Last week CM editor Brian Weatherley recounted the start of
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a run to the MAZ truck plant in Minsk with a pair of MANs. We pick up the story as the expedition nears the Russian border.
IN Leo and I are driving the 4x2 and tilt. It's difficult not to let the speed creep up as we have a tight schedule to keep; we must make the Russian border before 20:00hrs or we'll have to wait another day before we can transit. Leo looks at my tachograph suspiciously "I think you're a little bit fast." Two hours later he looks at his: "I think I'm a little bit fast also," and grins sheepishly.
The Polish landscape is pretty rural but sprinkled with ornate churches and dozens of roadside stalls selling apples. The one thing that really sticks out is that every house could do with a coat of paint. We divert at Grojec to avoid Warsaw, somehow lose the transit route but eventually we find it again. Then out of the blue a reminder of home, a lone British artic, an F-reg Iveco in Eurotrucks' colours . . . who are those guys?
Following an unintentional scramble through Warsaw (so much for ring roads) we're back on course for the border and Brest. The sun starts to sink. We have to hit the border on time or our entire schedule goes out of the window. Clockwatching we unwittingly blunder through a 60km/h speed zone at 85km/h. The road is deserted but the Polish police are there with the radar. After a touchy moment they fine us a meager 10DM and let us go with a warning. We were lucky; they could, with good reason, have been far less friendly.
SNIFFER DOGS
Then Poland is behind us and the Russian border appears. The lights are on but the Polish guards seem distinctly uninterested. There is even some doubt as to whether they will let us out to the Russian border. It takes a liberal application of posters, pens, carrier bags and various MAN knick-knacks from Wolfgang before they perk up and let us through for the 500m journey over a bridge into the Soviet Customs area. And we thought the East Germans were serious. Never mind the glasnost, this isn't a place for frivolity. As we drive up to the compound the first thing we hear is the barking of sniffer dogs, and within seconds there is a furryhatted soldier by our side with his dog giving our rig the once-over.
He asks us a question in Russian, we answer in German. He trys again in Russian, we misunderstand in English. Finally he makes it clear: wind up the window of the cab; the scent is distracting the dog. But we smile, he smiles, and after a while the dog wanders off, followed by his handler with his hands in his pockets and his boots clumping in the dark.
After a while we crawl into the transit shed. Our passports are taken away and the Russians get stuck into the trucks. The key player is a small, stocky comrade with a belted raincoat. All the others keep coming up to him so he must be important, even if he does look like a football manager.
The soldiers slouch around with their hands in their pockets. We get voluble support from the local Sovtransavto agent
who acts as an unpaid interpreter (Soytransavto is the Russian state-run haulage company). Once again MAN goodies (this time a poster and a lighter) work wonders. The football manager looks through the trucks. "Porno hooks?" "No". We can't tell if he's disappointed, but he gives the Daily Telegraph a good look. Then a quick stamp from his pocket seal and he's off to harrass a Pole in a Transit bus, leaving us to sort out the last of the paperwork with the Sovtransavto office.
Close to midnight, after an impromptu celebratory dinner of liver soup and dumplings eaten precariously off a dinner plate (they forgot the soup bowls) we creep out of the Customs area, past the guard house and the wire, onto the parking zone and into Mother Russia. Now for a kip: tomorrow it's Minsk!
It's a bright and beautiful day; our first in Russia. As we slowly come to life we find that the other trucks that crossed the border with us have all moved on.
Leo points to the edge of the layby which has fallen away down the hill — blacktop seems to have been laid over sand: "It's like that on the roads so don't pull off too much when you stop otherwise you're over the edge."
Both the trucks are in need of juice so we head down the road looking for a Sovtransavto depot. You don't just roll up and buy diesel in the USSR; you either have vouchers or a regular allocation for your operation. We finally track down the de pot, but only LPG is on offer. Further down the road we come to the main administration and workshop complex.
We wander into the cafeteria. Russian breakfast turns out to be lamb in a thick gravy with a whole mess of completely unidentifiable things on the side. But it tastes good and fills a hole for 50p a head. The best piece of Russian nosh is undoubtedly the dark bread; during our stay we demolish bushells of it.
As we eat I look around at the decor: sort of sixties British New Town, but with more cracks in the plaster. And then our first glimpse of the fabled Russian working woman; two Olgas in search of sustenance. They look as if they're plasterers and yes, they're built like Liverpool dockers (are there still dockers in Liverpool?).
After all those years of seeing Giles cartoons of them in the Daily Express I discover it's all true. I smile at one who giggles politely. Corr. .
On the way back to the trucks we pass through workshops the size of a Zeppelin hangar. Many Russians, particularly the Sovtransavto drivers, speak German, so we're able to extract directions to the nearest derv, back down the road at a 'service area'.
As we pull in a driver is just finishing off a bit of fine tuning on his wagon, knocking a shackle pin back into place with an enormous sledge hammer. The pumps are awash with puddles of diesel on the ground soaking into the windblown sand. As we fuel up pictures are taken, MAN gifts distributed and the West Germans have a natter with two drivers in a Steyr from East Germany.
We pay for the dery with a fist full of roubles and hit the road. This time 'Big Thomas' and I are in the 4>e2, and I take the first leg. The road from Brest starts off as a single carriageway, but after a short while changes to a reasonable dual carriageway. There's hardly anything moving on it — like one of those early photographs of the MI., but God, it's boring to drive on.
To British ears, Soviet trucks have some silly names: Maz, Kamaz, Gaz, Liaz, Belaz, Kraz, Moaz, Zil, Zuk Oaz . the little ones look like a cross between an old]] Bedford and a fifties GMC, but generally with more dents; the bigger artics look more like care worn Volvo F86s. It's as if the Russians bought the vehicular cast from Wages of Fear and set about building thousands more like them.
For at least two hours we do all the overtaking at a steady 80-85km/h, only slowing down for the checkpoints that appear every 20-30km. As you approach them, you have to drop down to around 30knilh so a policeman in a kind of glassfronted watchtower can take a look at you. They tend to be sited at major cross roads and intersections.
Leo and Wolfgang stop the camper to take a couple of pies of the MANs on the road. The police appear from nowhere and politely tell them to push off, The plan is to get to our hotel in Minsk by around 18:00hrs and meet our guide from the MAZ factory so we can't hang about, but a quick break for lunch gives us the chance to watch the traffic go by. You can often hear a Russian truck before you see it. Many of the smaller Zils are fitted with big petrol engines and sound like Detroit diesel-powered TMs. Most of the diesels are belching out enough smoke to make a Red/Green go white.
There are a few Germans and Dutch out here, then 14km from Minsk, a British Scania goes whistling by . . it's another Eurotrucks rig. Who are those guys?
Somewhere along the flat, straight road we've managed to lose the camper. We pull over and almost immediately a wellworn Mercedes car pulls up and a Russian spiv emerges offering to change some money for us. We decline. He shrugs his shoulders and slopes off. We sit in the cab listening to Radio Moscow and the howl of Russian trucks going by. It's getting dark and we still haven't hit Minsk, or the hotel. Enough is enough, we decide; we'll go on without them. Naturally they turn up at this point.
The first signs of the Hero City of Minsk, capital of Soviet Byelorussia (White Russia to you and me) appear on the horizon.
The apartment blocks spring up like sunflowers as we get stuck into city traffic. Enormous queues of people wait for the buses and trolleybuses.
The big broad avenues are attractive and easy to negotiate, but we're definitely blundering on here until Wolfgang stops the camper, finds a taxi driver who will lead us to the hotel and away we go again.
There are a few anxious moments slipping under rather low unmarked bridges before we reach the Yubileinaya Hotel, the official Intourist Hotel we have to stay in. After three days on the road the hotel is luxury; most of us head for a shower and a telephone to call home but it proves impossible to get a line through to the UK that night.
If the Soviet bread is good then so is the tea. Hot, sweet and served out of large silver kettles. The Russian for tea is `char, almost like char really . . . we get through a couple of kettles' worth as we talk over the plan of action. Today, we go to the MAZ plant for a look, before we hit the road again for Moscow.
At the front of the plant there's a wellpreserved truck on a plinth. One of MAZ's most popular models, it's a sixtonner powered by an 82kW (110hp) engine built between 1947 and 1965. It looks like an old Bedford to me.
The MAZ plant at Minsk is part of the giant Belavtomaz group — the other two parts being Moaz in Mogilov and Belaz in Zodino. Its main truck rival is the Kamaz, produced in a plant hundreds of kilometres further East.
COCA-COLA
The MAZ factory employs 31,000 workers and produces around 39,000 vehicles a year ranging from small rigids to 313kW (420hp) tractors and some semi-trailers. We're given the real red carpet treatment. All the big wigs are dusted off and we sit in a neat board room around a long wooden table with bottles of Coca-Cola. There isn't an official interpreter; instead we have a three-way conversation; German to Russian; Russian back to German, then I get a German-to-English translation. A simple question like "How many trucks do you build?" takes 10 minutes to answer.
The Minsk plant concentrates on assembly work and some chassis fabrication. The engines come from another plant in the group, as do axles. Over 50%, of MAZ's production goes to the state; once they've been asked to build so many trucks for the year they can't back out of the deal. The rest go for export, mainly to Commecon countries, but some to Africa, Latin America, South-East Asia and the Phillipines.
A small proportion end up with haulage co-operatives and, in post-glasnost USSR with the small, private haulage companies which are slowly re-emerging.
A few facts and figures float about, then it is revealed that the market for new trucks in Russia is a staggering 500,000 a year. Not exactly small potatoes.
Leo and I are getting fidgety. We both want to see the assembly line and try out the MAZ tractor with the MAN engine which is, after all, what we've come for. The men from MAZ, insist on lunching first. Leo and I agree that it's a hard life working on truck magazines.
0 Next week: the road to Moscow with the MAN-powered MAZ.