ere's one that will have them chortlin g at the 19th
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hole: a van was seen in North London with a sign on the back which read "My wife said she would leave me if I didn't give up golf. God, how I miss her."
lorida-based trucker Kenneth Bass has been named Highway Hero 1990-91 by Goodyear Tyre and Rubber after saving a motorist from drowning.
Bass was driving his Western Star rig along a country road at night when he saw a car come off the side of the bridge and go into the river. He dived into the water only to find the car upside down and the driver unconscious, suspended by his seat belt. Bass freed the man after several attempts to grab at his sweater.
A 38-tonne container
lorry and driver is needed "yesterday" by Coventry-based Global Care which has tonnes of relief supplies to send to the Kurdish people who are stranded on the mountains of Northern Iraq. The lorry will go to Turkey where the supplies will be broken down for onward shipment. Contact Yvonne Jackson or Ron Newby at Global Care on (0203) 226309 or 632203.
n unlikely drivers' champion has expressed her long-held regard for truck drivers — step forward award-winning journalist and author Germaine Greer.
Greer tells of her fondness for truckies, originating from her youthful rambles as a hitchhiker, in an article in the Independent on Sunday.
"Truck drivers took me to Relais Routiers in deepest Burgundy and ordered me the best things to eat," enthuses Greer. "Truck drivers showed me photographs of faded wives and mothers and sang their praises to me; truck drivers taught me all I know about internal combustion engines, about torque and braking power. Truck drivers took me where I needed to go with no shenanigans." According to Greer a romantic truck driver once left a posy of freesias at her youth hostel as a reward for listening to him pouring his heart out.
During those carefree
days on walkabout, she recalls, she was "assaulted, dumped on highways miles from anywhere... and once nearly half strangled". Not by truckers though — it was always the "man in the four-door saloon".
Greer then takes up her considerable cudgels to attack "British perversity" in constraining by law the hours drivers work while giving them nowhere to stop except the "unsafe and squalid phenomenon" of the. layby caravan. Lack of provision means that the HGV driver is "hunted and harried like some kind of criminal", she says.
"Other countries do not torture their truck drivers," she concludes, pointing to the excellent roadside bays in Europe, which are free — paid for by road tax.
The Hawk could not have put it better and wonders if any truck drivers reading this remember giving a lift to the youthful Antipodean? Perhaps next year Greer would consent to be the Hawk's guest at Truckfest?