Walsall, England.
We were pottering down the M^ empty a few days before Christmas, with the intent to just drop the trailer in the yard and bog off somewhere for Chrissy, when we got a call from the office, saying they had a problem with a guy who had been pulled up just south of Manchester by the police, for being over his gross-train-weight (GTW), could we help? “And,” says Alan the project manager “I know it is close to Christmas but the guy at the deliver site says his gang were supposed to be fitting this load over the holidays, and if it did not arrive it would costs tens of thousands to shut the plant down during normal working days. He said if you can help, he will give you a good drink when you arrive.” So, yes of course, muggins here will try and help.
When we arrived, our guy was parked up on the motorway slip road with police still in attendance. Our guy, was sitting there in a Mercedes 6x4, bigger truck than ours. But, the
police, when they saw me arrive with my little 4x2,
must have seen that I had a bigger than usual cab and mistaken that for the idea that I was a bigger
truck. What’s your GTW the officer asked. 80 tonnes, I replied. Which he said was good. So, I swapped trailers with the Mercedes guy and backed onto the new load, and drove off to the destination with it. Unfortunately, I was having a forgetful moment, and should have told the police officer, that in order for me to gross out at 80-tonnes, I needed a dolly, or at least more axles on the trailer.
I had no idea how heavy we actually was, as no one had bothered to tell me, but it did not seem too bad, so we slowly made our way to the concrete plant and delivered the load, where the ganger on our arrival was over the moon pleased. He unloaded us, lent us a D9 Caterpillar which we needed to close up the trailer as it had bent a bit, gave us an envelope with some cash in it and thanked us very much, and we set off for home. We were bobbing around the M25 on the way home, when I asked how much was in the envelope. She counted it, and replied £1,500. Wohoo! For that extra few hours work, we had a good Christmas that year.