I don’t know what’s going on here I’ll try it again.
Jeff…
Jelliot:
Come on Danne you know I never went looking for anything special, it was just pure dumb luck that I got where I was as I stumbled along through life. I’m certainly not smart enough to have planned any of it … and defiantly wouldn’t regard my self as anything special as far as driving trucks is concerned… pretty sure the guy I’m driving for at the moment wouldn’t either.Micky T I remember a few truck manufacturers that have tried to over come the untameable wilderness… I won’t include Clarkson and his mates although some of the things they’ve managed to achieve is pretty far out there, and if they’d presented it better it may of had some standing…
One of the more recent companies to try something was Iveco who did cape to cape… somewhere up in the artic circle to Cape Horn. Renault had a bit of crack at it as well. Of course KamaZ and KraZ does it pretty much every day… I would imagine all the driver training and good intent backed up with modern technology would put mega budget Euroneans in a fairly good position to start with, but in reality when faced with a situation like…You get a bunch of corporate city slickers that say we’re going 3800k’s that direction ,there’s no roads, just ice, snow, mountains, and swamp… plus you don’t know the group dynamics involved, driving ability and I assume there would be some kind of hierarchy involved…
Put that against some old ex military Russian in a 6x6 KamaZ that was born and bread in that area, he’s got a rifle or more likely AK47 and he knows what brown bear tastes like… But what’s even more important, he just came back from there last week. KamaZ might not have the sophistication of the European counterpart but I know who I would prefer to get me out crap.John West… Don’t take anything away from the 60’s 70’s 80’s Middle East it was tough and hats of to any one that did it. I tried to get a drive at it and wrote of to many companies to see if I could get a driving job but no one seemed willing to hire an 11 year old boy…
By the time I got to doing it in the 90’s most of it was good roads and most of the payments were done on plastic…Having said that I still manage to get about 300k’s a day on dirt roads on the Tasmanian mountain roads…It’s still challenging, and it’s still fun…
Jeff…
OHH it’s all pink and stuff… Nice …
Jeff…
[attachment=0]image.jpeg[/attachment)Here are a couple of pictures from the Internet. Taken in Russia, I believe.
Morning Micky T. I have at last finished reading your book. To all ex drivers I can recommend it as a most informative and very very interesting read. To all present day drivers. Read it. You will not be disappointed. To anyone who isn’t or never was a lorry driver find out what was required to pioneer theses virtually unknown routes across inhospitable and dangerous lands not that many years ago.
Thanks for writing it Micky and thank you for starting this thread. You were right to split it from the Promotor thread as this one has the potential to be even more popular.
Nice photos there of Colins truck, that he used to driver for his father in law Frankie White. Wasn’t the first man to slide of into the snow.
Good story about Frank… So Frank’s driving along down the M32 (Kaz not the UK) bad noise and all that sort of stuff… Cab mount’s gone on the Eurotec he’s driving, the cabs sitting on the Turbo, done the oil feed pipe, not so good. He has a bit of a look at it, as do some local truckers… try a bit of bodge up to see if they can get it going… Nothing doing…Now this is out in the middle of Kaz, flat land as far as you can see, now real roads. One of the other drivers says he’ll get a help message to someone… Franks sitting for a few days and another driver says, the message has been sent just sit tight… locals are getting food out to him… seeing he’s all good…
About a week and a half later an Iveco mechanic turns up… he’s driven out from Europe, and broke down him self… but not to worry cause he’s got a full set of filters, drive belts, and a set of brake drums and liners as well… A few days latter and they managed to do a local bodge job on the Frank-mobile.
One of the local news papers ran a story on it ( local to Frank, not me )
Did some one mention Dave Mackie■■? … Dave’s going out to the gold mine for Brit European and Gilders are tagging along as well… Iveco Eurostar as well 3 axle twin steer… ( yeh right nuts ■■? ) long story short by the time it gets back to Britain it’s only got 4 and a 1/2 axles the rest is on the back of Gilders Scania…
I think there’s some photos of that on the Kaz thread…
Jeff…
Talking about breaking down in Kaz, and on the M32 as well…
some of the light weights wanted to stop for the night at the check point just south of Balkalour, rather than pushing for the next one about 3 hours down the road at the town that had a good bakery… next morning the Scania drivers chugging it over… and over … then I can hear the battery’s going dead, but he keeps going at. Until he says his truck won’t start, he thinks it’s the battery, it might be dead ■■?.. We’ve got the cab up and are having a look at it, trying this and that, but it’s not going to fire…
The office would know where we were, but it’s about 5 am their time so there 'isn’t going to be any one about for a few hours, but I send a fax anyway letting them know what’s going on ( Great thing the satellite phone/fax for just 20,000 lire you could fax a copy of your arse anywhere in the world, or so I was told ) … Out comes the wire rope and we chug of down the road, but the Scania’s not having it, and it’s running out of air as well…
That was the best part of half a day, the Kaz blokes with the big hats were looking suspicious wandering about with big barky dogs and Ak47’s giving us the death stares, cause that always helps… See if they’d have done my suggestion we would have been near a bakery and at least of had something good to eat, but no it had to be barky dogs and guys with big hats. Those hats look stupid, they look like a cartoon…
I’ll skip the bit with lots of useless information getting faxed back and forward, wasting more time… not eating fresh bakery product…
The Scania’s on the wire rope, we’ve got the prop shaft of and are towing it about 1800 k’s to Almaty… It’s late autumn, raining, cold… and because they were all bickering, by the time we get to the bakers they’re closed…
We all took turns at towing, and getting towed… there’s no power steering… no heating and because numb nuts kept cranking the engine half the morning there’s not enough battery power to run the window wipers… and we have to stop every half hour or so to pump air back into the Scania to prevent the brakes from coming on. So your sitting there 15 feet behind a Smitz Fridge getting towed in the rain by a nutter that won’t talk to you on the CB to let youknow what’s up ahead, cause he’s in the vibe listening to Pink Floyd ( MAN )…
3 days late we get to Almaty, they sent a mechanic with a new computer from the Udine depot… but he got stopped by customs…
" Where are you going mate ?" ( I’m translating this bit ) I’m here to fix a truck he says… fix a truck are you ■■? says the customs dude. Not with that visa…and what’s that expensive looking thing you have there, paid tax on it have you matey boy?.. ( it is a bit a loose translation )
Lucky he’d only been at the airport a few hours before we turned up for him, so he didn’t really did himself into to big a hole…
Belgium Bob and I were dispatched to drag all the trailers up to Korgos and back while the 2 Scania men and the mechanic ( yeh that’s right both the Scania guys… see one was broken down and wanted to stay with his truck… ahhh bless… and the other was interpreting for the mechanic )… Not only that but they stayed in the Royal Tulip. ( What !!! I hear you say the Royal Tulip… Yeh… 4 star Royal Tulip ) for 4 days before they got things sorted with the visa… which I bet was more like a back hander to someone in the rail yard… If was me it would have been lumped in on of Juri’s Cosy Cabins, or some other flee pit.
Not only that but when I was back swapping trailer I asked them if they could get me some of those spicy cinnamon apple cakes with the icing on the top as I was running out of Tunnocks tea cake…Did they hell as like…
However when the mechanic got back he had to get some kind of “medical treatment” as he contracted some kind of " infection " ( Nasty truck drivers leading a youg boy astray… shame, shame, shame…)
So I was told, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, it was about another 2 months before I even got back to Europe, cause they were shunting trailers to Donet’sk for me… The Scaina men went straight back though!!! at least I still had a good supply of Irn Bru with me, even if I had to supplement it with local Pola cola ( if I translated that right )
Jeff…
sandway:
Morning Micky T. I have at last finished reading your book. To all ex drivers I can recommend it as a most informative and very very interesting read. To all present day drivers. Read it. You will not be disappointed. To anyone who isn’t or never was a lorry driver find out what was required to pioneer theses virtually unknown routes across inhospitable and dangerous lands not that many years ago.Thanks for writing it Micky and thank you for starting this thread. You were right to split it from the Promotor thread as this one has the potential to be even more popular.
Thanks Sandway. I am glad that you enjoyed reading the book. Hopefully it was well worth the wait.
Yeah, this thread is turning out to be really interesting. I think it’s a shame that Pro-Motor weren’t more heavily involved in Russia, because it really was an experience.
That was a great story Jeff. Typical of what went on out there. Shame that we didn’t meet each other in Donetsk. I did a fair bit of work in that area. I used to deliver safety equipment to some of the coal mines and supply the local Rank Xerox dealership.
Strangely, I had a Dutch mate who I used to meet up with in Poltava quite a few times. He was running to Rostov and we used to meet just by chance.
Talking about swanning off into deepest Siberia then I would agree with you that you would be better off with a Sov’ and a Kamaz. They would always help you out if you were stuck.
A weird thing was that I used to end up down in the Ukraine and Southern Russia and spend days or even weeks on my own. Usually, other than my Dutch mate, the only Western trucks that I would see down there were the occasional Italian truck. When I got to stop where they were it turned out that the drivers were Yugoslavian.
Jelliot wrote:
Come on Danne you know I never went looking for anything special, it was just pure dumb luck that I got where I was as I stumbled along through life. I’m certainly not smart enough to have planned any of it … and defiantly wouldn’t regard my self as anything special as far as driving trucks is concerned… pretty sure the guy I’m driving for at the moment wouldn’t either.
Yeah but you know what i ment:-) I just wish that i had have that luck,but when you guys did it i had just started driving and didnt know there was annything like this!I would love to go that far 
Just love to read about it so keep them stories coming
Danne
Great pic of bob may sadley no longer with us he worked for dave hogg for a good number of years
Hi Dan, Almaty is still there and it’s even easier to get a truck there now. I’m sure a guy with you heavy haul experience could get a drive for someone !!!
I believe that Transmondo moved it’s whole operation to Bulgaria or Hungary. When I was with them the only local drivers they had were doing Italy and France, they wouldn’t been seen dead sleeping in a truck, and all there Scanias had to have Ferrari stickers on them. All the long haul guys were from Dutch land, Belgium, a couple of Swiss blokes, one of which was related to Claude Ray Mermat ( Ferderici driver who’s regular run was Pakistan )me and another Brit but he lived Germany, and a few Scandinavians that came and went.
We also had a few Iranian subbies from Esfahan that got about in old American gear with huge ex military looking tyres and wheels. They were only doing dry freight not the fridge stuff… usually ran in a big group 5 or 6 trucks at a time…The stuff always got to where it was going but you couldn’t call it an express service… Top blokes, could fix anything with nothing… and feed you at the same time…
We met up with them one time at the China border and they seemed to be having a spot of bother with some paper work so one of our lads offered to give them a hand. He was quickly ushered of the side by the Iranian boss and told to ■■■■ off as they knew exactly what they were doing… Some times it’s easier if you can’t be understood ( nudge, nudge, wink, wink ) They were all tipped and out of there by the next morning…
Speaking of feeding… I like Shashliks but I never got the whole Plov thing !!!..
Jeff…
Some really good photo’s there Oily. Thanks for putting them on. 
Here is one i think you seen for sure. Hope Jamie dont mind me posting his propper daf on here
Danne
Dirty Dan:
Here is one i think you seen for sure. Hope Jamie dont mind me posting his propper daf on hereDanne
That DAF was, IIRC, a Turk-spec version with no mod-cons, but it did have a 13-speed Fuller gearbox which was not offered on Euro-spec 3300s (only on the old 2800 DKS). Robert