customs man opened up the back of the trailer at the factory, I breathed a hugh sigh of relief when I took this photo, it certainly was a Heinekin moment 
.
As regards keeping your diesel warm over night, I did hear people saying that they put a twelve volt side light bulb on a wire in their tank although I never tried it as it must of created condensation in the tank which I think would of turned into water.
Geoff, I can remember being on the National in Belgrade one winter with Roy Kershaw and in the morning we all had to light a fire under our frozen fuel tanks. Soon after there was a loud bang as the fuel cap of a British owned Ford Trancontinental went flying through the air and landed in the woods. The driver had forgotton to take off the fuel cap and the tank was split at the seams, not only that he had already melted his plastic fuel lines 
.
Regards Steve.
Well Carryfast this is my last comment on the subject it is after all Carbons thread. No body in his right mind is going to use a stripped down tilt as a flat unless its on apermanent basis or just a one off in which case where do you put the sidegates uprights all the side boards rof frame etc. if its a flat load use a flat you can quite easily use a tautliner for rebar they all have a central sliding post. I can think of one Co. in the Bolton area who have a considerable fleet of flats used for steel fabs and other difficult loads they have problems getting and keeping drivers because so few can rope and sheet.Im Geoff the Crow Taylor thank you for listening.BTW why this constant reference to VOSA they and other cretins are responsible for the ever increasing un neccessary regulations which are killing the transport industry i have no intention of ever driving a wagon in the UK ever again.
Carryfast:
geoffthecrowtaylor:
Good morrow gents i dont know why any one would use a tilt for flat work a load of unneccessary work when the answer is use a taut liner which have been about for many years unless its the only trailer availiable.The fact is there’s not much,if any,difference between using a tilt or a curtainsider on most jobs like palletised side loaded freight but the tilt has the advantage of being able to be turned into a flat for overhead loading type jobs as in the case of jobs like steel reinforcing bars for the construction industry in which case the tilt had the versatility of being able to do the job of both a flat and a curtainsider.
The other fact is carryfast,for the kind of work that you were using a tilt for,we used Euroliners with a sliding roof,or if they came out after your time,you must be pretty old by now.