Sorting through some old bits and bobs the other day,and I found an enamel badge that was given to me around 1978/9.
It is a badge of the 'Ross Drivers Club,Fakenham.
Around 1975-79 I worked in the coldstore at Smedley’s Foods in Faversham,Kent,loading the trucks for Fakenham.
They were a good bunch of guys,especially since they would go off to the canteen and leave me to shunt the trucks around the yard onto the loading ramp.(Wouldn’t get away with that in these day’s of health & safety,well I was only 18-ish)
They ran Scammell’s with the Michelotti cab,chinese six’s with the semi-auto box and Scammell Crusaders,as well as a lone AEC six-legger rigid,although the AEC was a rare visitor.
Then the Leyland Marathons started appearing,the first was a day cab which was based in London and double shifted.The day driver,Lol Galsworthy,would leave Hackney in the morning and deliver to the Ross depot in Brighton,and then come over to Faversham to load for Fakenham.
Bob (can’t remember his surname) would then take over at night and drive up to Fakenham to tip and load and return to Hackney.
Gradually the old Scammell’s were replaced with sleeper cabbed Marathons,although I do remember Lol coming in a couple of times in a rented Volvo F88,what a lovely motor that was.
As well as frozen foods,Smedley’s also did a lot of canned goods,and these loads were collected by the fleet of B-series ERF’s from Spalding and North Walsham,and very expertly roped and sheeted.
But the Ross guys were a good laugh,and years later when I’d started driving myself,I did a trip to Fakenham and saw some of the drivers from a few years earlier and they all remembered me,in fact Bob,the night driver from Hackney had even moved up to Fakenham.Though he himself said it was difficult to get used to living like a ‘carrot cruncher’. 