The rise and fall…?
ND really grew into a huge transport outfit didn’t it.
Looking at Wiki, it seems the family groupe have left transport behind and are now involved in property and (typically French 
) acquired Maison Joanne too!
I used to haul their tilts out of Dover on dock traction, for onward delivery round the UK for a short while.
Oh no, no question of fall for “Norbert”! They just decided to get out of transport to experience other kinds of more profitable businesses. Nevertheless, I would have preferred if it didn’t go American.
XPO recently to get rid of their European transport branch, but finally changed their mind:
[XPO stoppe la vente de ses activités en Europe]
How easy was it to get into that top bunk, bearing in mind the the bunk would have been in the way?
Perhaps just a body sized end flipped up and then back down again when you were in?
Mercifully, I never slept in the bloody thing. I mostly had a normal sleeper (like the B-series shown).
I hated being couped up in those top pods. I drove a few drawbar outfits with them. I once had a lorry fire and the first thing to go up was the sleeper pod, even though the fire had started in a rear hub - the pod simply evaporated before my very eyes. I vowed never to drive with one again.
Perhaps some of you would have loved sleeping in this Corbitt 603’s bunk? It was stuck between the cab’s floor and the chassis. Moreover, one driver commonly slept while the othe one was at the wheel.
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I wonder what their life-expectancy was? The noise, fumes, cramped conditions and vulnerability would have numbed them into submission to accept working conditions that would excite even the mildest of collective bargainers!
I think that if this was still allowed and if such trucks were still produced, quite a few Polish or Lituanian transport managers wouldn’t mind operating them with drivers from central-Asia, India or Africa. And I’m sure they could even stuck a third driver in the bunk!
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I wouldn’t mind having a go in that one for a couple of days actually , and I’d do it for nowt . I should imagine it wouldn’t possess enough power to pull me off Dolly Parton , but it rates several notches farther up the character scale than most of these modern rigs … and having slept across the engines of Mickey Mouse Fodens , Guy big Js and on the flatbed under a sheet stretched from the headboard on warm summer nights , kipping between the cab floor and the chassis would be tantamount to sleeping in the Paris Hilton …WITH Paris Hilton .
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My only memory of a night in a day cab was in a small Mercedes LP 608. Stretched across the cab on the seats, with the gear lever in my knees. Somewhere on the roadside of a gloomy North France town’s outskirts in winter 1980. No curtains, no heating and just a standard sleeping bag. Of course, I was 25, and wouldn’t do it now!
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Any survivors Paul? Would be nice if there’s at least one that had escaped the scrapyard.
That’s the one on the other side, and is actually in the county border of Senas. Whereas Relais des Fumades is in Orgon, but most drivers refer to it as Senas as well. If you’re coming from junction 26, it’s on your left handside after a few clicks.
Great place, and always open in the weekends.
ND logistics have been discussed on here before, wasn’t Saviem a close friend of the family…?
I started in a Volvo FL6, and although it was a day cab, I could have a short kip in it, because Volvo provided the driver with some sort of cushions that were put up against the back of the cab. You could lay them down on the engine hump, and it sort of created a bunk as you lay over the seats. Not ideal, but it worked for an hour or so.
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Saw this Citroën a couple of weeks ago at the Steam Fair in Dordrecht, Holland.
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Not sure about it. In fact, I never saw a Lévrier in a vintage truck meeting report, but will try to get more information.
Most of them were repowered with standard 6-cyl 180 bhp Bernard engines, or sometimes Leyland or DAF engines (in fact the same at that time).
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The same kind of equipment had been fitted in my Volvo FL 10. A kind of board which was normally folded against the back of the cab, but only the hinges remained. Anyway I never drove further than 50 miles away.
Here’s the truck with its trailer.
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A German Büssing 8000 S - built in Braunschweig, More information here: Büssing 8000s
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Great truck, the FL10. Must have been struggling a bit though, when you were fully loaded? On the other hand, if it was only used for a 50 mile radius, maybe it wasn’t that bad?