ELL'S VIA
Page 28
Page 29
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
It's just one more load.., one more day on the road. What can possibly go wrong? As these sorry tales remind us, just about anything. Pat Hagan winces as drivers tell him about some of their waking nightmares behind the wheel...
t doesn't take a rocket scientist to spot the considerable potential for things to go wrong in the UK haulage industry. With half-a-million drivers, almost as many trucks and an astonishing r.G billion tonnes of goods moved by road every year, the law of averages decrees that disasters will occur.
Most seasoned drivers have tales to tell of haulage jobs from hell. They tend to involve a mixture of mechanical failure, poor commu
nications and last, but never least, human error. But what is it about road transport that lends itself to such disasters?
"It's the sheer magnitude of the transport industry," says Geoff Dossetter of the Freight Transport Association. "Everything we use or consume is the product of a lorry journey, so it's not surprising that things go wrong, with sometimes hilarious or disastrous consequences."
Hilarious or disastrous... here's a selection of tales to turn transport managers' hair grey... • Kevin Smith always checks delivery notes these days, and with good reason. Five years ago Kevin, who drives a 7.3-toriner for a packaging company based near Peterborough, was delivering around Preston and Manchester and expecting to spend the night in the cab.
But his drops went like clockwork so instead he made a bolt for home, stopping at Derby to make his final drop.
"At the time Bookers and Nurdin Peacocks were rival cash-and-carries and they both had branches in Derby," he recalls. "There I was, bombing down the AG thinking if I got there before 4.3opm I would get unloaded and what a good job the delivery wasn't for Bookers as they would already be closed for the day.
"I pulled up outside the back door of Nurdin and Peacocks just after 4pm, threw the few items I had on a trolley and rushed in the door, where it was checked and signed for." he adds.
That night, Kevin was home in his own bed. But next morning, as he sat in his cab outside his firm's warehouse back near Peterborough, he decided to sort out his delivery notes. It was then he spotted the one that said "Bookers Cash and Carry, Derby".
"The depot manager was quite understanding and it only took until about 11.30am to drive back to Derby to rectify my mistake," says Smith. "But it just goes to show how your mind can make you see what you want to see."
• There's only one way to describe John Bramwell's first haulage trip to the Continent: a baptism of fire. Bramwell, who hails from Eye, near Peterborough, has been driving HGVs for 13 years.
Back in 1990 he was with an agency that sent him to a firm outside Spalding, Lincs. He was asked to take a load of plastic barrels to Holland, running with one of the firm's regular drivers who would show him the ropes.
But the other driver's sheer exuberance soon got the better of him. "After the briefing he shot off in his shiny 36 ohp MAN, while I followed rather more slowly in my 23ohp Scania," he says.
"When we got off the boat at Europoort he ran over the grass and bashed a trailer wheel on a bollard. It took me TO miles to get him to stop and then, as we started to change the damaged wheel, the police turned up and made us put it back on and drive to the next service area. By this time the wheel was stuck so fast we ended up towing it off!"
After getting lost, the pair finally arrived at the customer's premises in Oegstgeest and John was detailed to take a load up to the German border while his colleague transshipped the plastic barrels. But on the way he realised he had the keys to both trucks and got back to find his colleague had been made to move the barrels by hand. And it wasn't over yet: "The next day, on the way home, the Scania broke down..."
• Middlesbrough driver Rikki Chequer recalls a haulage job that should have been , straightforward but soon turned into a Keystone Cops-type farce, During a spell with a heavy haulage firm he was assigned to a week's work running one load a day of 44m pipes from Livingstone to Grangemouth. The trailer, that extended to well over 3om, was supplied by a Glasgow haulier.
Disaster number one occurred when an out-of-control crane smashed into the trailer while it was still in the yard. The irate trailer owner duly dispatched a fitter to weld it back together.
Disaster number two came when, having loaded the trailer, it transpired that there was no room to manoeuvre it out of the yard. Another phone call and a gang duly appeared to remove the fence to the neighbouring factory.
Finally on the road, along with a police escort, Rikki absent-mindedly sailed past his exit on the motorway before arriving at the back entrance of Grangemouth docks, only to find barriers blocking his way. These were removed but the steel supports in the ground popped two trailer tyres, requiring yet another call to a truly incandescent Glaswegian trailer owner.
"To be fair, he might have had a point as to my parents' marital status at the time of my birth," Chequer smiles.
• Female truck drivers can have a tough time convincing male colleagues they're up to the job. The last thing they need is the kind of embarrassing episode that once happened to Pat Nicholson, now a veteran of the road.
Nicholson, who drives for Bretts Transport of Wisbech, collected tomatoes out of Newhaven one night, and while her truck was being loaded she climbed on top to roll her sheets out. "But I wasn't aware that I was the last one to load and while I was up there everyone disappeared," she recalls. "It was about 8.15 pm and starting to get dark and I don't like heights. I put one of my very short legs over the front of the trailer to try and get a toehold on the headboard, only to find I had the only trailer with no headboard.
"Panic started to set in until I heard someone whistling. It was a security guard doing his checks. After what seemed like ages he spotted roe and had to fetch a forklift to get me down!"