JUST AN OLD TRUCKER LOOKING TO SHARE OTHERS STORIES

Huh, cool,,well, good luck with that. These groups start out harmless enough, but soon, some punk in mommy's basement in their jammy-jams, will hook onto it, and make your life miserable. The group I was in, called "Old School Trucking", by a fellow in Israel, of all places, started out fine, met up with some old truckers, got news on the ones that had passed, it was a lot of fun,,,THEN the trolls got in, posting obscene pictures and Nazi flags, and to call them out, made things WORSE. Also, if you don't have a FB account, you can see the groups, but can't participate, and I've found, any unmoderated site gets all the ilk of the world, which is why TTR is such a breath of fresh air. I think you'll have a better response by just posting stuff here. Practically everyone here is old school, and like I say, only trucking now because they have to. Keep in touch,,

 

"Princes"?!
I don't know about 1976, ---
but by 1986 they'd been reclassified as knights.
I wonder, ---
What's their current status?

 

Bad hips here started in 77 , you could find me in the back row at the Grovertown 76 Saturday night , weekly participant in the Hunts Point 500.

Me myself and I worked for Cal Inland , no toothpicks.


Welcome Merle.

 

Well Im a bored 52 yo who's only been trucking for 4 years. Started life as a tradie and pretty much have always worked for myself. Spent a lot if time thinking on how to change careers and had a few go's at various start ups which all went no where.
Wife wanted to be near her parents as they moved into their 80s, so that meant moving, kids changing schools, me starting from scratch again, and the wife also starting a new job. I also wanted to bring my folks along as mum was drowning with looking after the family home as dad had developed dementia. So after dome 5 years in the planning, (mostly for elderly people to get change through their head), we moved.
My new job was transporting bulk spring water from the families spring water business.
I got a licence, bought a truck and trailer and off I went. Bringing along my staff member of 12 years who now is the main driver.

Its a repetitive day doing the same run 4 times up and down a narrow twisty pot holed mountain road, before stretching the legs on some 55mph roads. However the pay is alright at 10k a week.

Its under threat however because there is always some joker who wants more, and will do whatever it takes to have it all. So I've started looking again, for what's next.

 

I think I might already have my answer seeing as this thread petered out over a year ago, but I'll make it brief.
I am a retired (21 years ago) English driver living in France. I started driving in 1960 and because such things didn't exist in those days, have never taken a test and taught myself how to drive an artic (semi) in a weekend on some waste ground after the boss suddenly promoted me one Friday afternoon. On Monday I backed that thing into a darkened warehouse to make my delivery, and never looked back.

Since then I have driven all over Britain, Europe and parts of Australia and even once shared the drive of an old coach from London to India. I have had more jobs than hot dinners (poetic licence, I am all too obviously well fed) purely because I am easily bored and was seeking new horizons.

So to my question. As a longtime member of a UK drivers' forum which went down for over a month this year but has miraculously risen again though much less busy than before, I have posted some of my experiences there and elsewhere, but I really wanted to know if there would be any interest here in some of the international tales of other drivers from a different continent. I must warn you that, though entertaining to a heavy vehicle driving audience they are very long. And I am talking pages, so if that appeals to anyone I'll get permission and get pasting.

 

Thanks for the reply, and point taken, but in my view 'long winded' means a lot of irrelevant chatter, whereas a genuine detailed and entertaining account would be compromised by cutting it down to that. In short, it would make no sense. But that is why I didn't go in full on but instead decided to test the water.

I must admit I blanche at the sight of so much printing on the screen but I have nevertheless read the various accounts when I had the time, and was glad I did so.

I read books too, some good, some bad, but the good ones could not be good as a magazine article.

Anyway, I will leave it at that, I can read them myself and if anybody is interested, they know where to find me nowadays.

 

Hi Spardo, I'm "pickled tink" this site reaches out to a global audience, however, I've found, no matter where you are, trucker stories are pretty much the same. If you have "pages" of experiences, perhaps write a book. Like it or not, this site is gradually moving away from the past, and is inundated with modern day trucking experiences, stuff WE don't understand, and quite frankly, don't want to. Our times are disappearing with every funeral, and younger drivers can't relate to our experiences, like I can't with theirs of today. Rather than pages, I suggest pick out a particular incident that may be worth sharing. I'd like to hear about that.

 

Yes thanks for that @201, and I think you could be right, though in the short time I've been here I reckon there are quite a few oldies. You may have a point about shortish posts but that might be difficult and if I tell you that the story I have just read is entitled 'Driving Home for Christmas' and is about an international driver meeting all sorts of obstacles in delivering to Turkey, and things going wrong in his already tight schedule, before trains (permits to cross Germany were easier to obtain if you put your truck on special railcars with accommodation for the drivers) and ferries back across the English Channel shut down for the holiday, you will see that the whole is as important as the parts.

However I suppose it, and others, could be broken down into small instalments to make it more interesting to others and an easier read.

I should add that I have no interest, moneywise or personal in this, other than I myself have always been interested in others of my profession in different parts of the world. I did, under pressure from Australian friends, make a contribution of my own about driving road trains in the Northern Territory which I copied from my book (yes I did write one but not about trucking exclusively). My own tale dates from the late '60s.

Let's see if anyone shows an interest and, if so I will look into cutting it down into useful episodes.