p retencling to be a non-English speaking foreigner when stopped for
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driving twice the legal hours is worth a try. The police are idiots after all, aren't they?
The last thing you want to admit is that you've driven from the west of Scotland to Hull, swapped over trailers, and headed straight back up the M90. By the time the police pull you in, you've been behind the wheel for 18 hours—without stopping. Your deception is helped by the fact that you are driving a Dutch-registered truck. This, added to the fact that you say not one word in response to police questions but merely shrug your shoulders, should convince the traffic patrol you are a "Dutch" driver. But it doesn't.
instead, one of them surmises that if you couldn't speak English you would prove this by saying a few words in your native tongue. Silence is not golden. "You are putting us on," says the copper. You shrug once more and ruefully reply, in English: "You have to try and make money when you can." It's a fair cop.
Bob Willison was one of the patrol which stopped this unconvincing "Dutch" driver. He did indeed try to be a fair cop in his years as a traffic sergeant in Fife. He had so much respect for hauliers that last year he handed in his sergeant's stripes, took early retirement after 30 years, and set up in business as an ownerdriver.
In his years in the force the incident of the bogus "Dutch" driver was about as blatant as truck drivers got. Mostly, he believes, they tried hard to respect the law and keep within its increasingly stringent limitations. "We knew the good guys and the bad guys among local hauliers. The cowboys got extra attention. They might think the police stupid but we knew what was going on—they couldn't pull the wool over our eyes."
Regular customer
The day CM met Willison he was endeavouring to arrange loads for his two tippers at the site of his most regular customer, Fife Sand & Gravel. Lashing rain and biting wind was serving to drive romantic instincts about haulage out of any but the hardiest of souls. But Willison was smiling "It's delightful to be your own man."
When he decided to leave the police he was offered a secure job by a local haulier who wanted a traffic manager in charge of 12 vehicles. He turned it down: "I told him, I've got to do this on my own. I didn't want to swap one desk for another, I didn't want to be a sergeant in the haulage industry. I wanted the pleasure of being on the open road with the sun shining."
Willison isn't quite on his own. His son Grant drives the second tipper, a MercedesBenz 2421 six-wheeler, bought this June. His first vehicle, a three-year old Volvo FL6 17tonner started earning him money in September 1993.
According to Willison, the four-wheeler has found a "wee niche"—delivering to building sites which don't want more than 10 tonnes to avoid material spoilage and others where access for a six-wheeler is impossible. It's also ideal for delivering sand to golf courses, bowling greens and playing fields.
Willison agrees that having a full police pension helps to ease the pain: 'There's not too much happening in this part of the world—it's patchy" So what was it that made him decide to leave a profession that is never short of work for one where work is never guaranteed? Simply, "love of lorry driving".
Grain artics
The seeds were sown in the late 1970s when a friend running grain artics needed someone to load vehicles overnight. He put Willison through the HGV test and a spot of moonlighting ensued, a practice banned in the force. This lasted only as long as it took someone to tip off his boss: "I was dragged before the deputy chief constable and grounded for several years, but lorry driving is a bug which gets into you."
He continued to dream of running his own vehicle. One day in Cowdenbeath, a four-wheel Volvo FLI3 tipper pulled up to ask directions of his patrol. He now owns this vehicle. "It was an immaculate little truck. I said to my fellow officer that would really suit me. With a bit of police work I traced the driver, a Tarmac owner-driver, to find he was retiring two months before me. The vehicle had done 62,000 miles in three years."
A haulier was born.
Willison's police career began as a 19-yearold wearing out leather for four years on the beat. He then became desk-bound for many years before joining the traffic department for his final 12 years. "I was a late starter in traffic, up against all the whizz kids."
Nevertheless, he passed his Class 1 Police Advanced Driving Certificate at the Scottish police college at Kincardine: "A difficult month culminating in tests in three cars with three examiners." One of the toughest is Maximum Progress with Safety—high-speed driving.
Eventually he reached traffic sergeant. "It's the best job in the force—each sergeant has his own team of 10 men with five patrol cars, the lovely BMW 5 Series."
Spot checks on hauliers became a routine part of the job. The most common offences were hours and overloading, the biggest headache the paperwork involved to prosecute someone. "You were bogged down," says Willison, who recalls that the officer would write the defendant's name 20 times—in the complaint book, the breathalyser book, the warning book before passing it on to the operations' room for a daily update.
Doesn't the fact that he operates in the same area as his former five-car patrol surely mean that "honest Bob" gets treated lightly by the boys in blue? He shakes his head: "I'm always the first to be stopped to prevent the police being accused of unfairness! And it's often one of my old colleagues who stops me. But it can't be bad they may find something wrong with my truck that I haven't noticed."
El by Patric Curmane