I hardly ever drive at night, but last night I was coming home from a friends house about 25 minutes away at 1am. On the main route between our two towns and its a fairly busy road in the daytime.

Last night though there were hardly any cars out, as you might expect, but there were a lot of trucks out there and some of them were driving like madmen. I was probably doing 60kmh and I was overtaken by two that were going easily 100. A few others were driving pretty recklessly. I kinda felt like that guy in the Duel movie, a bit threatened by them.

I think I'll avoid the midnight driving from now on, or maybe use the back roads.

Too right. I remember once driving on the main road at 2am, scary it was with some of those madmen.

Yes i often drive kansai-nagano at night and regularly have trouble with the trucks.

e.g.

- as you are overtaking, they indicate right and start to swerve into you then notice at the last moment and pull back (has happened about 5 times)

- start swerving maniacly between the lanes really fast so noone would dare go near them.

- just be an asshole - drive alongside another truck at a slow speed for miles and miles so noone can pass (actually this happens much more in the uk than here for some reason).

once it gets past 10pm it seems like it is law of the jungle for some people.

Cars arent much better, you get some real clowns out there going 160 and putting full beam on you.

I used to drive trucks. I wonder if that's significant?

Possibly.

In Oz the open highway speed limit is 100km/hr. I regularly drive around 10% above this and am often overtaken by semi-trailers and B-doubles.

(semis are usually 26 wheeled articulated trucks, b-doubles have two articulations and are bl00dy long!)

Were you officially a "trucker" soubs?

I am curious* about their schedules/lifestyle.








(Well, a bit).

I drove HGVs (artics / semis) for five years. It was 32 tonnes in those days.

I drove all across Europe, Norway to Italy. The job was to get there and get back. No sightseeing.

Driving to Frankfurt bobtail (no trailer) the back end of my truck aquaplaned off the autobahn at about 40mph. It took me about 14 turns lock-to-lock to correct. Plus three lanes and the hard shoulder. Good job it was 3 am, and no-one else there.

I still have my licence.

Don't they have machines (forgot the name) that will 'tell' on them if they do speeding??

Yes they do. Spies in the cab.

The tachograugh gives a printout of your times and speed.

Driving 1 metre off the back bumper of the car in front used to get them out of the way on the M5. It's amazing how having 32 tonnes up the chuff enforces lane discipline.

And how was your diet? Eat many battered savs?

In the '70s I witnessed a classic road death.

Germany (I was stopped on the inside lane). Outside lane hero drove his Cortina at max attack into the stationary car in front. We peeled him off the dashboard.

Re-reading my post, it reads like Viz-style innuendo. I actually am interested in the diet of a trucker, since the offerings you see in most roadhouses are so dismal.

Re diet: it's a short by happy life. Nothing like a cuppa and a bacon sarnie at 5 am. There was was an ace transport caff on Clapham common in the day. Heart attack in one sandwich.

One of my fellow drivers was so fat, all his shirts were holed where his belly rubbed against the steering wheel.

Truck driving is a challenge. Compared with driving a car, they are under-powered and under-braked.

I abhor the modern practice of slip-streaming the truck in front. Spending ten hours per day looking at the back of a container a metre in front is no different from working on the production line, packing chickens. I can rope and sheet. That's a skill.

There are two tricks. No1 is "making progress". That means using the gearbox to keep the rev-counter in the correct part of the dial.

No2 trick is to get your braking in early. You can't do this if you are up another truck's chuff. I learned this lesson on Day 1. In Kent I went too fast over the brow of a hill. Changing down did nothing as the David Brown shitbox jumped out of gear, and the brakes cooked themselves to nothing. I was steering a runaway. Fortunately the road went straight down and straight up the other side. There but for the Grace of God go I...

One of those roadside caffs once I had a 'sandwich' that had in it, get this, 5 pieces of bacon, 2 sausages, 2 fried eggs and some black pudding. It was their most 'luxurious' on the menu. Very good it was too.

How did it all fit on!?

that must've filled a whole loaf

Apart from the black pudding bit, sounds good

one for Soubs