Confessions of a Lorry Driver
ARTICLE BY FARMBOY MIKE
As its quiet on the footy front I thought I would engage you all with further adventures of my working life. As bizarre as these tales are, I stand by every word. Be also aware that this was in the late 80’s and the industry was, not to put too fine a point on it, a little non compliant with the law back then. This tale is from the best job I ever had over my entire ‘career’ in the transport industry and remember it with a smile on my face as I write. It was ‘situation comedy’ gold.
Driving down the single track country lane towards the village that played host to my next employer the words of my driver mates were ringing in my ears. The man is a nutter, eccentric, big trouble, cowboy, insane and various other adjectives that were some of the warnings I was given. No harm in an interview though I thought, before I make up my own mind and anyway jobs were hard to come by at that moment especially as I had been made redundant by my last boss who had gone bust. I had phoned Jon the previous day and he said there was a possibility of a job and to come down to the yard for a chat. It was a pleasant sunny spring day as I pulled up outside of the old low farmhouse on a right angled bend in the road with a small amount of land alongside rutted by large wheeltracks which I learned later was the front garden. Set back at the end of the ‘front garden’ was a large shed which housed the picking and loading area for the small wholesale fruit and veg business which, with the transport operation, was run alongside a 100 head dairy farm. The farm and accompanying land underpinned the whole caboodle.
I walked over to a small portakabin and stepped inside to see two desks one of which was piled up with all kinds of paperwork and numerous old copies of the Financial Times and the other neatly arranged and orderly with a man sat behind it. After announcing who I was, the kindly man said the boss was having a lunch break and to go over to the farmhouse as he was expecting me. As I reached the open patio doors nothing could have prepared me for the following few minutes. I was confronted with a mid thirties second row Rugby forward (which he was) with a ruddy face and a ginger beard, he must have weighed (for our American cousins) 250lbs and it was not fat either. He was dressed in (what I was to learn was his company uniform) a thick check shirt and ripped corduroy trousers liberally adorned with dried cowshit and wearing rubber wellington boots also covered in dried cowshit and sat back on a settee with his boots resting on the coffee table in front of him. On the floor was an old Golden Retriever and three chickens two of which were pecking at some crumbs presumably left from a previous meal and the other being chased by a small boy. “Don’t chase the chickens Toby or you won’t get any eggs” he said. He addressed me, “You’re Michael I presume” but my attention was drawn to the doorway to the next room where a pony had stuck its head around the door. He must have followed my open mouthed gaze and then bellowed out, “Debs….Debs!! that fucking horse of yours is in the house again, take it back to the paddock, I’m doing an interview here” His wife appeared and led the pony away apologising to me as she went. Some interview. Those sage words from my mates were rattling about in my head again. He asked of my background experience and to my surprise he was friendly with one of my previous international employers and that went in my favour as he was wanting to start international work himself very soon.
After a bit more chatting he suggested we go to the little portakabin which he called the ‘Transport Office’ so off we went with the old Golden Labrador following behind. On the way he went over to an open gate to the field behind. He said “The job is yours if the dog brings back the boot”. Somewhat confused I replied “What?” He proceeded to remove one of his boots and handed it to me and pointing to the field said, ” Go on, throw it as far as you can and if Colonel brings the boot back, the job is yours”. Feeling like I was being filmed for the latest hidden TV camera show I humoured him by heaving the boot as far into the field as I could and by this time a little part of me was hoping Colonel would stay put and ignore it. No such luck, the old arthritic bugger ambled out to the boot took it in his mouth and returned it to his master. “Right, job’s yours come to the office and I’ll check your licence and take your phone number and we’re in business”. He wrote my phone number on one of the numerous pieces of paperwork piled on the desk not giving me any confidence that he would ever find it again and thinking that might not be a bad outcome. I was not to know of his photographic memory then. ” I’ll give you a ring on Saturday and tell you where you’re going Monday”.
Come 9am Saturday I got the call. ” Morning Michael it’s Jon”, intoned the broad Wiltshire accent “How do you fancy doing a little job today? One of my driver’s has gone AWOL and we don’t know where he is. Probably pissed up again and sleeping it off in a ditch. I want you to pop to Oxford for me to collect some boxes of spuds and bring them back here, there’s £100 in cash for you”. Thinking, that won’t take 6 hours, I agreed and that I might as well use it to get my feet under the table. As it turned out this particular driver was a true piss artist and was to be found many a time sleeping off the drink in different locations around the farm not having been able to make it home from the local pub. In future times, running together, we had to drive his truck off the overnight ferry boat because he had been propping up the bar all night and was totally incapable of manoeuvring a truck in a tight space. We left him on the quayside to sleep it off. He only got away with it because he caught an early ferry.
I arrived at the ‘yard’ to find a small group of men egging on Jon and saying he couldn’t do a certain task. If he did it then each would have to buy him a beer. He had to put £25 behind the bar of the village pub if he failed. He claimed he could complete a distance of 25 metres carrying 8 x 25kg sacks of potatoes. He put one under each arm picked up two by the neck in each shovel of a hand and asked someone to place one on each shoulder. 8 sacks totalling 200kgs and then walked the 25 steps. I concluded my mates warnings were right. This was one of his team building events and as I grew to learn over the following years were a regular occurrence. So armed with collection notes I climbed into the truck. When driving another’s truck its an unwritten rule that you don’t touch his personal stuff and leave it as you found it, clean and tidy. This cab however did not smell too sweet and I didn’t want to pull back the bunk curtains to discover what might be there anyway. I thought let’s get this over and done with as quick as possible. I fired up the truck and set off. About half a mile down the lane I nearly fell out of the seat when I heard ” What the fuck is going on?” behind me and the bunk curtains were pulled open. I looked behind me and a yellow very bilious looking face with bloodshot eyes was staring back at me. I pulled up. ” Who the fuck are you?” the thing slurred “and where are we going?” I explained the situation to him after which he slurred ” Oh, that’s alright then, let me out here and I’ll walk home. Don’t say a word and tell don’t tell Jon you found me” I agreed and he tumbled out to make his way down the lane to his house presumably or it could have been back to the pub, who knows, I didn’t care either way.
After that all went well, found the big farm estate, loaded what I thought were too many boxes of potatoes and when weighed off at 46 tons and queried the quantity to be told that was what was on the collection notes. (Weight limit at that time was 38 tons). Armed with, at that time a state of the art truck, which had a modified fuel pump I easily made my way back to the ‘yard’. On my return his other 3 trucks were parked in the garden leaving only one space. Only being allowed to return down the lane in one direction owing to parish council restrictions it meant reversing in off a single track lane which had raised hedgerow either side with low cut off tree stumps. Jon came rushing out and shouted watch the tree stump on your left as you bend it in you can’t see it. Crack! He was right you couldn’t. When I apologised to him for breaking my left front indicator lens he produced a box with 3 new lenses and a screwdriver handing it to me saying, “You’re not the first or the last”.
So the first week of the most bizarre, fun and enjoyable jobs I ever had. So many funny happenings to come. After 3 years the other 11 of the rather disparate bunch of original drivers (none of which you could describe as normal) were and still are good friends.
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