For heavy hauliers, getting an abnormal load onto the road
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can often be more of a struggle than the journey itself — as these pictures show all too dearly ...
• Moving a 100-tonne transformer from a half-demolished electricity station in Birmingham to the main road 500 metres away proved to be an all-day task for heavy haulier George Curtis.
When driver Mark Curtis and mate Hugh Rowbottom woke in the cab of their five-axle Leyland Daf 95 380 at 10am last Thursday, they expected to have the transformer aboard and on its way to its Barnsley destination by early afternoon.
Instead, they and a four-man team from Barnsley scrap dealer C Soar had to work until 8pm as the temperature soared to over 80°F.
Perseverance was the key. Eventually the 175-tonne plated vehicle was manoeuvred into position: the transformer was levered onto its 10-axle hydraulic trailer, and driven down a precarious rubble ramp. Then it was up another steep access road before the truck was ready to move onto the Birmingham streets with its police escort the next day. "It was one of our toughest jobs," said Curtis, who has been a driver with his father's firm for four years. "The access was bad and the ground soft. But next week we could well have a worse one."
In the process, the front hitch was broken on his four-month-old truck (which, he says, is the only ballasted Leyland Daf in the country).
George Curtis has been in heavy haulage since 1980. His 10-truck fleet has handled jobs in Egypt, Central America, the United States and Pakistan. Mark Curtis and Rowbottom, who has been a driver's mate for three years, average three trips a week
by Murdo Morrison.