Hello, new member

Welcome

 

Just discovered this site and have to confess, I am a refugee. From the foremost, and possibly the only, Drivers' forum in the UK.TruckNet UK which seems to have gone belly up after 20 odd years and with thousands of members. Word of advice, if you make good friends on a forum get their emails or phone numbers, otherwise you may wake up one morning, and they're gone.

I am not a wanabee driver, been there done that and retired 21 years ago at 60. But I missed it, not the aggro on the road or anything else, just tired, oh yes after avoiding rattling frigos (reefers) for 58 years I came here to France to live and got a job straight away driving yes, a frigo. But what I missed was the brotherhood of the road which is especially alive in France in all the many Routiers, usually small, family run affairs with excellent food and companionship where you can park safely for the night. In many you all eat together at long tables, in sharp contrast to my native England where we used to joke that if a transport cafe had 13 tables, it was full after the 13th driver walked in.

So 13 years ago I found a new way of stalking the roads of the European Union. As a volunteer with my car collecting and delivering rescue dogs to the far flung corners, to start with I slept with them, large and small, excellent for keeping warm but then bought a Teardrop caravan, just enough room to stretch out but not stand.

Before all that I drove almost every kind of vehicle for moving freight, only excepting bulk liquids and cars. I drove a bus to India, but with 2 others and only as a means to get to Australia. There I landed in the far north, Darwin, at 4 in the morning and by lunchtime I had a room and a job. A few weeks later I took a bus 300 kms south and asked a soon to be very famous road train operator, Noel Buntine, for a job. He asked me if I had driven a twin steer before. I thought it was a strange question, nothing special about 4 wheels at the front, driven many 8 leggers. But I had misheard his accent, which I found out when presented with my first truck, a B61 Thermodyne Mack with 20 speeds controlled by TWIN STICKS. !!, and 3 trailers and was soon on my way west to collect a load of cows from Western Australia.

So that's me, you'd have less to read (if you have got this far) if I was 21 and asking for info on how I get to Canada. But no, looking for a new home just for the craic, as they say in Ireland.

 

Work for a courier service that runs local around your area.

 

welcome and we look forward to seeing your projects