lucy having done what you do,writing that is,for a year in CM a great privilige I thought,I don’t think at any time I considered revealing all.Tried on most occasions to inject a bit of humour and was pleased to find on occasions drivers actually laughing at something I wrote.
Can I say as an interested reader of your print and critic…calm down.
Cowboyism or the lowly depths of truckology I don’t think I want to read about it.
Each to their own, Armageddon. I do what I do, and it works for me, but there are all kinds of writers out there to suit different tastes - which is precisely how it should be. 
i worked for a firm in liverpool who ran on irish plates and i can tell you they were the dodgiest place to work 4 nearly everything had a defect of some sort, wire’s fitted, tacho’s burnt etc etc and this was within the last 2-3 years now am not name dropping the firm but a guy who has replied in this topic has also worked here when i did and he wil agree most surely with me, that it was a uk firm giving ireland a bad name as to the way the firm was ran by running on irish plates even though they never had nothin to do with ireland, not sure how it worked to be honest like ! although that we was told to avoid every vosa checkpoint
I’ll tell you why companies stopped running bent in one word ‘ENFORCEMENT’
I’ve worked for a few firms that ran bent all the time, some little 2 or 3 lorry outfits, some big, supposedly, professionals, it was the name of the game up until recently. One company (a well known London based fridge operator) had an ‘agreement’ with the ministry that as long as we had 11hrs off in Dover anything we had done across the water was overlooked, in practice this meant as soon as you loaded you went to the boat in one hit, if you were lucky it was apples from France, but if you were in the bottom of Italy, Spain or Portugal the same rules applied. If you were ever stopped over there a ‘coffee’ had you on your way again in no time, it was only when the law over there stopped this practice that things changed.
A technological breakthrough allowed us to do this, we had microwave bunks in the lorries, 9hrs sleep in 20mins Although remembering life on the road during those times I can honestly say that I never saw half as many smashed up lorries as you do today when everyone (almost) is running legal.
That the Irish were singled out for this is beyond me, everyone was at it, the English were probably the worst, during the 80s & 90s pretty much everybody doing Italy, Spain or Portugal was doing one a week & this was including a morning clearing customs going in & an afternoon clearing customs leaving, then 5 or 6hrs minimum in Dover customs. There were maybe a handful of firms that did the job legally, I don’t know who they were though, I would say that anybody who denies that systematic abuse of the regulations took place during those times is either in a very small minority or wasn’t there.
The funny thing is that even though we were pushed to the limit, we still had time to pull up & sit in a resturaunt to eat dinner, catch up with old mates & make new ones, we also had time to help each other out with breakdowns or stripping out a tilt, there was also time on each trip for at least one night on the beer/wine/paint stripper, now we’re running straight & having all this time off every night & nobody has the time for any of that anymore 
newmercman:
I’ll tell you why companies stopped running bent in one word ‘ENFORCEMENT’The funny thing is that even though we were pushed to the limit, we still had time to pull up & sit in a resturaunt to eat dinner, catch up with old mates & make new ones, we also had time to help each other out with breakdowns or stripping out a tilt, there was also time on each trip for at least one night on the beer/wine/paint stripper, now we’re running straight & having all this time off every night & nobody has the time for any of that anymore
That is how I remember it too, 
The waitress has just taken your order for moules mariniere and another bottle of wine, then someone pipes up, "We have to run legal now, and then proceed to tell you where they have loaded that morning and when they will be shipping out next
newmercman:
That the Irish were singled out for this is beyond me, everyone was at it, the English were probably the worst, during the 80s & 90s pretty much everybody doing Italy, Spain or Portugal was doing one a week & this was including a morning clearing customs going in & an afternoon clearing customs leaving, then 5 or 6hrs minimum in Dover customs. There were maybe a handful of firms that did the job legally, I don’t know who they were though, I would say that anybody who denies that systematic abuse of the regulations took place during those times is either in a very small minority or wasn’t there.
Hi newmercman, I wouldn’t dream of speaking for others, but I was doing Europe during the whole of the 80s.
I can’t fault a single word you’ve written and, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s very well put. .
You should contact the South Westerners by the looks of things.
newmercman:
I’ll tell you why companies stopped running bent in one word ‘ENFORCEMENT’I’ve worked for a few firms that ran bent all the time, some little 2 or 3 lorry outfits, some big, supposedly, professionals, it was the name of the game up until recently. One company (a well known London based fridge operator) had an ‘agreement’ with the ministry that as long as we had 11hrs off in Dover anything we had done across the water was overlooked, in practice this meant as soon as you loaded you went to the boat in one hit, if you were lucky it was apples from France, but if you were in the bottom of Italy, Spain or Portugal the same rules applied. If you were ever stopped over there a ‘coffee’ had you on your way again in no time, it was only when the law over there stopped this practice that things changed.
A technological breakthrough allowed us to do this, we had microwave bunks in the lorries, 9hrs sleep in 20mins
That the Irish were singled out for this is beyond me, everyone was at it, the English were probably the worst, during the 80s & 90s pretty much everybody doing Italy, Spain or Portugal was doing one a week & this was including a morning clearing customs going in & an afternoon clearing customs leaving, then 5 or 6hrs minimum in Dover customs. There were maybe a handful of firms that did the job legally, I don’t know who they were though, I would say that anybody who denies that systematic abuse of the regulations took place during those times is either in a very small minority or wasn’t there.
The funny thing is that even though we were pushed to the limit, we still had time to pull up & sit in a resturaunt to eat dinner, catch up with old mates & make new ones, we also had time to help each other out with breakdowns or stripping out a tilt, there was also time on each trip for at least one night on the beer/wine/paint stripper, now we’re running straight & having all this time off every night & nobody has the time for any of that anymore
But while you lot on continental work were all having the life of Reilly in the good old days some of us were lumbered with UK crap and could’nt get away from it all because everyone knew how good life was on the other side of the channel so no vacancies.We just used speed as way of circumventing all the hours issues.The faster you can run the less hours you work and I’d be totally knackered if I did’nt get more than 9 hours sleep.The difference with the Irish was that they put that idea together with running bent on hours as well and if I’d been all Irish instead of just part Irish maybe I could have halved my working week by doing two night’s work in one longer shift. 
.
dieseldave:
newmercman:
That the Irish were singled out for this is beyond me, everyone was at it, the English were probably the worst, during the 80s & 90s pretty much everybody doing Italy, Spain or Portugal was doing one a week & this was including a morning clearing customs going in & an afternoon clearing customs leaving, then 5 or 6hrs minimum in Dover customs. There were maybe a handful of firms that did the job legally, I don’t know who they were though, I would say that anybody who denies that systematic abuse of the regulations took place during those times is either in a very small minority or wasn’t there.Hi newmercman, I wouldn’t dream of speaking for others, but I was doing Europe during the whole of the 80s.
I can’t fault a single word you’ve written and, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s very well put. .
didn’t want to quote the whole thing so used this. very well put post,hit the nail on the head alright.
well to explode the myth even more that its only the irish that run bent ,i shipped back from belfast last week into birkenhead and the place was full of irish motors all parked up and most with the curtains shut.as for the un roadworthyness has anyone thats called the irish took a look at the motors there running, top spec scannys volvos dafs etc.weve all heard storys of northern scotish hauliers doing the bolougne run and not putting a card in till carlisle no one seems to bothered about that.some members of this forum seem to have a selective memory on running bent theres been some high profile english firms done in the past few years.bottom line is no matter what nationality it dont pay to run bent anymore.you cant get away with a coffee or a packet of ■■■■ to get you out of trouble in france or italy or spain anymore.if you get done over there the first thing you here mr gendarme say is DKV or VISA
Carryfast:
But while you lot on continental work were all having the life of Reilly in the good old days some of us were lumbered with UK crap and could’nt get away from it all because everyone knew how good life was on the other side of the channel so no vacancies.We just used speed as way of circumventing all the hours issues.The faster you can run the less hours you work and I’d be totally knackered if I did’nt get more than 9 hours sleep.The difference with the Irish was that they put that idea together with running bent on hours as well and if I’d been all Irish instead of just part Irish maybe I could have halved my working week by doing two night’s work in one longer shift.
And while you were doing all that chasing about, we were transiting Germany, Czechoslovakia, or Swiss while asleep on a train
Wheel Nut:
Carryfast:
But while you lot on continental work were all having the life of Reilly in the good old days some of us were lumbered with UK crap and could’nt get away from it all because everyone knew how good life was on the other side of the channel so no vacancies.We just used speed as way of circumventing all the hours issues.The faster you can run the less hours you work and I’d be totally knackered if I did’nt get more than 9 hours sleep.The difference with the Irish was that they put that idea together with running bent on hours as well and if I’d been all Irish instead of just part Irish maybe I could have halved my working week by doing two night’s work in one longer shift.And while you were doing all that chasing about, we were transiting Germany, Czechoslovakia, or Swiss while asleep on a train
I never heard anything about drivers sleeping all through Germany or Czechos on any train but I know the old Lotschberg and Simplon tunnels by train for anyone who did’nt prefer the scenery while driving through Swiss (not me) but you would’nt have had 9 hours sleep on that run?.But if I was the guvnor and I’d heard that my drivers had put the wagon on a train all through Germany and Czeckos and then slept through there instead of driving it and then I got charged by the rail firm for the priviledge I’d have cut their wages to pay the rail company,minus the fuel cost.But I’d bet tat the rail company would have charged more than it would have cost to drive through there.But the bit I can’t work out is why would anyone want to go through Germany to Swiss via Checkos I reckon it was those slower continental speeds and long hours just making you think that you were on a train asleep going via that route??. 
Ok the train thing came about 2 ways, firstly in the days of permits, or rather the lack of permits, a receipt for the train through Germany got you an extra permit, the Swiss train allowed you to run at 38t through Switzerland rather than the 28t limit on road transit. Theorectically both also allowed faster transit times, you can go through Swiss at night by train, not by truck & the other ones would get you at least 8hrs further down the road than you were when you flipped the tacho switch to bed mode, there were many other methods of doing this that didn’t involve a train ride, such as unscrewing the cable from the tachograph head in the pre electronic days or interrupting the power supply by a wire or pulling a fuse on electronic ones, which coincidentally brings me back to the original post
Also Carryfast, there were barges that ran from eastern West Germany along the Danube from Passau to points much further east, I know Willi Betz used to do this quite often, I don’t know if any British or Irish firms did it though.
I don’t understand why everyone is giving Lucy grief. You just have to look though some of the posts in this very site to see that many British drivers have an obession with how the Irish run, so why moan at her for writing an article on a subject she thought people would be intrested in? A lot of you obviously are as this topic is running to several pages.
I haven’t read the article yet but from what I gather it points out they are running legal now, I know I am anyway. As for British drivers working for the Irish not being able to tell the truth as someone put, well I find that quite offensive.
I’ve run very bent in my time with both Irish and Dutch companies and very bent with UK agencies. I can see she wasn’t singleing the Irish out for criticsm but just producing a story about a group that has a lot of myths surrounding it.
As for maintanence and roadworthyness as somebody else mention all I’ll say is the company I work for has workshop facilities and trucks that would put most similar sized British operators, and many dealers for that matter, to shame.
newmercman:
Ok the train thing came about 2 ways, firstly in the days of permits, or rather the lack of permits, a receipt for the train through Germany got you an extra permit, the Swiss train allowed you to run at 38t through Switzerland rather than the 28t limit on road transit. Theorectically both also allowed faster transit times, you can go through Swiss at night by train, not by truck & the other ones would get you at least 8hrs further down the road than you were when you flipped the tacho switch to bed mode, there were many other methods of doing this that didn’t involve a train ride, such as unscrewing the cable from the tachograph head in the pre electronic days or interrupting the power supply by a wire or pulling a fuse on electronic ones, which coincidentally brings me back to the original postAlso Carryfast, there were barges that ran from eastern West Germany along the Danube from Passau to points much further east, I know Willi Betz used to do this quite often, I don’t know if any British or Irish firms did it though.
I can remember that Swiss weight limit which always did’nt seem to match the reality of the wagons which I saw running through over the years though?.It only seemed to make sense with the Swiss 4 axle wagon and drags but there was loads of artics and drawbars running through there all the time on 5 axles from here,France,Germamny,Italy and Swiss etc. and I can only assume that most or many of them were just treating the limit as a ‘guideline’ + or- 10 tonnes or so?.Also never saw any scales on the roads I’ve always used through there like the yanks have everywhere and definitely seen plenty of wagons going through there at night?.But according to wheelnut the Swiss civil defence are a bit ‘trigger happy’ when it comes to ‘infringements’ by trucks so maybe that train was a good idea after all.But I will say that with all the propaganda concerning rules there I’ve actually often driven (a lot) faster with a car through Swiss than Germany with the speed limits being treated like the ones on the autobahns in Germany (they’re advisory not compulsory depending on how you look at it and wether there’s any coppers about or not).
I think everyone is getting off track on who did this or that. The article was on Irish & I thought Lucy`s comments were balanced & fair perhaps the only unfortunate bit was she could only get three people that would be quoted, although in her defence she tried to get more. Now after the fact everyone seems to want to say something 
Carryfast, although my post was put on in jest as you are easily wound up about trains, you were not the gaffer and if you were, you would have worked out that a driver could drive from Zeebrugge to Freiburg in an easy shift, book onto the train and using one movement to board it later that evening while they do the driving. The next morning you are woken up in the centre of Milan with a fresh card. OK, the rest on the train is not the best sleep in the world unless you imbibe 
The train from Koln to Munich allowed you to travel Sunday, drive through a feiertag and receive an extra genehmigung for your troubles.
You may have been on a European trip in a car and seen some trucks, but unless you had the portable weighbridges at your disposal or the plate bridges on the borders, you wouldn’t know that they only weighed 28 tonne. Your assumption of chucking an extra 10 tonne on and the weights being a guideline would have been amusing to watch. If you had watched how the Swiss operators did it, they used an artic unit to take the loaded drags to the border, while the rigid lorries followed on behind then coupled them together to enter France, Italy or Germany:arrow:
There were several other routes through Switzerland and Germany, the Dresden (D) to Lovosice (CZ) service was a favourite of mine as it allowed me to get from Europoort to Rakovnik using only one card.
Newmercman mentioned the permits and barge service, there will be many drivers who did the Passau changeover with the Bulgarian trailers.
Don’t always dismiss the intermodal system out of hand, the alternative is far worse, running bent or double manning.
I myself did the Passau changeover, that’s how I knew about it
I remember weighbridges at all the Swiss entry ports, after paying tax, doing customs etc you ran over the scale, whether anyone took any notice I don’t know, I never took the chance of being too heavy, as well as a fine it was a bloody long way to the nearest tunnel! I did used to load heavy in Swiss though, ice cream from somewhere or the other, it was a 3hr run to the border, that I do remember, we used to have to come out via the Schaffhausen border, which I believe was the ‘overweight’ border. I don’t remember whether there was an extra tax for running overweight, knowing the Swiss, there probably was though
I only had one incident dealing with the Swiss police, so can’t say how they were really, although in my case playing the stupid Englishman certainly helped, I was running home & got pulled into a rest area, they wanted to know how I managed to have a St Lorenzo (Rome) customs stamp on my T-forms when my tachos clearly indicated that I had only been to Milan & had taken 36hrs off, there was also some excitement over the shade of the liquid in my belly tank, anyway my lack of understanding of every language the copper spoke, including heavily accented English soon had me on my way with my wallet intact And to appease switchlogic, who appears to have no jam in his doughnut, I was working for an English company at the time, not one of those fly by night paddy cowboy firms
Wheel Nut:
Carryfast, although my post was put on in jest as you are easily wound up about trains,The train from Koln to Munich allowed you to travel Sunday, drive through a feiertag and receive an extra genehmigung for your troubles.
You may have been on a European trip in a car and seen some trucks, but unless you had the portable weighbridges at your disposal or the plate bridges on the borders, you wouldn’t know that they only weighed 28 tonne. Your assumption of chucking an extra 10 tonne on and the weights being a guideline would have been amusing to watch.
There were several other routes through Switzerland and Germany, the Dresden (D) to Lovosice (CZ) service was a favourite of mine as it allowed me to get from Europoort to Rakovnik using only one card.
Newmercman mentioned the permits and barge service, there will be many drivers who did the Passau changeover with the Bulgarian trailers.
Don’t always dismiss the intermodal system out of hand, the alternative is far worse, running bent or double manning.
That all sounds like an alien type of transport operation to me wheelnut.I’ve been on a lot more than ‘a’ european ‘trip’ using cars over the years but I can honestly say that I’ve never seen any Swiss artic units pulling any loaded drawbar trailers to their borders followed by any rigids and the idea sounds interesting to me because would’nt it mean using something like an old fashioned ballast boxed prime mover if that railer was a three axled type hauling some real weight??.But what I have seen is plenty of what seemed heavy enough to me wagons going through the Swiss borders without going over any scales and/or without using any train at Freiburg and that was one of the ways I often went and still sometimes go through there (Reims-Kehl Bridge-Basel ) and there were and still always seem to be plenty of heavy artics and wagon and drags going the same way as me using the passes like the Simplon and St Bernard judging by the speeds that they were and still do climb and come down them?.I’m sure that just running at 28 tonnes gross that I would have been climbing those passes a lot faster than they were going.There also always seemed and still seems to be plenty of them running different routes like the St Gotthard tunnel too.I’d still say that the train thing is something in the British and maybe the German way of thinking more than mine and many Italian,French,Spanish and East European operators?.To me using trains to run to Italy and doing changeovers for Bulgaria (considering that they thought nothing of running through to the M/E from here with none of that) seems to make no sense and I reckon that it should’nt be too much of a problem to run UK-Italy-UK or even further without having to use trains or run bent or double manned.But as I’ve said before my idea of is to rotate the runs (using more than one driver) so everyone gets some decent homelife and more drivers have a job.Anyway exactly how much did it add to,or save from, the cost of running down to Milan to use that train from Freiburg allowing for fuel etc?.But with all of the cost and bureaucracy barriers now in place running through Benelux,Germany,Swiss or Austria it’s obvious that the rail interests are trying to increase their stranglehold on Italian or South East European traffic and running through France is probably the only option for (what would be) my type of owner driver operation although having said that I’m sure that even that old ridiculous Swiss 28 tonne weight limit must be a thing of the past by now?.But you’re right I do get wound up about the rail freight competition issue probably with good reason.So can we take it then that the rail freight lobby would’nt complain if we got the same price for road fuel as rail,60 Tonners,and an increase in European truck speed limits on motorways to 65 mph with no limiters or tachos like the yanks have??.Who needs to run bent even the Irish could live with those rules. 
Id love to meet the man who reckons he earns £600-£700 pw legally :S Full Of ■■■■…