Quote:
Originally Posted by ceylon220
My first job( 1960)on wagons was driving a Commer 2 stroke for a local man loading sawdust from saw mills over the Border into Scotland,buying the load for £3 and selling it to farmers on the English side for £3 a ton,my wage was £3 for every load that I achieved each week, the buying and selling was all done by me,all the boss had to do was do the books. He purchased an old S type Bedford tipper which had a steel covering over the wooden floor which was making the vehicle over weight for applying for the old C licence so a day was spent removing this --still over weight--so off came the spare wheel and not contented with that he removed the carrier also,when he was granted the said licence on went the gear we had removed plus he added extra boards to the sides and back just to get the ideal pay load--this was filled with the sawdust to the top plus two layers of bagged sawdust on top of that and all on by a shovel--you certainly worked for your £3 a load. Only once did one saw mill helped and by that they built a wooden hopper for me and this only lasted a couple of months until some "numpty" left a ciggy and burnt it down---those were the days where jobs on wagons was all hand ball--nostalgia!!!!!   |
Attaching boards to the sides of tipper bodies was very common and I remember drivers used to call them ' greedy boards ' because if you used them you were being 'greedy' and wanted a bigger load.