The first time I went to Europe was 1967 and it was the easiest job I have done it was mating on a Scammell contractor taking a 130 ton roll housing to Rotterdam we went over from Immingham where a ramp had been built on the slipway ( by Pickfords ) to take the weight of around 200 tons gross for the freighter to come round for us to load. When we disembarked in Rotterdam we did not go off of the docks only round to where the roll housing was offloaded by floating crane into a barge and returned empty to Immingham. my first trip which was any distance was wing parts for "concorde " from Preston to Toulouse with a T K Bedford artic as the few trips with a old Scammell highwayman had only been a days run or less from the docks but it did break you in steady. In the 70s I was driving an Atkinson veiwline which I was over quite regular usually the benelux countries and France one job entailed around 13 loads from St.Charmond back to Sheffield the first time I used the auto route and Tanquerville bridge “which I thought I had bought” but returning loaded I had to use the national roads as I was grossing around 60 tons and then I sussed that I could down the national roads and book the auto route toll which was handy.
Brilliant read!don’t stop there though,what happened when you got the Transconti’?
Brilliant stuff there Mr Nut, love reading these memories from “back in the day”!! 
Dont stop now though, you are on a roll. Look forward to hearing more tales of you, the Transcon and your trips to Greece!! 
lynchy:
Brilliant read!don’t stop there though,what happened when you got the Transconti’?
It just got better, but that is for another wet day
I really enjoyed that Malc 
thanks for taking the time to share it with us.
The first time that I met Mr Chamberlain was at Aachen Nord while he was about to have some T-Forms made out and we ended up having lunch in that restaurant on the Dutch side, was it a Les Routiers 
. Dave had groupage on that he had collected in West Germany which included six big B.M.W. motor bike engines on the load. I have never seen anybody as excited as Dave was about a motor bike engine .
Regards Steve.
cracking stuff malc