The Silk Road and Beyond. Ivor Whitall

if he realised I was actually too young.

      I loved driving, so could this be a turning point in my fledgling career? I hardly slept with the worry and excitement, but at 5am next morning I was firing up the old Leyland, aiming to be in Clitheroe by six. All I had to do was make sure I reversed the trailer in a straight line, keeping the elevator roughly above the centre of the bed. It was all handball and the loading gang kept calling me to pull forward as they stacked the 14 tons of hot cement bags.

      “Off you go, park over there and collect your paperwork from the office.”

      ‘Righto driver,’ called the foreman. ‘Off you go, park over there and collect your paperwork from the office.’

      It was a beautiful sunny morning and I’d seen how Derek had roped his load, so with a couple of cross ropes holding the rear end in, I walked nonchalantly across to the office to collect my notes.

      ‘No Derek today then?’ came a female voice from the other side of the glass. ‘The miserable old git hasn’t jacked in again, has he?’

      ‘Dunno,’ I replied, not wanting to get involved.

      “Yeehaa, I thought, I’ve done it. Mind you, the sweat was pouring off me, so worried was I that I’d cock it up.”

      Yeehaa, I thought, I’ve done it. Mind you, the sweat was pouring off me, so worried was I that I’d cock it up. I stayed with Alf and J&C Lowes for the next 18 months, until I reached my 21st birthday and I could finally drive articulated lorries legally!

      It was time to broaden my horizons and move on. For the last few months I’d been keeping my eyes open, looking for a better driving job, and near at hand was a company called Titchener & Brown. I knew they did ICI stuff to Liverpool Docks and they’d also got a reasonably new fleet of vehicles. So, organising an interview with the transport manager Frank and his assistant, the boss’s adopted son Martin, I turned up in my best bib and tucker ready to sell myself. It was all very weird and vaguely off-putting, in that after nearly every comment Frank would add, ‘on the other side,’ or, ‘on that one,’ even when it made no sense! It was almost like a verbal impediment!

      ‘Well my boy, on that one, you’ve got the job starting a week Monday.’

      ‘What time do you want me in?’ I asked.

      ‘On the other side, it’s normally a five o’clock start and that should get you to Liverpool Docks for around six.’

      The money was about the same but with more hours my wage packet should look a little plumper.

      Monday week, at five o’clock on the dot, I was drawing out of the yard and heading for the infamous Liverpool Docks. I’d heard all the horror stories about being delayed for weeks, starving to death, growing a beard and whiskers, all while waiting to load or unload, and now I was about to find out the truth of it. Strange that I hadn’t seen the other lads in the yard; they must have left a little earlier. A little earlier! Huh, turns out they’d left at four o’clock and were at least 200 yards ahead of me, right at the front of the queue! Dammit, this wasn’t going to go down too well with Frank.

      The boat I wanted was the MV Mystic and, as I watched, a docker walked down the line of trucks chalking MVM on their tyre walls. That must be my boat and I decided to take a chance on jumping the queue, a lifetime ban if caught and it could mean the end of my fledgling career before it even started. Pulling out of the dock, I drove around the perimeter until I was out of sight, and then got out to look for an old stub end of chalk. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look long and scribbled MVM on the sidewall of my tyre. Drawing into the next gate, which luckily was empty, I pointed to my front wheel and shouted the name of the boat.

      ‘That’s two gates along,’ came back a broad Liverpool accent. ‘Why aren’t you in the queue?’

      ‘I was feeling a bit queasy and had to find a bog mate. If I go back I’ll have lost my place, there were five of us together.’

      ‘Go on then and don’t make a habit of it,’ he said, giving me a quizzical look.

      Turning right, I drove along the inside of the dock wall hoping I’d be able to get into the queue further forward. Then, the lorry god smiled on me, as the queue shunted forward and in through the gate rolled the other four Titchener wagons! I just tagged on the back as we made our way to the shed where the chemicals discharged from the ship were stored.

      There’s always a catch, and being the new boy normally meant learning the hard way. The reason they’d all left at four and not five was that pallets were handed out on a first come, first served basis and we got paid threepence for each empty pallet we collected. More importantly, if there weren’t any pallets in the yard it meant handballing the bags on at ICI, and off again at the docks, all by yourself!

      Occasionally we’d reload from the docks with groundnuts, 15 tons in 100 kg sacks; that’s nearly 225 lb! That was 150 massive hessian bags dropped down in a sling, which you then had to manoeuvre into position on the bed of your trailer. I can tell you, nobody volunteered for that little number.

      “I gave them a call, wondering if I could blag this one . . .”

      On the way home after work, I’d often see a Leyland Beaver artic with a makeshift sleeper welded to the back. Sign-written on the door was the company name, and under it, UK–Italy. Intrigued and deciding nothing ventured nothing gained, I gave them a call, wondering if I could blag this one . . . Being put through to the manager, his first question was, ‘Buongiorno, parliamo Italiano?’

      ‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Pardon?’

      ‘I said, “good morning, do you speak Italian?” To which you replied, “what,” then, “pardon.” From that response, I can only deduce that you don’t.’ And then the phone went dead.

      My renowned blagging skills weren’t going to work there then.

      ‘Si’ was about my limit, so with the best will in the world I wasn’t fluent.

      Interestingly I got to know the driver of that truck ten years later.

      chapter three

      38mph FLAT OUT!

      In 1970 I called it a day with Titchener & Brown and again found myself searching through the jobs page of the Blackpool Gazette. The name P. Hottersall & M. & J. Cadman caught my eye, so I made the call. A guy called Wilfred answered and it transpired that he owned the company. It also turned out he had his fingers in numerous other pies in the area, one of them being Seagull Coaches, famous in the 1960s and ’70s for their ‘Mystery Tours’. He seemed a genuine bloke and, even though he drove a Ferrari, was more than happy to get his fingernails dirty in the workshop. Once again I ended up with ‘a shed’. What is it about me, do I have ‘Gullible Ivor’ tattooed on my forehead? It was a six-year-old Atkinson with a 150 Gardner engine and six-speed David Brown gearbox, the original ‘guvnor’s wagon’. On my first day there I recognised John, an old work colleague from T&B, and quizzed him as to what to expect.

      ‘It’s alright Ivor, Wilf lets you get on with it. Most of the work is Sealand or Ferrymasters out of Preston Dock, and you’ll be expected to organise your own work, especially backloads. His stepson is supposed to be in charge of that, but is bloody useless.’

      It wasn’t always the old Atki that I drove, but generally it was regarded as ‘my’ lorry. Other than the fact the old girl struggled to do 40 mph and had a heater that hadn’t read the instruction manual, only blowing out cold air, I quite enjoyed the variety that the job offered. All the while I was gaining experience in this dog eat dog world of road haulage.

      “What is it about me, do I have ‘Gullible Ivor’ tattooed on my forehead?”

      It was the end of 1973, I’d been there over three years and at the age of 27 considered myself a skilled and professional driver, having covered most of the country, albeit very