Bacon Butties & Communion Wine

Rest assured I was parked up when taking this - 

harder than it looks as it happens, especially with a point and shoot!

I spend way too much of my life trundling up and down the A1 in the transporter, given the location of dealers our company delivers and collects from.  At Barnsdale Bar, not far from Ferrybridge in Yorkshire are fascinating pair of advertisements in a field that always catch my eye.  Unfortunately I’m not in a position to photograph them from my cab, being a responsible driver and all that, especially as VOSA stopped me so often in December that I’m now on first name terms with all the officers and have invitations to two weddings and a birthday party.

Bust shortly before Christmas an opportunity arose when on a slack business day I rode as a passenger on a trip up to Rochdale in order to get out of having to do some real work in the yard.  The principle advert is on an old artic trailer, with the second sign set against it at the end.  The positioning is clearly deliberate as the signs have been like this for the last couple of years; I just wonder if the café owners read into it what I read into it!

Prepare to meet your God - cafe next left. Either the Big Man has popped down to Barnsdale Bar for a bacon butty or the food is so bad it's going to kill you. Either way; 'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you can eat in or take away.'

A bit more catch up from last year; my Scania broke down one Monday morning (don’t we all?) and this impressive Foden Wrecker was sent to collect it.  The truck sounded more like a railway locomotive and left an impressive cloud of clag when it finally departed with the transporter in tow.

For 2011 I have been upgraded and given a trailer to add onto the lorry on a full-time basis.  Designed for carrying large vans, the new addition makes it the longest vehicle in the fleet – hope the insurance premiums are up to date!

On one of its final solo outings as a rigid, this pre-Christmas 

delivery to Leicester looks rather festive.

Did The Earth Move For You?

Moses came down from Mount Sinai in his triumph with the Ten Commandments and the Red Sea parted before him.  I came down Mount Street in Nottingham in my Scania with five customer cars and the whole pavement parted beneath me.

Moses only had to contend with Pharaoh and the Egyptian army with their chariots.  Fall through a pavement in Nottingham and you have to deal with Council officials, utility providers and people pretending to be policemen, sorry, policepersons, in hi-viz jackets and bulletproof vests.  Not to mention the veritable army of self appointed experts who just happen to be passing and helpfully pass on tips about digging out tanks during the Battle of the Somme.  “What you need, young man, is flypaper and a coal scuttle.  Wrap the axle up in greaseproof paper and you’ll have it out in a jiffy, what!”  Which is why I decided to wait out the episode in my cab and grab forty winks.

What happened was this.  I had a delivery of five cars to make to one of the umpteen ‘hand car wash’ places that have sprung up everywhere in Nottingham.  Because Councils make everywhere as HGV unfriendly as possible these days there is nowhere to offload and the racetracks that serve as roads to the demented drivers of Nottingham – who make the Wacky Races look like a 1930’s drive in the country – are not exactly the most ideal place to make a delivery from.  That’s assuming you can even see them under the yellow lines, red lines, chevrons, cameras, bus lanes, cycle lanes, yummy-mummy school lanes, antiskid surfaces and red top tarmac.  Therefore I pull onto the pavement to drop the cars off.  Unfortunately, the pavement gave way under the weight of the lorry – a fact I can only subscribe to mining subsidence from the days when Britain had what we used to call industry and employment.  The nearside wheel went into the hole up to axle height, with the vehicle resting on the anti roll bar.  Fortunately I could adjust the air suspension to maintain a level surface in the cab so I didn’t spill my coffee whilst awaiting the recovery vehicle.  This would have arrived a lot quicker than it did, had not our buffoon of a ‘service provider’ sent it to a different street in Nottingham to pick up a coach.  No wonder they couldn't find me.

Recovery with an impressive beast of a three-axle Foden was swift, thanks to the simple expedient of attaching a chain to the front and bodily lifting the truck out of the hole and swinging it onto the road.  The experience didn’t seem to have harmed the Scania, and it performed normally for the rest of the day.  Now we have to wait for the reams of paperwork and claims, followed by insurance battles and counter claims in order to decide who pays how much and to whom.  Not something that Moses had to deal with, of that I’m sure.

I Like Trucking

I came across this video recently, having only a vague recollection of the original episode of Not The Nine o' Clock News. Most appropriate given my line of work, although I have yet to see a hitch hiker as attractive as Pamela Anderson ..... as for hedgehog sandwiches, well don't knock it until you've tried it!

The Road to Hull - Well, Nearly

As it was a fairly quiet day at work, I was despatched up to Beverley in East Yorkshire to the RCB dealers to collect some trade cars. This is a pleasant run, as it involves crossing the Humber Bridge. No matter how may times I see this bridge, I always find it an amazing piece of engineering, (at my age I don’t get out much), and the view on a clear day is fantastic. Today was crystal clear, and the tide was at low ebb so the Humber looked as still as a sheet of glass. Unfortunately the local constabulary take a dim view of HGV drivers parking up to take pictures, so I carried on to the toll booths to pay the outrageous £10.90 that they charge a rigid lorry to cross. The bridge is superb – but not that superb. Still, the company was paying, so never mind. As I couldn’t stop for pictures, I took this one on a previous visit when I travelled by car and could visit the viewing point. It was a much colder and windy day on that occasion!

North of the Humber the trip to Beverley is slow, due to the need for a roundabout every 25 yards. I don’t quite know what the need for a roundabout every 25 yards could possibly be; probably something to do with left over Council Tax that must be wasted before the end of the fiscal year. That’s what they do in Grantham, so I assume Beverley isn’t that much different.

Upon arriving at RCB, I was somewhat surprised to see that it was no longer RCB. The forecourt and showroom were abandoned, and a brand new 8 foot high palisade fence surrounded the complex. Oh goody, I like a challenge. Fortunately the company had had the foresight to erect a ‘We have moved’ sign – pity they didn’t have the foresight to telephone their transportation company and tell us, though. The address was given, so I made a mental note and carried on until I could stop in a layby and look it up. Everything seemed straightforward enough, it was a simple matter of finding somewhere to turnaround and backtrack past the showroom formerly known as RCB. The new site was nearby on an industrial estate. I found it easily enough, and was surprised to find that it was HGV friendly – space to turnaround, and space to load up. Is it Christmas already?

The cars were all ready for loading – okay, it is definitely Christmas – and they all started on the key with no jumpstarts, kicking or swearing required. So it’s Christmas, New Year and National Goldfish Memorial Day all rolled in one. So, no need to rush, and I was even able to stop off for a spot of lunch on the way back, after admiring the Humber Bridge for a second (expensive) time in one day. Everyday should be like this.