I started life in a village called Knayton, in North Yorkshire, England. From there we moved to Borrowby, my father was a fitter for Places Timber Yard at Northallerton, and as a youngster I was always interested in trucks and all sorts of transport. When I was older I looked forward to weekends and school holidays. That was when I could go with my dad out into the woods to service the tractors and crawlers. My job was to grease the tractor, and then take it for a run in the woods to warm the oil up, so it would run out better. The trees were then pulled to the road side for loading onto the trucks and then hauling them off to the saw mills.

 
When I was at school I had to get up early every working day, check my dad's car for oil and water, and then start the car, to get it warmed up and ready for him to go to work. In the winter time I had to put the starting handle in and turn the engine over a few times, pull the choke out, switch the ignition on and manually crank the engine with the starting handle, not
with the self starter.

When I left school, I started in farming as a tractor driver for Ronny Dicks' farm at Great Fencote. I had to cycle to work summer and winter. I finished work there and moved on to a farm at Scruton, for Jack Ward. I worked for him until I was 17 years old, and then got my driving licence. With that, I started for the fat stock marketing at Askew near Bedale as a van driver delivering oven ready chickens. From there, I got the job on a Thames trader going around to the farms and collecting the chickens for slaughter. I got a few trips out to Smithfield market in London with meat. I had to stay on the Thames trader because I was still under 21, and did not have the correct licence to drive the larger Bedford BMC or the Atkinsons.

I left the FMC and started for a civil engineering company. I was a driver but we did almost any thing, from driving dump trucks and bulldozers,

loading shovels, and any thing else that was needed doing. In the winter time when other work was quiet, we did lime spreading on farms.

I remember one winter, I think it was 1964 we had a lot of snow, and I went off with a Chaseside loading shovel to work for the North Riding County Council, snow shovelling.

I was sent up the A 66 Scotch Corner to the Cumberland border, which was on the Saturday. I left the machine at the Council yard at Bowes over night, and went home. I set out Sunday morning, there was so much more snow that I could not get back with the car. Leaving the car at Scotch Corner I got a lift with a snow plough to Bowes, and when I arrived, was told to go to Barnard castle and start clearing a road up to Middleton Teasdale.

Apparently, one of the Council 6x6 Macks had become stuck in a snow drift, and would I try to dig it out. I got it out, and was told to keep clearing the road to Middleton.

After working all day I found that I could not return home as the snow was so bad it had blocked the A 66. Not going home, and just being newly married with no telephone in the flat, I could not let my wife know what was happening. I rang her parents so as they could go and tell her my problem, and for her to be at her parent's house the next night so I could ring her.

I stayed at the Red Lion pub in Cotherstone. I had no clean clothes, so I made a phone call to my boss asking him to go to my house and collect me some. They arrived by helicopter, and were lowered down to me on the winch.

The next morning the weather was worse than ever, roads blocked every where. I got a message to keep heading towards Middleton and when I arrived, I was told that there was a woman at a pub in a village who had been there since Saturday night, and she was ill. They needed to get her to hospital. The helicopter was busy on other work, and could I make a road through for the ambulance? After much hard work I managed to get through, and tow the ambulance up to the pub. The snow was still blowing in and blocking the roadway. The snow plough that was following me cleared the way back for the ambulance.

After working all day and night, and then through the next day, I finally arrived back at the pub in Cotherstone. I was trying to relax with a well earned pint, only to have the local policeman come in and tell me that some people on a bus were trapped in a snow drift, and would I go and dig them out?

I managed to get to them around midnight. The snow was so deep I had the machine bucket up as far as it would go. With a Council worker in the bucket standing up, and with a shovel upright in his hand, he still could not reach the top of the drift.

When that job was finished, I managed to get about three hours sleep, then back to work. I was busy clearing one snow drift when I noticed a flash of chrome as I tipped the snow over the hedge. On a closer look, I found that a car had been left on the road, and I had picked it up in the bucket, tipping it over the hedge with the snow.

Well the snow finally let up by the end of the week. They kept me on clearing the back roads, and during that time, was when the torque converter prop shaft broke. I managed to get back home that Friday night, and returned Saturday with a new shaft. I even took my wife with me so as she could drive the car back.

It was one hell of a job putting the new shaft on, as the machine was on the road side in the snow. I had to lie on my back to take the old shaft off, and then replace it with the new one. Having to lie in the water and snow all that time, that when I finished the job, I was like a block of ice. It took over an hour sitting in the car trying to get warm again. During this time was when my wife told me she was expecting our first child. (That helps to warm one up pretty quick.)

When the company folded, I went to work for a plant hire company called Curtis, at Tholthorpe. I was hired as a low loader driver, but ended up driving cranes, draglines, dozers, and loading shovels when the other drivers were on holiday. If short of an operator, I would go out on site and operate a machine, this job did not last to long before he went bust.

My next job was at a garage in Green Hammerton near York. I was classed as a semi skilled fitter, in other words a dog's body. I was the one to go out with the heavy recovery truck, (a Scammal ex army) with no power steering, just muscle power. It was hard work to shunt about when out at an accident. If you had to get in a position to winch a truck out of a field or a gutter, it was a struggle at times, but once there, it could do its job and that was the main thing.

I also went to Leyland, Albion, and Scammal, collecting new trucks and delivering them. They also gave me all the heavy jobs like changing springs. My problem was, although I was at home every night the money was rubbish, so I decided to go back driving full time.

I applied at Sunter Bros for a job and was accepted. I started in July 1969. At first I was a second man at my request, as I had never loaded wagons, and steering bogies before. I was spare driver for a while and then I was given a Scammal Highwayman with a Leyland 680 power plus engine. The Scammal was an artic but it also had a ballast box. I did mainly low loader work as it only did 40 mph but was good at pulling. Next I was put up onto a six wheeler unit, an Atkinson with a Cummins engine. In summer it was very hot in the cab and in the winter it was freezing cold. I did a lot of work with this truck with out much trouble;

I was then put onto a new Scania 110 with sleeper cab. I first started going abroad for Sunters, and had never been out of the country before. My first load was a little bit too high for the motorways in France, so I had to follow the route on the back roads and, to add insult; I had to go to Paris to clear customs. The route in Paris had me going the wrong way down one way streets with police escort. It was after nine o clock at night and not knowing a word of French it became a real headache. I managed to get by successfully that trip, and did many more throughout Europe after that.

Upgrading from the Scania, I got a new Volvo F89, and the first job was to go solo to Memingen, in Germany to collect a new six axle trailer. I did many trips abroad with this trailer and the F89. They were a great pair.

THANK YOU, --- BOB FLETCHER.

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