Peterborough or Bust

Well, bust actually.

Ever thought that things are going too well, and all of a sudden you’re going to come to a grinding jarring halt? Yes, me too. This week my regular lorry, the Iveco Cargo, has been away for a service and MOT so I’ve had the pleasure of driving our spare truck, the much newer and more pleasant spare vehicle that is our recently purchased Mercedes Benz Atego.

Lovely truck to drive, but the bodywork rather lets it down.
This was one of the Atego's first outings, a day return to Liverpool.

With the huge downturn in car sales this year, car transporters have dropped drastically in price, so when this truck appeared for sale it was too good an opportunity to miss. I’d hoped to be given the lorry as my full time vehicle, given that it is newer, lower mileage, more powerful and a lot more pleasant to drive than the old bag of spanners. But, no. The accountants, who always know best, decreed that the Merc should be the spare lorry, sitting around doing nothing most of the time, whilst the Iveco would lurch on in full time use - since when it has broken down twice and needed a new engine and gearbox at a cost that only Fred Goodwin wouldn’t flinch at. Yes, say the accountants, but on paper, it’s cheaper to break down and require a very expensive recovery operation than it would be to use the more modern lorry that can make it as far as Scunthorpe all by itself. I don’t quite get it, but then again, that’s why I drive them and don’t do the accounts.

So I was delighted to send the Iveco off for servicing last Friday, and get my hands on the Atego this week. I picked it up on Monday, glistening in its fresh coat of paint as it had just been resprayed into company colours.

What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes! Now it looks great,
and is just waiting for the new company vinyls to be applied.

The week flew by until Friday morning, when I had to collect the Iveco, load up and do a delivery in Peterborough. Long before reaching my destination, I knew I had problems. The air pressure was falling, and I lost all my low-end gears as a result. Pulling away from a roundabout or junction was similar to pulling away in a car in fourth gear – judder, judder, judder, lurch, judder, stagger, over-rev and finally crawl away. Having thus endeared myself to the road users of Cambridgeshire, I crawled and lurched into my destination, which was Lincoln Road in Peterborough. I stopped the truck, pulled on the parking brake, and that was that. I could clearly hear the escaping air; it was shooting out with some force. The fault was a two-inch split in the reinforced pipe – not what you want on a Friday.

Worse followed – I couldn’t raise or lower the decks without air, so the cars on the top deck were stranded. The usual phone calls to base and our service provider were exchanged, with helpful comments like, ‘Drive it up to Lincoln and I’ll take a look at it.’ I won’t put my actual reply in writing here, as I’m fairly confident that you can guess. After an hour of various phone calls and helpful advice, our service provider agreed to get someone to take a look. This would take time, so in the meantime, the problem was how to get the cars off. The first thing I tried was the traditional bodge. Some cloth wrapped round the split and tied with a couple of cable-ties should suffice – no. The pressure just blew it off. A ratchet strap might work as they are very strong, but there wasn’t room to work. A more ingenious method of unloading was required.

The Atego was also working today, and, quite by chance, was engaged in a delivery on the other side of Peterborough. Another phonecall summoned it to assist – on arrival the Atego reversed down Lincoln Road until the two trucks were back to back. The decks were jiggled about a bit, and the three cars driven across from one lorry to the other. This took 45 minutes, as the Rover was flat as usual – they hold their battery charge for about, oh, anything up to 6 minutes after you take the key out. The Clio suffered from all the usual Renault problems – they are bags of shit. Sorry, but no other word conveys the low esteem that I hold these ‘vehicles’ in. Other car manufacturers get their electronics systems from IBM and Phillips. Renault just take apart singing Santas and bung the wiring into their cars with a Gallic shrug.

“What iz ze problem, heh? If it is right-hand-drive, zen zees car is for ze English, oui? So, we send them le merde, porquoi pas?’

The battery was flat, the bonnet clip was missing so I had to go fishing around to release it, and even when jump-started the immobiliser refused to turn off. But with persistence, patience and lot of swearing, we finally transferred it across. The Ford Focus started on the key and drove across first time – well done Ford! One out of three ain’t bad, I suppose. This was all happening on the road, of course, and I only wish our resident Health & Safety Gauleiter had been observing, as she would be cuddling the litter of kittens she’d just given birth to by now.

Once transferred, the cars were then dropped off from the Atego to our bemused customer. Still no sign of any assistance, so I did the run down to the chipshop to get lunch in. I always try to break down near a café or chippy; it makes the waiting so much more pleasant.


It was two hours before recovery turned up, and he arrived in a small pick up used to collect cars. He had no equipment to fix the truck; his task was merely to assess the job in hand. Well, I’d already assessed it, and summed up my appraisal with a single word. And he’d driven from Huntingdon to tell us that? To be fair, he did attempt a get-you-home fix using some spare rubber tube he happened to have, but just as with my earlier attempts to wrap stuff around the pipe, the pressure just blew it off. So he called back to his base, and requested the service engineer, who should have come in the first place.

This entailed another hour of standing around, during which time a woman from the Council turned up. Oh goody! There is a particularly nosy old bat of a woman who runs an employment agency that exploits foreign workers close to the garage where we deliver. The garage owners and her enjoy particularly bad relations, and everytime we deliver, she phones up our office to complain. She fancies herself as an amateur Health & Safety Gauleiter, but hasn’t got the brains to actually become one, (although to be fair, she has the total lack of personality and commonsense that the job entails) so she does this instead. Now if I were running an employment agency in the middle of a recession, I’d have bigger problems to worry about than delivery lorries. But there you go. Well, today was her red-letter day. Not just one car transporter to annoy her, but two, plus a recovery truck, all blocking one side of the road! She must have had a multiple orgasm, but we couldn’t hear it above the Iveco’s engine that wouldn’t turn off.

The bat has called the Police onto us before, and they’ve duly turned up, and asked me what I’m doing. I’ve told them, and they’ve said fine, carry on sir. So that option was out. But the Council – well, Councils are the natural habitat of the small-minded nitpickers in society; people with absolutely nothing to do all day but find fault with other people who are just going about their lives. Try putting an envelope into your black wheelie bin and putting it on the street at 06:59 and you’ll see what I mean. We may not be breaking any laws by being stuck on the road, but you can guarantee some small minded Council pillock will find some infringement or other. So, along came a woman dressed in her black power suit, driving her black Chrysler (oh, that’s a sign of upward mobility!) Out of the car came a red clipboard and a camera. She wandered up and down the opposite pavement taking photos and ostentatiously taking notes on her red council issue clipboard. What she didn’t do, being a narrow-minded Council busybody, was come and ask us what we were doing there (yes, it was obvious we’d broken down, but you can’t put ‘obvious’ and ‘Council worker’ into the same sentence). This went on for ten minutes, so I made sure my hair looked nice for the photos. With a bit of luck she’ll post them to her blog, as I didn’t take any pictures myself and it would be handy to have a few.

At around 3pm, the actual service engineer finally arrived, some four hours into the saga. He confirmed what the problem was (you don’t say) and removed the offending pipe (yes, he had tools!) and despatched the recovery man ‘down the road’ to a hydraulic specialist to get a new one. This would take time, but what the hell, I’m on wages anyway – and it would be a permanent fix, not a get you home bodge, which suited me fine. So we had a coffee and generally put the world to rights, as you do. About an hour and a half later, the recovery man turned up again, with a biggish pipe – or he was delighted to see me. No, it was a big pipe. This was duly fitted amidst much cursing coming from the bowels of the lorry – these bits are never in convenient locations. Finally, at 5pm, we were done, dusted, and all ready to hit the manic Friday night A1 for the trip back to Newark. I was delighted to be finally leaving Lincoln Road, although presumably not half as happy as the woman at the agency!

Lorry, 'cross the Mersey

Had a pleasant day out to Liverpool, which isn’t something that everyone can say. Deliver 5 brand new Kia Crapeos and bring back any 5 dogs that would start – and finding 5 cars in Liverpool that start is quite an achievement in itself. Loading takes place on the docks, which makes a nice change, because here, for once, is loads of space to do things like park up. It is also nice to have a spot of lunch with a sea view, so to speak, and this is the vista from my riverside terrace in ‘Restaurant Iveco’.

The warship is a long withdrawn frigate, HMS Plymouth, laid up because we don’t do anything pointless like invade other countries on the whim of an illiterate American President who thinks he’s in a John Wayne film. Because that would just be silly, now, wouldn’t it? So, before it gets broken up (the ship, not George Bush - ooh, now there's a thought .....) I took some pictures for posterity.

I was somewhat surprised to see that Emma from the H&S Wehrmacht, hasn’t been here – just look at that deep harbour full of deep water! And not a stick of 8 foot high palisade fencing in sight. It was very difficult driving down the exposed quayside without lots of health and safety notices, cordons and railings to keep me right. I had to rely entirely on my long dormant commonsense to understand that driving on water could be mildly dangerous and impractical, although I’m pleased to say that in strictly scientific tests, my hi-viz jacket floated beautifully – probably on it’s way to Ireland by now, where I hope it will be well received. Mind you, writing ‘If found, please return to Romania,’ might see it thrown on a fire to dry out first.

My health and safety file doesn’t float, and in the interests of health and safety, I couldn’t jump in to retrieve it. I can’t walk on water; that’s the preserve of health and safety officials – so they can go and get the bloody thing back.

Shortly after commencing his stag night party piece,
Jesus had to return to the shore for his high-visibility jacket.

Steep Learning Curve

My induction into the world of HGV driving took place in early 2007. I had my HGV tuition course booked a week ahead up in York with Tockwith Training, so decided in one of my rare moments of wisdom that a bit of familiarisation might help. So, I signed up with an agency and requested some 7.5-ton work, which I could undertake on my existing car licence that I’d held for some time.

After a couple of days, the agency offered me some work, a 3-day trip from Rutland to the south coast delivering gas and electric fires plus assorted accessories. There was a mix of domestic customers and shops, so lots of variety and the chance to try my hand at nights out. It was too good an experience to pass up, so I readily accepted and the following morning presented myself at the depot in Oakham at 06:00 on an extremely chilly February morning. The friendly transport manager showed me the vehicle, an Iveco Cargo box truck on a 53 plate, which looked reasonable, for an Iveco. While it warmed up we had a coffee and warmed ourselves up, whilst going over the route that was a sprint down the M1 to the M25 (oh joy), then start a rash of deliveries in the Slough / Maidenhead / Reading area. Once these were done, head down to Woking and Guildford before continuing to Portsmouth, Southampton and Bournemouth. Return via Winchester, Newbury and some final drops in the Oxford area. Everything seemed fine, and the load itself was straightforward – gas and electric fires, plus various surrounds and add-ons. What could go wrong?


I set off with some trepidation, as this was the largest vehicle I’d ever driven at that point, and boy, did it suddenly feel enormous! (Why do my girlfriends never tell me that?) En route to the M1, I familiarised myself with the various controls and became more comfortable with the handling. As daylight grudgingly emerged things improved, and the run down the M1 was uneventful, although it took ages to figure out how to flash the headlights (it turns out to be a button underneath the indicator stalk, which I like now, but was frustrating then).

The real work commenced in Marlow, with my first customer being in an Old Folks Home. She was a very pleasant lady, once I finally found her down miles and miles of anonymous corridors and very heavy fire doors. She also had ordered an imitation marble surround, which weighed a ton and was a joy to lug down said corridors. The following few drops were all domestic, which was an interesting experience at manoeuvring the lorry in and out of estates, cul-de-sacs and back lanes. It was a lot harder than I’d imagined. Maidenhead proved a real killer. I had to go down one of those residential streets flanked by blocks of flats, so cars were dumped everywhere. Progress was further impeded by more cars trying to drive up the street and refusing to pull into spaces to let me past. They could see me coming and could have waited, but no! They have to get there first – except, of course, that they get stuck and end up going nowhere. Well done. One car was determined to get past me no matter what, so I decided to let him have a go. He lost his door mirror in the process, as the box body stuck out further than the cab. Now if he’d waited ….

I had a few deliveries in Maidenhead, all of which were in ludicrous places (well, I thought they were ludicrous then as it was my first time. Now they are just an occupational hazard). Once they were done, I could head for my next drop, an industrial estate near Taplow. Unlike most of my addresses, which were quite clear, this one just had the name of the estate and Taplow. No problem, I thought, head for Taplow and ask. Yeah, right – asking somebody in the south for directions is like asking an MP for a straight and honest answer. No one knew, or pretended not to know, which was annoying. Eventually, I got an answer, so headed down the appropriate road, only to be confronted with a sign warning of a 12’9 bridge half a mile ahead. Marvellous – I was in a 12’10 truck. Rather than go down and get stuck, I thought I could either reverse – not ideal – or try doing a left turn into a tight side street that curved round in a sort of horse shoe and would bring me back out half a mile down the road. That seemed my best option, so after a couple of shunts I got in. This was clearly a well-to-do area; on the left the houses were those quaint olde-worlde black timbered and white wall style places that front directly onto the road with no garden. On the right were palatial modern bungalows, each set in several acres of rolling countryside. The cheapest car to be seen was a Porsche. This was not a good road to practise manoeuvring!

Well, I was committed, so I ventured down, but soon found that the road was blocked by parked cars – and not the sort of car you'd wish to hit, either. These clearly belonged to stockbrokers, hedge fund managers and other jobs handled by men called Charles or Spencer who play golf and do little else – apart from bugger up the economy of the country, but that was a couple of years away at the time. They’re probably working in Burger King now. But I digress. Further progress was impossible. I was now in quite a predicament. I got out to have a look and assess the situation. From where the lorry was, I reckoned I could reverse into a drive for one of the bungalows, and with a couple of shunts get myself back out the way I came. Okay, give it a go. So, into reverse, and gingerly backed into the drive. Then the truck came to a jarring halt. What the f…? There was nothing in the mirrors, and I knew the drive was clear of cars as Spencer was at the 15th hole by now. Maybe one of the wheels had hit a kerb or something. So I powered up, had another go and again, the truck ground to a halt. I got out for a look. At the rear of the lorry I found the problem. The drive sloped upwards, but quite gently. And the vertical supports for the tail-lift had gouged two ravines into the tarmac. Oh shite. Damage to property was the last thing I wanted; this was my first job and I was trying to make an impression. Well, I had achieved that alright. This now meant that the lorry was straddling the road and pretty much wedged in. Not an ideal situation in this well-heeled part of the country. As my options were now severely limited, and decreasing every minute, I took stock of my unpleasant situation. There was absolutely no way I could shunt my way out of here, without causing considerable damage to the drive. So turning round was out. I had to go forwards, and try and squeeze down the road. Which is what I did - holding my breath, stomach churning, and proceeded down the impossible road at the speed of a slug that accidentally trod in some superglue. And I made it, without clipping a single expensive wing mirror on the assembled line of Mercs, BMW’s, Porsche and Audis (admittedly no one gives a toss about clipping an Audi).

This whole sorry manoeuvre had cost me the best part of half an hour, and I was by now really wishing I’d decided to take lessons before signing up for work. But, no time to dwell on my lack of foresight; press on. I got back on the lane, and headed down to the main road, and almost immediately discovered a sign for the Viking Industrial Estate. Whaaattt?!!! I’d driven right past it! So, I drove straight in, and couldn’t find the shop. Oh, for Gawd’s sake. I asked in an office, and the helpful receptionist told me that whilst I was technically in the right place, recent gales had blown down a building or a wall or something – thus cutting the complex in two halves. And yes, I was in the wrong half. Great. So I had to reverse back out into the lane, totally blind, which was un-nerving but at least nobody drove into the side of me. Proceed to the main road; hang left; left again and finally left once again into the correct place.

After that, things picked up a bit, and deliveries around the region went well, apart from one customer in Slough who had died the previous day, so when I pitched up with the gas fire he’d ordered, it did make for an uncomfortable moment on the doorstep, although his daughter was very pleasant about it. It’s one of those truly awkward moments, especially as I was being extra friendly to the domestic customers, as I know what it’s like to be greeted at the door by those delivery types that just chuck stuff at you and walk off.

I had various drops around Woking, including a shop that had a large order of fires. Because of all the messing about in Taplow, I was late and they’d gone home. No worries, I decided to find a layby, park up, and recommence early doors.

I’d passed a layby on the way in, so figured I could continue down the road for a mile, spin round at the roundabout and return. No problem. Except that it was a problem, because it was a mini roundabout and there was absolutely no way I could get round in one go. Nowadays, of course, with the benefit of experience, I’d just go anyway and do a shunt, or keep on going to a larger roundabout. But I was very green, and the large amount of rush-hour traffic was intimidating. I had a choice of going left, right, or straight over, which was a pub with a sign for ‘car park at rear.’ In my infinite, but unreliable, wisdom, I decided to go down the side of the pub, spin round in the car park and emerge again without causing any congestion on the roundabout. This would have worked extremely well had it not been for one of those ridiculous height barriers blocking the carpark, which of course I didn’t encounter until I got there. It wasn’t as if I could even try to squeeze in either; it was set at a height that only a limbo-dancing pygmy could negotiate. My options were now limited. Obviously I couldn’t go forwards, and reversing out would mean hitting the roundabout, and everything on it, in the dark. Not good. But then I spied a small residents car park out of the cab window on my side. Ah ha! I could reverse in there and then drive back out. But I wasn’t taking any chances after the days adventures so far, oh no! It was unlit, and consisted of two sets of parking bays either side of a narrow access slip. None of the cars protruded too far forwards, so with care I should be able to reverse into here and pull out.

Once again I found myself reversing slowly and very carefully between the cars; it was tight but not unduly so. I was almost all the way in when ‘CRUMP!’, and the truck stopped. Shit, shit, shit, now what? Jumping out, I could see all the cars on my side were fine, so round to the nearside – no problems. I made my way into the darkness at the rear of the lorry, where the problem manifested itself. A wooden fence was leaning drunkenly at an angle I’m sure it wasn’t at before. I’d been concentrating on the cars so much that I hadn’t given much consideration as to what lay beyond them.

Well, there was nothing much I could do, and as all the expensive cars were unscathed I returned to the truck, completely fed up, and departed. I parked up for the night and spent a chilly evening in the cab, as I couldn’t get the night heater to function. I managed to nod off for an hour eventually by virtue of wrapping everything I had around my sleeping bag, but the freezing cold seeped in and it was a very uncomfortable night. When I woke in the wee small hours I thought I had rigor mortis I was so stiff.

I decided that today could not possibly as bad as yesterday. It had been a steep learning curve, but by putting those lessons into practise I reckoned that things could only get better – or at least, not hit anything. My first drop was close by, so I arrived first thing and unloaded the stock they’d ordered. Then into Guildford for another shop, which was relatively easy considering the traffic, before I could join the A31 and then A3 to my next area. I joined the slip onto the A31, a dual carriageway on a hill, and noticed that the truck was losing power. I assumed it was just cold and dropped a cog and booted it. Nothing happened, the power dropped as quickly as the speed and 100 yards up the hill the lorry ground to a halt with the thick acrid aroma of a burning clutch wafting into the cab. So now I was really in the shit, well and truly. Hazards on and call base. Not the sort of call you want to be making on your second day in a new job!

Well, base took the news calmly and said that a rescue would be arranged, so sit tight by the phone. By now a long line of traffic had built up behind me, and I had my first ever mention on Radio 2’s traffic news. Hello Lynn! Inevitably the Police turned up in a Range Rover, and I have to say they were extremely helpful and friendly considering the chaos I’d caused. I had to be moved, so they hitched the lorry to their Range Rover and towed me up the hill, dumping the truck in the Little Chef carpark. Mama, I’m home.


With nothing else to do, I updated the company and went and treated myself to a breakfast plus numerous coffees while I awaited the recovery truck. This took five hours as there was the usual behind-the-scenes wrangling about who would pay for what. But eventually an 8-wheeler DAF CF turned up, hitched up the Iveco and off we went. The trip was steady, apart from a fire on the rear axle of the Iveco, which had to be extinguished on the hard shoulder of the M25. Further up the motorway traffic was grinding to a halt as a DAF artic had come to a complete stand in the middle lane, and traffic was darting around it in a manner that would surely lead to a crash before long. The driver of the DAF looked totally fed up as we crawled past – I thought I had problems! Arrival back at Oakham was well after 7 pm, so it had been a long day and I was glad it was all over. Overall, though, it was a useful first experience, and didn’t put me off. There had been some interesting moments, times of abject horror and I’d sweated my own bodyweight in places – but nevertheless, got through it and I was ready for more! But first, I’d go and get some professional tuition …..