Wreckers' world —dirty, cold, wet
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WII1LE he was building his Chaseside empire in the United States (selling and servicing almost anything on wheels, and running driving schools, marinas and even a burials-at-sea service), Bill Jackson never lost touch with his first interest. "1 would cancel directors' meetings or leap nut of bed in the middle of the night to do an interesting recovery'', he writes in the preface to . the Profi'ssional..: Book II.
He adds: -Everything I had learnt up to then came the hard way — dirty, cold, wet and frustrated because c.)I poor equipment and lack of outside training.'' It shows, The book is full of anecdotes recounted entertainingly by a man who in the course of his recovery work has been covered in leeches while driving through floods in Nigeria, taken ill with cholera in India and frozen in Finland.
The stories by the president of the American arm of vehicle recovery equipment manufacturer Wreckers International serve to illustrate practical points about the business of vehicle recovery. Each incident, Jackson tells us, is an education—like the car that was hauled out of a ravine in Switzerland by a recovery vehicle standing on a bridge. The operator found that he couldn't get it past the parapet. A mobile crane was brought along to help, but the problem was that the bridge would not take the weight of both vehicles. The solution was to lash the car to the bridge, remove the recovery vehicle and finish the job with the crane.
Supporting the anecdotes is an abundance of technical information, there are sections on the mechanics of recovery (complete with mathematical formulae), techniques, equipping and specifying vehicles, heavy recovery and hazardous loads. Points are illustrated with simple diagrams and black and white photographs (not always of the best quality).
In his preface, ,jackson stresses that Book II is not a treatise. -It is an effort on the part of two people (Ron Grice, managing director of Wreckers' UK business is a contributor) whose hearts and souls have been in this business as far hack as we can remember." It was written, he explains, because he was dissatisfied with Book I, which attempted to cover the whole field of recovery. hut was out-of-date when it was eventually published.
Wreckers International, Caxton Hill, Ware Road, Hertford SG13 7LT.