gear boxes
 

Anyone remember the Atkinson with the 180 Gardner engine. Slow with lots of pulling power. when the gear box warmed up you could almost roll a fag between gears waiting for the revs to drop. No syncromesh in those days.
And the Albion clydesdale and chieftains. heavy clutch and that gear lever that came all the way from the gearbox,bent to fit over the engine cover. first few days on them and you had a painful left knee and shoulder...LOL

Albion
 

Hi Billyboy, I remember the Albion's well. In the sixty's I used to drive a
six wheeler with an aluminium body. The doors of the cab were in front
of the wheels. We carried 6500 bricks reguler. No power steering.
Going around roundabouts and corners was hard work, you vertualy had
to stand to turn the wheel, the steering was so heavy, and with the
heavy clutch you were glad when it was time to finished. Arm's and leg's
ach.ing all over

Driving HGV's is like driving a car these day.
All the best.
Barney.

last one i drove was a pan-tech. multiple drops.steering not too bad. but the amount of gear changes in a day doing town drops left me with painfull left leg and shoulder.
Dont know they are born today

I started on Albions on steel haulage out of Sheffield in 1968.7637 WJ was my first one,a Reiver.Then onto a Clydesdale artic with a splitter lever at the back of the cab and a BTC four-in -line trailer.You had to be a contortionist changing bloody gear but soon got used to it.Graduated onto a Leyland Badger 9902 FZ ex Northern Ireland Trailers and then a Leyland Octopus FWJ 975C,a nice motor.
When the ergo cabs came out I was on market work and had an AEC Mercury four-wheeler and a Mercury unit-both could catch racing pigeons:D.Also a 6-wheeled TK(underpowered rubbish),a KM 6-Wheeler (much better) and an AEC MK5 Mandator ex Leathers Chemicals,Bradford.This unit had been round t'world twice I reckon and threw a piston at Burton at 0200 one saturday morning en route to Birmingham market.We'd only had it a week!
Aye them were the days.:)
More to follow.

Chris.

Now there was a fun trailer to reverse . . .

had a go at reversing a 4 wheel drawbar trailor once. not as easy as the driver made it look.

when working for the furniture makers Alston of Ipswich I had a drawbar outfit and when on the northern Ireland run one of the ferries was not wide enough to be able to swing around on the car deck so we had to reverse down the ramp!! one time it took me 35min to park the damn thing.. The Fillipino mate kept telling me to go straight back. I was getting angry with myself which made it worse so I told him if he could do better then do it 'cos he cant do my job but I could do his! In the bar after dinner he asked me what I meant so I told him if I wasn't driving trucks I was driving ships. We got on well after that!

:D
Yes,the old drawbar - the "proper" "A" frame type.You could have some fun with them.
When I came off tanker work in 1979 the firm I went to work for had quite a few of them.Scania 111s,then Ford Transcontinentals then back to Scania 82Ms.We pulled 24 ft trailers so the whole outfit could carry 48 roll cages.Nobody wanted to drive them and I used to have a go reversing on the trailer park when I came off nights.I got used to them after a while as I used to help the night shunter.We never nosed trailers in,always backed them in and the trick was to watch your mirrors and not put too much lock on.If you got in a tangle you only pulled forward far enough to straighten the dolly and had another go!I finished up on them regular on nights for five years and never had a problem - in fact I could get them in some places where you couldn't get a 40ft trailer.There was hardly any cut-in.When they got rid of them and I went back onto artics I kept putting the wrong lock on for a start,I felt a right bloody idiot:confused:
I remember Alstons Ray,are they still going?

Aye,and even more fun changing an inner wheel on the bloody things.:D

I remember handballing bricks out of LBC at Fletton.We used to get the work off Peterborough BRS.After loading that lot and negotiating roundabouts etc. without power steering I was always ready for a pint:D

Then you'd to chuck 'em off at t'other end.No wonder they brought that Selfstak system out.
EE,them were t'days.(Playing Hovis advert).:)