Just read Mick Twemlow’s new book, ‘Trucking Magic’. After ‘Vodka Cola Cowboys’ I was looking forward to the sequel.
This one covers trucking down to the Middle East and the Balkans and is a great read.
I can thoroughly recommend it!!
You can buy it through Ebay or Amazon.
If it comes down in price maybe but i’ve seen it advertised for between £16-£25 in paperback.
It’s deffo a good read chaps 
! This book contains another collection of interesting, detailed stories of life on the road on long-haul work in Europe and way beyond, from Mick Twemlow. As always, Mick’s urgent, racy style keeps the reader hooked throughout, even though the tales are non-fiction. And there appears to be a continuing appetite for this kind of stuff at the moment, possibly because there is virtually none of it going on currently, owing to the mosaic of trade squeezing out British participation in the long-haul scene.
Enjoy!
Robert
My book, “Trucking Magic” tells the story of the five years that I spent driving for Pro-Motor, between September 1978 and October 1983.
During that time I drove to every country in Europe, except Norway, Finland and Portugal.
The book is written on a country by country basis and details the incidents, adventures and situations that occurred.
The vast amount of my work for Pro-Motor was to Yugoslavia, which is where the photo was taken, just outside of Zagreb.
However, I also spent a large amount of time driving in the Soviet controlled East Europe, as well as making 9 trips to Baghdad for them and my first trip to Russia.
In addition to this I was involved in West European work on prestigious operations such as the Ford Sierra launch in Paris and the Ford Cargo launch in Montreux.
Trucking Magic tells tales of what happened during that time, ranging from the humorous to the dangerous.
Many of the readers of Trucking Magic and Vodka Cola Cowboy have thoroughly enjoyed both books and are waiting for the launch of the third book
“The Champagne Truckers”, which will hopefully be published in November 2017.
Mick
Dirty Dan:
Just got mine,hope for a good readDanne
Hi Dan. Hope that you enjoy this one as much as you did Vodka Cola Cowboy.
Mick
Of course, not all of my work on Pro-Motor involved snow and ice, but I did get my fair share.
However, here is a photo from warmer climes. Taken just South of Ankara in Turkey
on my way to Baghdad.
This was my second trip to Baghdad, but my first for Pro-Motor. It was also my fastest
taking 21 days Zeebrugge to Baghdad and back to Dover.
As I say in my book “Trucking Magic”, there was a diesel shortage in Turkey at the time
because the Iraqi’s - who supplied all of Turkey’s fuel had shut off the taps.
Every fuel station that you came to in Turkey had queues of vehicles stretching away from them
for miles in each direction.
I was lucky though because I was running with a Falcongate driver who had a belly tank under his trailer
which I fed off in both directions.
Mick
Just finished reading this book on my Kindle. Great book and very well written. I read it for free as it is included in the “Kindle Unlimited “ deal from Amazon.(£7.99 per month, I am trying it free for 30 days and it looks good value if you read a lot. The only problem would seem to be that “vodka cola cowboys” is not presently included, but lots of other trucking books are.)
kickstart:
Just finished reading this book on my Kindle. Great book and very well written. I read it for free as it is included in the “Kindle Unlimited “ deal from Amazon.(£7.99 per month, I am trying it free for 30 days and it looks good value if you read a lot. The only problem would seem to be that “vodka cola cowboys” is not presently included, but lots of other trucking books are.)
Hi Kickstart. I am glad that you enjoyed Trucking Magic. I was just dealing with the same situation on facebook where someone has read Trucking Magic through Kindle unlimited but cannot get Vodka Cola through it. This is probably because Vodka was published by Old Pond and Trucking Magic was published by me. I signed Trucking up to K.U. but Old Pond may not have signed Vodka up to it.
Or, it may be that Amazon/Kindle have done this as a promotion. You never know Vodka Cola Cowboy may become available later on.
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
kickstart:
Just finished reading this book on my Kindle. Great book and very well written. I read it for free as it is included in the “Kindle Unlimited “ deal from Amazon.(£7.99 per month, I am trying it free for 30 days and it looks good value if you read a lot. The only problem would seem to be that “vodka cola cowboys” is not presently included, but lots of other trucking books are.)Hi Kickstart. I am glad that you enjoyed Trucking Magic. I was just dealing with the same situation on facebook where someone has read Trucking Magic through Kindle unlimited but cannot get Vodka Cola through it. This is probably because Vodka was published by Old Pond and Trucking Magic was published by me. I signed Trucking up to K.U. but Old Pond may not have signed Vodka up to it.
Or, it may be that Amazon/Kindle have done this as a promotion. You never know Vodka Cola Cowboy may become available later on.
Hi Mick, yes I realise that Vodka Cola Cowboy is published by Old Pond and I don’t think that any of their books are available on Kindle Unlimited. When I have exhausted all the truck related books on KU I will probably purchase VCC as I have all my many books before joining KU, but at the moment I want to get as much value as possible from KU (being a tight ba****d and now retired). When is the new book likely to be available and who is publishing it?
Les.
kickstart:
Vodka Cola Cowboy:
kickstart:
Just finished reading this book on my Kindle. Great book and very well written. I read it for free as it is included in the “Kindle Unlimited “ deal from Amazon.(£7.99 per month, I am trying it free for 30 days and it looks good value if you read a lot. The only problem would seem to be that “vodka cola cowboys” is not presently included, but lots of other trucking books are.)Hi Kickstart. I am glad that you enjoyed Trucking Magic. I was just dealing with the same situation on facebook where someone has read Trucking Magic through Kindle unlimited but cannot get Vodka Cola through it. This is probably because Vodka was published by Old Pond and Trucking Magic was published by me. I signed Trucking up to K.U. but Old Pond may not have signed Vodka up to it.
Or, it may be that Amazon/Kindle have done this as a promotion. You never know Vodka Cola Cowboy may become available later on.Hi Mick, yes I realise that Vodka Cola Cowboy is published by Old Pond and I don’t think that any of their books are available on Kindle Unlimited. When I have exhausted all the truck related books on KU I will probably purchase VCC as I have all my many books before joining KU, but at the moment I want to get as much value as possible from KU (being a tight ba****d and now retired). When is the new book likely to be available and who is publishing it?
Les.
Hi Les. I am publishing the new one, which is called “The Champagne Truckers”. By the look of it the book should be released in the middle of this month. It will be available in paperback and on Kindle and it will be signed up to Kindle unlimited. I will put it on here and my Trucking Magic facebook page when it is available from Amazon. As a pensioner myself I know what it’s like and KU is a good way to get to read books.
Mick
Thanks for the info Mick. I look forward to reading it.I really enjoyed “Trucking Magic”, your style of writing is great and informative without being repetitive and boring. Thanks for putting it on Kindle Unlimited.
Les
kickstart:
Thanks for the info Mick. I look forward to reading it.I really enjoyed “Trucking Magic”, your style of writing is great and informative without being repetitive and boring. Thanks for putting it on Kindle Unlimited.
Les
Thanks Les. It is great when people tell me that they enjoyed any of my books.
When you are writing them you are never sure whether people will enjoy them.
What I think is interesting might not appeal to other people.
But to be fair I have had a lot of very good feedback from both of the two that I have written so far.
With the next one, “Champagne Truckers”, although it covers the period that I lived in Moscow which
I wrote about in “Vodka Cola”, they are all new true unpublished tales and stories from that time.
Obviously, it links to “Vodka”, but I have tried to write it so that you don’t need to have read “Vodka”
to enjoy it.
Mick
Well Mick, from my perspective as someone who has covered most of mainland UK in a wagon, I have had no experience like you have and it’s great to read these adventures. I have driven in Yugoslavia, but only a hire car when my wife and I visited Croatia, back in Tito’s days, and the roads around Dubrovnik, Herceg Nova, Budva etc weren’t too bad.No experience of driving away from the tourist areas. Although the latter part of my driving career was on buses/coaches due to a back injury, I still kept my hand in on the wagons doing agency work when on holiday periods or long weekends off etc and like to keep abreast of what is currently happening by visiting Trucknetuk and reading any books on the subject, and yours certainly appeal to me.Keep up the good work, we need more like you and Jazzandy!
Here we were sitting at the al Mannah custom depot outside of Baghdad on the road to Fallujah.
You could not think of a bigger dump to be stuck in for days.
The J.C.Bs were a regular load of mine for Pro-Motor. They were for the Baghdad Trade Fair.
Not a bad load to carry, the problem was re-building the tilt after you had tipped.
Hot, dirty sweaty work in the blazing sunshine.
Mick
Having just sent off the final upload for the book, I would like to introduce you to my latest paperback.
Once again I have returned to my time in Russia between 1990 and 1995.
It should be available on Amazon from around 20th November.
Hopefully you will find it as interesting as Vodka Cola Cowboy and Trucking Magic.
Mick
When you drove for Pro-Motor you were always told to expect the unexpected.
You would not get more unexpected than this.
Brian Holmes and Johnny Preece were delivering in Kurdistan and got snow and sand.
I believe that they said that they did not get a suntan on this trip 
As I said in “Trucking Magic” my nine trips to Baghdad for Pro-Motor were carried out
for the twice yearly Trade Fairs. I went at the time of year when the weather was always good.
But Pro’s carried out work to the Middle East all through the year and in all conditions.
Mick
Sitting around at Al Mannah, I got bored but I did get a good sun tan. This was the early stage of it before I got really brown.
Once the customs were cleared I then tipped my load of JCBs at the Baghdad Trade Fair and headed for home.
My good friend Johnny Preece. In Trucking Magic I talk about when the two of us spent
two weeks running back and forwards between Paris and Boulogne for the Ford Sierra launch.
We were taking trailers full of cars and show gear to the Palais de Congress.
Then after a short break we repeated the job taking goods back to the U.K.
.
As I said in the book, it was John that taught me a very naughty Yugoslavian phrase.
Mick
My usual starter for ten. The wall at Zeebrugge. I would ship out of Dover
during the night and park beside the wall for a few hours extra sleep.
From there I would set out for where I was headed for.
When a number of us shipped out at the same time we would park there if there was space.
If not we would roll down to the Fina and later to the new stop, where the Irish girls worked.
As I said in “Trucking Magic”, some of the boys spent more than a few hours there with the Irish girls.
Sometimes it was a few days. 
