Security measures back in the day question

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS OLD TIME LORRIES, COMPANIES AND DRIVERS (INTERACT
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Carryfast:
:open_mouth: Blimey in that case he’s got no chance he’s toast.The Polish security services have been tracking the Polish friend before he even gets out of here if he’s lucky. :smiling_imp: :laughing: Great ending to the story.He makes it through Dover and Europe to Poland and escapes from the sheeted flat where the … disguised Polish secret service agent is waiting for him. :bulb: :wink:

youtube.com/watch?v=6zwW7iWinrk

youtube.com/watch?v=o0wNl66tT3Q

XD An amazing film made even better by the (albeit small) addition of David McCallum!

newmercman:
There were quite a few firms running flat trailers over the water, Murfitts were one such outfit, way back when they were a small family firm, Bowkers were another, as were Beresford and RK Crisp. The oilfield and ship supply companies from Scotland were another lot that used flats and there were Smiths of Scotter and that mob from Scunthorpe with the red white and blue livery, 3 letters beginning with an O, not OHS but similar. They (Smiths) ran steel down to Italy and marble or tiles back and possibly still do.

I know when I’ve run an opened tilt down that the customs will Colis seal the goods, basically a big piece of string wrapped around the piece (in my case big forklifts) with a lead seal on the ends.

Obviously I never had to worry too much about security as it would take a very big bloke to run off with a twenty ton forklift, mind you I never went to Italy with one, so you never know [emoji23]

cav551:
If we do end up going with a Tilt, Newmercman’s mention of plant in a Tilt suggests possibilities. Either uncovered or just the back uncovered to accommodate a machine’s boom poking out. With a little bit of author’s license the stowage of the buckets might allow the hero to hide unnoticed under an upturned one. The export of plant in the real world then would have been quite a quite common sight on Eastern European vehicles as well as UK ones.

Perhaps now over to Monsieur Saviem for information on the likes of RABA, JELCZ, LIAZ, Skoda etc vehicles and Eastern European haulage companies from that era, or links to already posted details.

Thank you, though as long as the members on here think roped & sheeted is a viable choice, that’s the one I’d prefer to go for, rather than a tilt or anything else, because it really adds to the aesthetic of the book.

newmercman:
I went to Berlin in a 7.5tonner before the wall came down, my one and only incursion behind the Iron Curtain while it was still the Iron Curtain, it was to a fashion show in West Berlin and I was loaded with posh frocks. It was in an X reg Ford Cargo, one of the first and this particular one was obviously one of the first of the first as they didn’t have enough pistons to finish the build, there were only 4 of them and it was painfully slow.

Anyway, it was still in the day’s of the authorised transit route and the border procedures were bloody scary if I’m honest and I was a young lad then, a pint of Fosters in me and I would’ve had a punch up with Muhammed Ali if he’d looked at me the wrong way or eyed up my bird. It was a great adventure for sure, but there is no way I would’ve entertained the idea of doing anything naughty, the border guards were very serious about their job and the defences in place were formidable. Tbe one thing that struck me was although it was difficult to get into DDR, it would’ve been nigh on impossible to get out.

The next time I went that way was in 1994 and I was in a brand new (first of the first again) Volvo FH12 and I passed the same spot on cruise control at 85km/h

That is so glamourous. Good thing I wasn’t the driver or those dresses would never have reached the fashion show!

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HI CAVALIER, i hope you would have nicked those dresses and not worn them ■■? i …words like “aesthetics” do not seem to belong to a lorry, roped and sheeted, or a tilt there was never no glamour [beauty] attached to any job i did…pdb

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peggydeckboy:
HI CAVALIER, i hope you would have nicked those dresses and not worn them ■■? i …words like “aesthetics” do not seem to belong to a lorry, roped and sheeted, or a tilt there was never no glamour [beauty] attached to any job i did…pdb

Nicked AND worn, pdb – I’m a lady! :smiley:

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They were Jaques Vert, Jaeger Couture and Betty Barclay dresses. I had picked them up from a show they’d had on the QE2 whilst it was docked in Southampton.

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The only “security” I can member in the '70’s was loading shoes (expensive ones at that) in a tilt, in Rome, but only the left shoes, the right ones were loaded onto another trailer a few days later (so you didn’t run together)…the system worked well…

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Yes FERGIE 47 YOU ARE 100% CORRECT, Cavalier i had you sussed, “do not kid, a kidder"old drivers saying, however nothing wrong with Lady drivers at all, i have run with them ,and what you are doing is ok but please not a fictional story enough of those around,whatever you do in your life belive me, there was no glamour in driving trucks around ENGLAND OR europe or most of al the middle EAST,
yes the trucks all look nice and ponsie now , go back 30 years when most of us on here started it was one of the unsocial ,dirty,underpaid ,long hours ,we had” big boots and black hands" most of the time ,most jobs all by hand,[no not that] handball, and as a industry we were one of the least likely you wanted you sons or daughters to go into , none of mine ever did, the only ones that did, normanly had a family business to follow on to, and a good job they did or there would have been no transport around, would there…when you have done a 24 hour day + extra, and hundreds of us did ,some did not those on C Licence NEVER,but most journey men DID especially on them meat within EUROPE …GOOD LUCKDBP

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We must’ve inhabited parallel universes DBP, my life on the continent was far from antisocial, there were days when it was dirty, breakdowns, punctures, stripping tilts and the like, but there were overalls and showers, or a kettle, a bucket and a bar of soap to take care of that. I most definitely wasn’t underpaid.

Glamour, well yes it could be glamorous, take my trip to W Berlin as an example. Or a Mediterranean Cruise that preceded each trip to Greece, weekends on the beach, afternoons at the Acropolis, the Coliseum, the Anzio and Normandy beach landing sites, the concentration camp at Dachau (ok that wasn’t pleasant) boat trips on the Blue (brown) Danube, the Eiffel Tower, I’m going sort of alphabetical here and I could go on for a while until I get to Venice and Vienna and I took my lad to a Zoo once, but can’t for the life of me remember where!

Yes there were plenty of trips that never allowed time for tourism, but there was still a lot more glamour involved if you take the scenery into account, certainly when compared to running up and down the M1.

Life is what you make it, I like to make the most of mine whenever possible.

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Nobody ever told me that it would be glamorous. :unamused: Some of the older fellows did tell me when I first started out that I would get a fair days pay for a fair day’s work. That I had to take the rough with the smooth, to try to run to suit myself and if ever I thought that I was tired to park up straight away. Most drivers said that I would have to spend some time away from home and that I would be my own boss until I got back to the yard without the hassles and stress of being an owner driver. You didn’t have to be unsociable or unwashed unless you really wanted to be, even a night parked up in London, Luton or Edinburgh could turn out to be a bit of an adventure after a cab wash and a change of clothes, you just had to make an effort.
It wasn’t always a case of driving around the clock, changing wheels, waiting for hours to load, putting on snow chains, waiting days at borders or getting black as (Z.B.) you just had to accept it and get on with it and when the great jobs did crop up then you were wise to make the most of it.
One job that I remember was with The Royal Ballet on a tour of Italy for just under a month, 10 days in Venice and 10 days in Rome. There were five trucks on that job, one lad took his daughter, one lad took his wife and as you probably know Venice and the parking at Tronchetto is very expensive so we drove over to Lido de Jesilo just up the coast and parked up on the free coach park on the beach for six days. Lying on the top bunk first thing in the morning, watching the sun coming up over The Adriatic, now that was glamourous.
In Rome we parked up across the road from The Colosseum and we were given free tickets to see a performance of Romeo and Juliet and of course we spent three days walking around Rome and The Vatican.

Peggy, I am sure that all fridge companies were not the same as the ones who you worked for but if the job was as bad as you describe it then why did you do it. :confused: I can remember being parked up on a beach in Greece with a couple of Pryor’s and Grangewood drivers who were doing fridge work sometime in the early eighties. :slight_smile:

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I’ve spent many a night at Lido di Jesolo Steve, I used to load from Mira just down the road, rolls of film for Peuduce Nappies in Telford, it was the stuff that stops the pee and ■■■ from soaking through, so you could call it a crap job lol

The Merc is mine, the bloke that doesn’t look like a sailor is my mate Simmo and the other one is a sailor.

Here’s the Merc again on the Austria/Italy border at Tarvisio, I dropped my trailer at the border as the Dogana were on strike and went for a doss by the river.

This one is high in the Austrian Alps, my boy came for a ride, he’s 27 now and a lot taller.

I’ve got tons of pics like that.

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The top pic is in Venice BTW.

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Hi Mark, great photos and you have just reminded me that all the parking attendants around Venice all seemed to wear a captains cap or a sailors hat. :laughing: For the first couple of hours I just presumed that they were all boat owners or the crew and it was only after a group of blokes turned up to offload our trailers and put the props and the rest of the equipment into the barges that I realised that every Tom, ■■■■ and Giuseppe were wearing them. :slight_smile:

The second time that I went to Venice I had my brother and my nephew with me as it was during the school holidays and it was one of those jobs that we all got occasionally. After tipping in Verona late on a Wednesday afternoon I was told to go to Padua as the load was waiting and pick up a full load of supermarket trolleys for a place in Liverpool. The customer was one that I had never heard of before called “TOY’S ARE US”.
I was on the doorstep of the factory in Padua the first thing the next morning and after an hour or so they told me that the load would not be completed until the Friday morning. :cry: I phoned my boss up and he said you might as well have a day off (with pay) as I haven’t got anything in that area and I won’t be able to find anything around there at such a short notice. They let me drop the trailer in their yard and we went off to Venice for the day. Of course, I think that I put a couple of gallons of diesel out of my own pocket into the tank and even paid for the car park ticket.
When we started loading the next morning I noticed that on the handles there was a spelling mistake, the letter "R’ had been written backwards. :unamused: So there I was, waiting to load over 400 hundred brand new supermarket trolleys which I thought would all be rejected due to this spelling mistake. If I mentioned it to the manufacturer then I would probably have to wait until the Monday before I had a reload. If I said nothing, then we might have to bring the load back from Liverpool to be rectified. After consulting with my brother he told me to do the right thing and mention it to my boss. After a phone call to the U.K. the import manager told me that it was an American firm that was setting up in the U.K. and strange as it seemed back then “Toy’s R. Us” with the backward letter “R” just happened to be their logo. :blush:

Regards Steve.

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mushroomman:
Peggy, I am sure that all fridge companies were not the same as the ones who you worked for but if the job was so bad as you describe it then why did you do it. :confused:

That’s more or less established that all the rumours among those of us lumbered with UK work about international being a holiday and getting paid for it were more or less true. :smiling_imp: :laughing: As for PDB my explanation is that maybe in some cases familiarity created contempt in forgetting to appreciate the type of job they were lucky enough to be working in.On that note I’m sure I’d have been happy to swap him my slightly cleaner job as a council driver which when I wasn’t working with stinking bulk refuse it was the mixture of oil and muck of working around knackered old plant sometimes both on the same day.While I obviously didn’t see any need for photos on that job.But have plenty of similar ones from my paid for few weeks a year holidays just with the car instead of a truck in that case. :wink:

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peggydeckboy:
Mushroomman yes a good photograph of the "best -iss"firm i ever worked for… however that photograph was before my time, BUT! the driver may well have still been on there it was a job for life,i never had any complaints mind you i was not LANCASTERIAN OR YORKSHIRE i did not involved in the war of the Roses, yes it still exists,ask any LANCS or YORKS man.

THIS is true we were all stopped for a brew in France about 4 of us ,yes i did run with drivers i liked, and the question of the brewing water came up as we all carried our own UK water WHOs WATER WAS WE GOING TO USE,FROM HULL depot or PRESTON[bamber bridge] just to make the tea, the merits of the differnt water…you had to be there to have witnessed the [meant ]banter.it was getting heated ,so i made my own as usual and then they all did … so i did not really count but i enjoyed every day i was there . ?may i ask ,why did you take photos of lorries,very nostalgic,however,you must have some for-thought that they would be interesting in years to come…

AS for Poland, you done more than me however one trip was the same routine as others ,you had to write down how much curancy you had for Poland ON THEIR VERY POOR PAPER LIKE TOILET PAPER and record where your money went in fact the only thing you would buy or need was maybe a Lady,there was nothing else of worth to buy… it if i remember right,i know it was one country in commie block…Last time i was there it was 1.000 zloties to the pound,also i have a going out EAST German STAMP IN MY PASSPORT AND NONE ON EXIT they were gone,not a sole around, in that short time while i was delivering in POLAND…there will be men on here who probably did Poland regular not me…We used to load FAT PORK BACKS,FROZEN ,for the sausages at Bowers…pigs back fat with the “skin rein” on about 3/4 inches thick …lovely,ixed with rusk you never did know, i know 4 pigs that will never get that big and they are in luxury in Hampshire,eating apples so they allready have the sauce in them buzzer…pdb

Peggy, you asked why I took photos of lorries all those years ago, well to be honest I always took photos of anything that I thought at the time might be interesting to see many years later. I had no idea that forty years later I could share them at the click of a button with somebody on the other side of the world who might be interested in seeing them. Like everybody else I only wish that I had taken more photos and at the time carrying a camera was not only a hassle but it was also expensive after buying a roll of film containing 12, 24 or 36 snaps and you also had to go down to the chemists to have them developed which cost an arm and a leg compared to today’s prices. I only carried a Kodak instamatic point and click as I knew that if the cab was ever going to get broken into then that would of been one of the things that would disappear. In some eastern block countries, as you say like in Poland, you had to complete a card when you arrived at the border to say if you had a radio, camera or a C.B. The card was then placed in your passport and had to be shown along with your camera as you were exiting the country to show that you had not sold it on the black market. There were loads of “No Photography” signs all over the Communist Countries especially at the borders, bridges, near military establishments, airports, shipyards and factories. I was loading at a Honey factory once in Bucharest and I could never understand why there were lots of no photography signs all over the place. :confused:

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Thanks so much for the replies, everyone; I’m sorry I haven’t been on for so long, I’ve suddenly come into a lot of personal problems and haven’t been able to be online since it happened (till tonight).

Newmercman – Thanks for the photos, and I’m glad you enjoyed your job! And, whatever anyone else says, I can’t help finding your story about the dresses at least a little glamorous. :smiley:

Fergie47 – thank you very much.

DBP – I wasn’t trying to make any comment about your lifestyle, and I’m very sorry that you had such a hard career (I wouldn’t know, as, though I am a lady, I am not actually a driver – I just came on here for some advice on my plot point). All I meant was, there is something a little glamorous about delivering dresses to a fashion show in West Berlin, even if the rest of it is back-breaking labour.

Mushroomman – though I in no way mean this to undermine anything DBP said about the job, that sounds really lovely. And thank you for the trip down memory lane you gave me by mentioning Toys R Us…haven’t been there since I was a little girl!
Thank you also for the photos – what good luck you had the foresight to take them all those years ago!

Carryfast – sorry about the lack of glamour in your work! :frowning:

Thanks again to all of you for all the help. :slight_smile:

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mushroomman:
Here’s one of your old firms D.B.P.
When I took this photo in the early eighties of a Bowker lorry going up Monte Blanc towards Italy, I did wonder if anybody would ever be interested in seeing it. :slight_smile: I am not sure if the driver was Jag Joe. :confused:

Nice to see the photo! One of the earlier F10s on the fleet; the fleet moved over to plain white cabs in 1982

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I am glad that you like it 240 Gardner, this was his mate not too far behind him.

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cavalier …I have to say the worst imo was when I was running uk eire depending on who was on hunger strike /was shot arrested …crossing at Newry was a real pain and have felt the pain off a full unload out on many occasions not good when you have a load of quilts on packed to the roof in a wagon and drag (due to high-ups in office promised that only they were allowed to sell them in the republic and of course your load was a black load going to another retailer). Security …mmmmm…parked up outside the sein fein office in drogeda? (spelling ,was just before a bridge on street to the left )many times reckoned they wouldn’t burn me down due to being next to the office. :open_mouth:

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mushroomman:
I am glad that you like it 240 Gardner, this was his mate not too far behind him.

Thank you :wink:

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Mark’s mention of taking a load of frocks in a van to Berlin got me thinking about the first time that I ever went through the West/East German border at Helmstedt. So I had a look in the old photo shoebox to see if there was anything that might spur my old memory bank into action which then led me to spend two days Google searching. As it was coming up to my girl friends twenty first birthday some forty four years ago we both decided that we would like to drive up to Berlin to visit a couple of friends of ours who had been posted to R.A.F. Gatow. All British military personnel who were stationed in West Germany in the 60s/70s were issued with one of these.
In a nut shell, since the end of the second world war the Allies and the Russians had an agreement that a few dozen Russians would be stationed in West Germany to monitor any large build ups of allied troop movements towards the East German border. All their cars displayed a Soxmis number plate showing that they were part of the Soviet Military Mission and they travelled all over West Germany taking photos and making notes of airfields, military installations and vehicle convoys. They often strayed into restricted Allied military areas and it was part of every British serviceman and women’s job to report then as soon as possible to the military police who would try and follow them to see what they were up to. At the same time The British, The French and The Americans were also allowed to operate a small contingent of their military personnel in East Germany to make sure that The Russians and the other Warsaw Pact countries were not planning an invasion on The West. All the British vehicles had to display a similar Brixmis number plate showing that they were part of The British Military Mission in East Germany. They were based in Potsdam in East Berlin and they were all members of The British Army or The Royal Air Force. google.com.au/search?q=Brix … ATYQsAQIGg
As we wanted to travel by road up to Berlin we had to get extra security clearances which involved getting approval from The R.A.F. Germany headquarters at Rheindahlen and after an interview with the Provost Officer who told us about some of the things that we had to do we were told that we had been given permission and that we would be issued with Berlin Travel Documents (B.T.D’s.) the day before we were due to leave. They tried to pursued us to drive up to Helmstedt and then to travel as passengers on the special military sealed train into Berlin which was the way that most people travelled in those days as it was much safer but to us it was the journey as well as the destination which appealed to us. Just before Helmstedt we filled the petrol tank up on my blue, reliable Volkswagen Variant Estate car (well it was reliable most of the time) at the last B.P. station in West Germany where we were able to use our petrol coupons which I had been issued with. Then we drove along to the border which wasn’t too far away where the West German border guards stopped us but we just showed them our N.A.T.O. Travel Documents and they pointed us over to a small building which said All Allied Personnel. I had already been instructed about taking photos at the border so I haven’t got a photo but I did come across this one on the internet which was supposed to have been taken around 1970 two years before our trip.

A British Army military policeman came over to us and asked had we been through The Corridor before and when we said no he said that you better come in then for a briefing. We went into the office and he asked to see our Berlin Travel Docs and our air force identity cards. After he had written down the details of our B.T.D’s in a book he got out what looked like a photo album which contained about twenty or so photos of different cars, tanks and other Warsaw Pact military vehicles. He explained to us what to look out for and explained the different insignia between the East German Police, The East German Army and The Russian Army. We were told that if we broke down and we couldn’t fix it then we had to stay in the car and to talk to nobody. If the East German police came we had to show our B.T.D. against the window and according to protocol they had to inform a Russian Liaison Officer to come and mediate with us. Helmstedt was known as Checkpoint Alpha and the entrance to Berlin was called Checkpoint Bravo, which ever checkpoint we were nearest to then the Russian Officer had to inform the checkpoint of our delay and to send help.

  • I only found out two days ago with the help of Google search that Britain and America didn’t recognise the government of East Germany until the following year, 1973 and that was why we were told that we could only communicate with The Soviets. *
    We were told not to speed, to obey all traffic signs and we were given 2-3 hours to complete the 110 mile journey. If we had taken any longer then a mechanic and a recovery vehicle along with a military officer would be sent out to find us. If we saw another B.F.G. (British Forces Germany) registered car as we had our own special registration plates we had to stop and try to assist them and if we couldn’t help them then we had to report it when we got to Bravo. We were also asked to help any American Forces Europe or Canadian Armed Forces vehicles that we saw as they also had their own distinctive number plates and to help them if they were in trouble. We were asked not to take any photos at any border, of the East German Police, Army or Russian vehicles but if we did see any large convoys especially with tanks to make a discrete or mental note of what we had seen, which way they were travelling, where, the time and to let the R.M.P.'s know about it when we arrived at Checkpoint Bravo. The briefing took about fifteen minutes and then we went back out to the car where the army policeman asked us if we had a full tank of petrol, I said yes but he still checked the fuel gauge. Then he wanted to see my wheel brace, jack and spare wheel which he checked to make sure that it was inflated. He pointed down the road and said in about 500 metres you will come to a barrier across the road, when it opens drive slowly forward and park next to the building on the right hand side with the Russian flag flying out side. There will be a Russian soldier waiting for you, get out of the car, lock it, give him your B.T.Ds. and follow him to a window outside the building. He will pass your B.T.Ds. through the window and after a few minutes you will get them back, he might like a quick look inside your car but don’t let him take anything, if he does tell him that you want to speak to his officer. That’s it, have a good trip and with that we drove slowly towards the East German barrier.

To be continued if anybody is interested.

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I’ll be checking in regularly for the next installment