pv83:
Read an article years ago about this man, I reckon he was the only one brave enough to do trips like that in a Renault Magnum…
Anyone ever met this chap?
pv83, Im guessing you are talking about a German chap by the name of Asia Tom? I remember the article (if it is the same one!) and he used to travel to the eastern part of Russia etc, hence the nick name!. I may be wrong but im sure he was actually posting on here for a short while once, that was a few years ago. I think some of our members have met him or run with him.
pv83:
Read an article years ago about this man, I reckon he was the only one brave enough to do trips like that in a Renault Magnum…
Anyone ever met this chap?
pv83, Im guessing you are talking about a German chap by the name of Asia Tom? I remember the article (if it is the same one!) and he used to travel to the eastern part of Russia etc, hence the nick name!. I may be wrong but im sure he was actually posting on here for a short while once, that was a few years ago. I think some of our members have met him or run with him.
Hi Guys
I remember Asia Tom, I took him down to Bahrain on his first Middle-East trip during the first Gulf war, dropped him off at Dammam and I continued to Doha, we met up again at Ramtha on our way home and ran back to Istanbul together. He was driving for Bayerlein. Thomas Wunderlich, really nice bloke. When the Kazakh and Eastern Russia took off he was on that run with a double drive Magnum. I often wondered what happened to him and I believe he is in Norway or Finland now.
GS
Jelliot:
Hi Mick, glad you liked it, hope it cheered you up a bit…
We were doing a safety thing at work a while back and the guy presenting it went on about lining up all the ducks in a row, and how if they all lined up it was pretty inevitable that something was going to happen… Just a little bit here and there, leads to a bigger thing and once that falls into place then suddenly your heading in the wrong direction…
I was looking back over it this morning and I’m still a bit 50 50 about it… thinking if it ever gets into print I might change it a bit or just drop it altogether. I still feel a bit betrayed by the second part, there I was starting to feel safe, and the rug got pulled…big style…I thing that part was scarier than the first part…certainly didn’t sleep to much that week…
Jeff…
I thought that it was excellent Jeff. But it is like everything when you are writing. You put bits in and take bits out, sometimes not sure if they are going to work in the overall scheme of things. But personally I think that it is a great story and you should keep it in if you can.
Just a quick reminder of what Russians like to do with their trucks.
But, it reminds me that during the period 1990 - 1995, there were three Western drivers killed in the Western Soviet Union. Each one of them was in collision with an unlit Soviet vehicle.
The first was an Englishman driving for a Dutch company, “Blue Star”. He was in an accident about 10 miles West of Smolensk, while heading towards Moscow. As he was on his first trip I did not know him. He collided with an unlit Sov’ truck, at night. He did not die at the scene, but passed away a few days later in Smolensk hospital. When I next passed the scene of the accident the vehicles had been removed, so I did not see how much damage had been done to his truck. However, Igor, my mate at the Smolensk Motel told me all of the details.
The second was a German lad driving a Wagon and Drag. He too was heading for Moscow and was killed in an accident just inside the Russian border near Orsha. I passed the scene, heading West on the following morning and did see his vehicle by the roadside. The cab was trashed completely. The culprit again was an unlit Russian truck.
The third was a Frenchman who was in a collision with an unlit giant earth mover, just to the North of Odessa. Again, I saw the vehicle, because it had been moved to a Police compound, which stood beside the road, at a Police post. Nobody would have got out of that alive.
Interesting to see that there were wide spread protest marches against corruption in Russia, over the weekend. Who would ever have dreamed that there was any corruption in Russia, Certainly not any of us who had any dealings with the Militias and the G.A.I.
And in Belarus aswell. Saw something on the news that some russian journalist had linked a load of very expensive properties and yachts to the russian prime minister
This was what I was used to seeing in Moscow, when they mounted the anti - terrorist controls in 1994 and 95. These were in response to the threat of terrorism from Chechnyans. It coincided with the beginning of the first Chechnyan War.
They would run the controls at night and stop all vehicles. I would always get a cab and trailer inspection. The controls unearthed loads of illegals, mostly from the Southern Republics, who had no right to be in Moscow.
pv83:
Read an article years ago about this man, I reckon he was the only one brave enough to do trips like that in a Renault Magnum…
Anyone ever met this chap?
pv83, Im guessing you are talking about a German chap by the name of Asia Tom? I remember the article (if it is the same one!) and he used to travel to the eastern part of Russia etc, hence the nick name!. I may be wrong but im sure he was actually posting on here for a short while once, that was a few years ago. I think some of our members have met him or run with him.
Thomas Wunderlich aka Asia Tom is in Norway and has been for a long time. Great guys to run with the Frank Ritter drivers but always took the long way to Uzbekistan adding a few days to the trip but a better road surface . Tom is on facebook and is a member of a few truck groups on there as well
Dnepropetrovsk was a strange place. I delivered there, to the tractor factory to discover that it had massive security, from the Russian Army. I then found that the outer part of the factory was the tractor plant, but the central hub was a tank factory, hence the security. Good job that I did not start taking photos. I would have ended up in Kamchatka, mining salt.
I also reloaded from Dnepro’ many times. The loads were zinc buckets and watering cans which were hand stacked in the trailer. They were destined for Woolworths, in the U.K. Loading was extremely slow and of course it was women who loaded all of the goods.
I worked in Dnepropetrovsk in 2003. The City was nick-named “Space City” and was the home of the Russian space programme. It was closed to the Western world until the Russians pulled out in 1992. The missile factory is still there , camouflaged as blocks of flats for erecting the rockets and is largely used as an engineering workshop and store by companies like ALEF- who I was sub-contracted to, to build harvesting equipment. Every entrance to the city has a huge mostly derelict security entrance. I boarded a small bus one Sunday morning from the Hotel in the centre and travelled to the outskirts - it is huge. There is a market in the centre that is well worth a visit and a tram way to the top of the hill that is awesome. All the tram drivers are women - the theory being that it is impossible to get lost in a tram. Jim.
jmc jnr:
I worked in Dnepropetrovsk in 2003. The City was nick-named “Space City” and was the home of the Russian space programme. It was closed to the Western world until the Russians pulled out in 1992. The missile factory is still there , camouflaged as blocks of flats for erecting the rockets and is largely used as an engineering workshop and store by companies like ALEF- who I was sub-contracted to, to build harvesting equipment. Every entrance to the city has a huge mostly derelict security entrance. I boarded a small bus one Sunday morning from the Hotel in the centre and travelled to the outskirts - it is huge. There is a market in the centre that is well worth a visit and a tram way to the top of the hill that is awesome. All the tram drivers are women - the theory being that it is impossible to get lost in a tram. Jim.
I took the load to the tractor (Tank ) factory in January 1991. The consignment, which was 4 large cases containing a computer system, was part of a multi drop load to Kiev, Dnepro’, Zhaporozhi, Vitebsk and Pskof. There was no problem entering Dnepro’, or getting into the factory, other than the very heavy military security check on the way in and out.
The following year I was on my way into Ukraine with another multi drop load to Kiev, Poltava, Jolti Voda, Dnepro’ and Nikolyev. The drop in Dnepro was a case of spare parts for the tractor factory’s computer. This time, they held me on the border at Kukariki and would not let me go to Dnepro’ and Jolti Voda, as they were closed cities. I had to drop the goods for Jolti and Dnepro in Poltava. But the people from Jolti and Dnepro had to come to Poltava to clear the goods. They were not best pleased and thought that I had refused to go there.
However, at the time Nikolyev was also a closed city. The Okean shipyard where I had to deliver Racal safety equipment was where the Soviet battleships were built. But they let me go there with a K.G.B. ■■■■■■ from Odessa.
They were very mixed up times with Closed Cities opening and then closing to foreigners again. They changed with the wind.
But there was no problem going into Dnepro to load the buckets and watering cans.
Was at my Local Volvo workshop this morning just to have cup of coffey and a chat. When the guy behind the desk said. Danne! Sure you speak russian and burst out laughing. There was an russian FH from 2007 there and the driver didnt speak nothing els but russian… truck kaput he said. I didnt stay long enough to see what fault he had but when i came in this evning he had left.
