Russian Roulette

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

[attachment=1]Sov 2.jpg[/attachment
Carrying on with the Sovtransavto theme, I came across these photo’s which show the varying colour schemes used by Sovtrans. Originally all of their International trucks were painted light blue. I used to see them, in bulk, in Central customs, in Belgrade in the late 70s and early 80s. Then, when they began to buy Western trucks, the colour schemes changed. The old Volvo’s were orange and white. The newer models were all orange. The Mercedes first came home with the sandy coloured paintwork and then, around 1990 changed to the white and red livery.

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

Sovtransavto, the Soviet Unions State Transport Company not only ran trucks, but also fleets of coaches.
The coach in the picture was one that was used to carry Soviet tourists abroad.
I often used to see them parked outside of the Hotel Aero in Budapest.
Also, on the road inside Russia and at the Sovinteravtoservice Motels.

[tiptop495]

Hey,

Eric,

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

tiptop495:
Hey,

Eric,

Hey Eric. Those are very interesting
A bit of Sovtransavto publicity.
Thanks very much for posting them.

The pennant says " Sovtransavto Deutschland G.M.B.H." That would have been the company called Desotra.

Mick

[dirty_dan]

Hi! I live just by the road that goes to kapelskär if you are going west in Sweden or futher west to Norway. And in the last 5-10 years there been a large increas of russian trucks to and from the port. When it started it was mainly “sovato” trucks but now i see varius of companies and alot do them with fridges on but evan them old tilts. There are some really new units but then there are some old danish or dutch units aswell. But al and al there fleet isnt that bad any more.
Back in 2010 i was doing lowloader work to the north of Sweden and one sunday northbound in mid summer i saw 8 white and red sovato trucks parked up north of Gävle ca 200km north of Stockholm. On my way back wensday there were now 10 of them. One week later there were still there one my way up north. On my 3rd trip up they were still there,but on my way down i meet al of them going north. I tryed to talk to some of them but they were not interested…

Danne

[tiptop495]

Vodka Cola Cowboy:

tiptop495:
Hey,

Eric,

Hey Eric. Those are very interesting
A bit of Sovtransavto publicity.
Thanks very much for posting them.

The pennant says " Sovtransavto Deutschland G.M.B.H." That would have been the company called Desotra.

Mick

hey mick, you have right, here the other side.

Eric,

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

Dirty Dan:
Hi! I live just by the road that goes to kapelskär if you are going west in Sweden or futher west to Norway. And in the last 5-10 years there been a large increas of russian trucks to and from the port. When it started it was mainly “sovato” trucks but now i see varius of companies and alot do them with fridges on but evan them old tilts. There are some really new units but then there are some old danish or dutch units aswell. But al and al there fleet isnt that bad any more.
Back in 2010 i was doing lowloader work to the north of Sweden and one sunday northbound in mid summer i saw 8 white and red sovato trucks parked up north of Gävle ca 200km north of Stockholm. On my way back wensday there were now 10 of them. One week later there were still there one my way up north. On my 3rd trip up they were still there,but on my way down i meet al of them going north. I tryed to talk to some of them but they were not interested…

Danne

Hi Danne. Yes they had definitely improved the vehicles that they use. They don’t run around in the Maz and Kamaz trucks that they used to use. I wonder why they were parked up for so long ?

[tiptop495]

Dirty Dan:
Hi! I live just by the road that goes to kapelskär if you are going west in Sweden or futher west to Norway. And in the last 5-10 years there been a large increas of russian trucks to and from the port. When it started it was mainly “sovato” trucks but now i see varius of companies and alot do them with fridges on but evan them old tilts. There are some really new units but then there are some old danish or dutch units aswell. But al and al there fleet isnt that bad any more.
Back in 2010 i was doing lowloader work to the north of Sweden and one sunday northbound in mid summer i saw 8 white and red sovato trucks parked up north of Gävle ca 200km north of Stockholm. On my way back wensday there were now 10 of them. One week later there were still there one my way up north. On my 3rd trip up they were still there,but on my way down i meet al of them going north. I tryed to talk to some of them but they were not interested…

Danne

Hey Danne, most realy Russians are very closed people, especially at the Sovjet time, but till today it still takes
some time if they thrust you. the yought is more open today. That’s my experience, but find the White Russians more open, some Ukrainians I worked with, were even closer and had a very own thought even.

Eric,

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

A few more Sovtransavto photo’s to show their more up to date vehicles.

[tiptop495]

Hey, an other advertisement.

Eric,

[geoffthemeff]

Vodka Cola Cowboy:
0
My truck in the queue at the Belarus/Polish border coming back out of Russia.

Having been heavily involved with haulage to and within the ex-Soviet Union, I felt that now was the time to open a thread dedicated to those operations. Having had my book, “Vodka Cola Cowboy” published, which charts my time living in and operating my own truck from Moscow, between 1990 and 1995, I have received numerous comments from readers who are fascinated by those times.
Many of those readers are truck drivers, who either drove to Russia or are interested in the operations.

I drove to destinations such as Odessa, Yalta, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Leningrad and up to Turku in Finland. There will be other truckers who drove to destinations further East, such as Uzbeckistan and Kazakhstan. It would be interesting to read about their adventures.

So, come on and add to the thread.

Micky T.

Didn’t Ralph Davies do Chinese Border? I seem to remember reading Trucking International as a kid? Maybe mistaken.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

tiptop495:
Hey, an other advertisement.

Eric,

Hi Eric. That is a great advert. I like that one. All of the ad’s you have posted are very interesting.
Do you remember the Sovtransavto workshop at Zeebrugge?

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

geoffthemeff:

Vodka Cola Cowboy:
0
My truck in the queue at the Belarus/Polish border coming back out of Russia.

Having been heavily involved with haulage to and within the ex-Soviet Union, I felt that now was the time to open a thread dedicated to those operations. Having had my book, “Vodka Cola Cowboy” published, which charts my time living in and operating my own truck from Moscow, between 1990 and 1995, I have received numerous comments from readers who are fascinated by those times.
Many of those readers are truck drivers, who either drove to Russia or are interested in the operations.

I drove to destinations such as Odessa, Yalta, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Leningrad and up to Turku in Finland. There will be other truckers who drove to destinations further East, such as Uzbeckistan and Kazakhstan. It would be interesting to read about their adventures.

So, come on and add to the thread.

Micky T.

Didn’t Ralph Davies do Chinese Border? I seem to remember reading Trucking International as a kid? Maybe mistaken.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Hi Jeff. If you read through the earlier posts there are a number about Ralph Davies and Peter Gilder going to Kazak. Also Jeff Elliot, who drove for an Italian company. He used to tip on the Chinese border. You might find them interesting because I know that I did.

[dirty_dan]

Vodka Cola Cowboy:

Dirty Dan:
Hi! I live just by the road that goes to kapelskär if you are going west in Sweden or futher west to Norway. And in the last 5-10 years there been a large increas of russian trucks to and from the port. When it started it was mainly “sovato” trucks but now i see varius of companies and alot do them with fridges on but evan them old tilts. There are some really new units but then there are some old danish or dutch units aswell. But al and al there fleet isnt that bad any more.
Back in 2010 i was doing lowloader work to the north of Sweden and one sunday northbound in mid summer i saw 8 white and red sovato trucks parked up north of Gävle ca 200km north of Stockholm. On my way back wensday there were now 10 of them. One week later there were still there one my way up north. On my 3rd trip up they were still there,but on my way down i meet al of them going north. I tryed to talk to some of them but they were not interested…

Danne

Hi Danne. Yes they had definitely improved the vehicles that they use. They don’t run around in the Maz and Kamaz trucks that they used to use. I wonder why they were parked up for so long ?

Hi Mike! Yeah i wonder that to that was one of the reson i try to talk to them. But they didnt seem to be unhappy or so. Just a part of there job eh?

Danne

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

Dirty Dan:

Vodka Cola Cowboy:

Dirty Dan:
Hi! I live just by the road that goes to kapelskär if you are going west in Sweden or futher west to Norway. And in the last 5-10 years there been a large increas of russian trucks to and from the port. When it started it was mainly “sovato” trucks but now i see varius of companies and alot do them with fridges on but evan them old tilts. There are some really new units but then there are some old danish or dutch units aswell. But al and al there fleet isnt that bad any more.
Back in 2010 i was doing lowloader work to the north of Sweden and one sunday northbound in mid summer i saw 8 white and red sovato trucks parked up north of Gävle ca 200km north of Stockholm. On my way back wensday there were now 10 of them. One week later there were still there one my way up north. On my 3rd trip up they were still there,but on my way down i meet al of them going north. I tryed to talk to some of them but they were not interested…

Danne

Hi Danne. Yes they had definitely improved the vehicles that they use. They don’t run around in the Maz and Kamaz trucks that they used to use. I wonder why they were parked up for so long ?

Hi Mike! Yeah i wonder that to that was one of the reson i try to talk to them. But they didnt seem to be unhappy or so. Just a part of there job eh?

Danne

Yes Danne. We have all spent time sitting around. You don’t mind if you are getting paid enough. ha ha ha

[dirty_dan]

Hey Danne, most realy Russians are very closed people, especially at the Sovjet time, but till today it still takes
some time if they thrust you. the yought is more open today. That’s my experience, but find the White Russians more open, some Ukrainians I worked with, were even closer and had a very own thought even.

Eric,

Hi Eric. Yeah i think you got a point there. We have alot of ukrainians working constrution here and as you say they are more social and oppend.

Danne

[dirty_dan]

Here are a couple ive taken. The two Dafs were in Nantali in Finland. They stod there when i returned from Tempere were i had loaded a stonecruser back home. I was there 1400 and the ferry deparded ca2200. The curtins were drawn al day and when the ferry left they were still drawn…
The Scania was taken in Arboga in nowember in 2016.

Danne

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

Dirty Dan:
Hey Danne, most realy Russians are very closed people, especially at the Sovjet time, but till today it still takes
some time if they thrust you. the yought is more open today. That’s my experience, but find the White Russians more open, some Ukrainians I worked with, were even closer and had a very own thought even.

Eric,

Hi Eric. Yeah i think you got a point there. We have alot of ukrainians working constrution here and as you say they are more social and oppend.

Danne

Hi Danne and Eric. When I first went to Moscow in 1981, I had a week there and spent a lot of time walking around, site seeing. The Russians would not talk to you, if you were a foreigner. They were scared that the K.G.B, or K.G.B. informers would report them. The only people who would talk to you were the Hotel staff, etc, who were K.G.B. anyway.
When I went back in 1990 it was totally different. Gorbachev’s policies had made it possible for them to speak to you. Because they had not been able to speak to Westerners before they were keen to speak and find out about the West. Because most Russians did not speak anything other than Russian, when I learned to speak Russian I had some great conversations with them. Over the 5 years that I lived there I found out some really interesting stuff.

[jelliot]

Well Mr Vodka you certainly got the thread up and running… there have been quite a few Russian misfires on here over the years… Sorry to here about you illness…I hope you can get the most out of you time…

Like you, some of my ancestors seem to have had quit a colourful past and there are few wild tales going about…but… are they true ■■?.. None of them were ever written down, and I can remember that the tales being told about them when I was a kid have changed a bit compared to the tales of the present day…Sort of handed down Chinese whispers…Makes you wonder exactly what they did… If anything…That brought me to thinking it would be better for me to write things down while I still kind of remember them, so I started writing down my words a few years ago… I’d done a few articles for various magazines… and done the odd photo shot here and there when the pro photographer hadn’t bothered to turn up… I didn’t know how to put my story together… cause I have a habit of rambling of on a tangent from time to time …so I started at the beginning and worked on from there… Seemingly I could remember quit a lot from back then… couldn’t tell you what I had for breakfast this morning…

End result is about 965,000 words… and it was going to be a series of books…If it had been around 200,000 words and I had been offered a book @ 80,000 I might have gone for it… The problem was that when I was about 300,000 words I had a publishing house saying go for it, we’ll back you… I wanted to have most of it nutted out before I did the deal just in case I couldn’t finish it ( for various reasons ) I didn’t fancy handing back the retainer… Life got in the way and it dragged on I only had computer access a couple of days a month… yeh I know you can run computers in a truck but I was doing the best part of 80 hours a week, not including loading, brake downs etc… by the time I was happy with it the company had been taken over by another group who had a different business plan…
If I get it published or not wouldn’t make any difference to me… It’s not the sort of thing that would buy me private island in the Caribbean ( next to GS Overland ) I did it for future generations of my family… And that’s a genuine answer not some kind of Hollywood crap…There are various clips of it floating round on this forum… I gave an early copy of it Dave Mackie who was quit liberal with chucking it about, and slotting it in here and there… and I have even done a few stand alone cuts of it here and there…

Currently I’m looking at various delivery systems, other than published books… the lack of money they were offering got me thinking I might as well just give it away, so if I can just recoup a small amount, and have fun while I’m doing it, I may as well give it a go…

I haven’t heard from Dave for a long time, we used to skye a fair bit… there was a guy that had tales to tell… It would be sad if he passed on with out some kind of record of what he got up to … It doesn’t matter now Dave!!! they wouldn’t put you in jail for it… you can just say " it’s only a tall drivers tale "…may be Mushroomman would know where he is ■■

There’s quit a few guys on here that have done the book thing and I’ve read most of them… all of them are of good standings… and I’ve read all of them from cover to cover… some more than once… Like Uncle Bob said it’s an up and coming genera which one day may stand on it own…sort of modern version of old salty dog sea tales…However most of “them” were told in the penny dreadful’ s of the 1900’s
There was a time not so long ago when if you wanted to read something like this the only way it could get out there was for an established writer recognised by a publishing house to accompany a driver and milk him for stories… There are a few books like that and most missed the mark… A fleeting glance from an outsider is never going to get it…You have to feel the bumps and corners as you read… not be tortured by benign drivel spouted forth by a would be literary pajero…( See if that one gets passed )

I’ve ordered your book and am looking forward to reading it… hopefully both of them… from what I’ve read on here it should be good…

There’s certainly more trucks in the west then there ever was in the south east… Russian joke… Travant is the longest car in the world… 3 and a 1/2 meters of metal, rust and rubber… 50 meters of pollution…

How’s you Russian getting on now ■■?.. I’ve forgotten most of mine… I can still read the odd word here and there… and if I’m listening to it in a movie I can usually get the jist of what’s going on… but I don’t think I could have much of a conversation… Same as Italian…and Trukish

As for Russians talking to you, it took quit a few trips for us to get any one other than officials to talk to us… and even then suspicion would at the front of their minds all the time… even at the bottom of a 20 litre oil drum of home bru vodka thy were still very wary…

Out the west side of Perm can you remember the women that used to sell gum boots ( wellies ) at the side of the road. They used to bung one on the end of a stick or a small tree branch…The road side was littered with them for miles … It would have been funny if it hadn’t of been so sad…

Same sort of thing outside Volgograd but it was radios and cameras gear farther down…Factory workers sent out to get wages…

We pulled up in a town near Bishkek and shop keepers tried to buy stuff from us to put in their shops… they also wanted to by US dollars but the note had to be under 5 years old… They made some quit tempting offers, but we were talking to the fat controller in the Almaty rail yard one day and with out even bringing up the subject he told us that trading would not be looked on favourably…

Jeff…

[vodka_cola_cowboy]

Hi Jeff. yes. I don’t think that I would have wanted to cut down so many words to get to 80,000. The funny thing was that I had to go through it so many times, because towards the back of the book there would be a reference to something earlier. But that had been cut, so it did not make sense.

Luckily I was still using Russian up until 2010, so I still have a pretty good handle on it.

Hope that you like the book. Let me know how you find it.

Mick