Summer 2019 TRUCKING 69at break time and now have
nothing to eat.
On the rare occasion when
I’d managed not to eat my
lunch on the go, I still
suffered. I had two pies sat
on my engine cover and
would do my next drop in
Central London before
heading towards Reading,
taking my break and eating
them. Unfortunately the IRA
had let off a car bomb and
all traffic was being stopped
and searched. As I got out of
my cab to be patted down
and show my notes, the
sniffer dog jumped in. The
two steak and onion pasties
disappeared faster than a
forklift driver near break
time. That was a hungry day.
On one contract there was
a plentiful supply of
bananas. That’s all I ate all
day. After every drop I peeled
another, like a Wimbledon
tennis player between
rallies, or a bored orang-
utan. I can’t stand them now.
The job was to deliver
chilled groceries to a
supermarket chain. They had
decided to add bananas to
their range, but you can’t
chill them because it turns
the flesh grey. It was decided
we should carry the boxes in
the cabs – we all had
daybeds and there was room
for the no more than eight
boxes a day’s run needed.
After a brief discussion
between management and
drivers about the legality
etc, of having part of the
load in the cab, a
compromise was reached.
We would carry them there
and, as part of
management’s commitment
to their drivers having a
healthy five-a-day diet, we
could eat the odd banana. All
very equitable.
Unfortunately one driver- we’ll call him George –
thought nothing of eating
his five before he left the
yard. Worse still, he left a
trail of skins thrown out of
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the following address: [email protected]wake everybody? It also
assumes there is bread in
the house. While you’re in
the land of nod, because you
have a 5 am start, the rest of
the family will be snacking
on toast. When you open the
breadbin, there is only
unwanted crust in a
crumpled wrapper.
“Don’t forget to leave some
for your Dad...”
The second is: when do
you eat them? They sit on the
seat next to you sending out
seductive waves of bready
goodness. You’ll just have
one. Well, maybe two. Twenty
miles after leaving the yard,
all that’s left is the apple –
and that goes before your
first drop. So you’re starving
The foreman announced some of the
banana boxes had been found to contain
spiders, so we should be careful.
the window as he drove off.
Despite asking George to be
discrete because he’d spoil it
for all of us, he carried on.
We got our heads together
and came up with a solution.
The dispatch foreman
announced before we left
that some of the boxes had
been found to contain
spiders, so we should be
careful. He winked at those
of us in the know. We
watched as George got in
his cab, checked his
paperwork and reachedbehind him for a banana.
There was a loud scream
and he leapt from the cab
and into the warehouse.
Once it had stopped
spinning round the cab, I
grabbed the wind-up joke
spider the foreman had
put under the lid of the
box and pocketed it. George
still delivered the bananas,
but he always had a plank
of wood across the top of
the boxes – and he never
ate another.
Something else I don’t eat
now is chocolate. Many
years ago I drove for
Cadbury’s, delivering its
range of chocolates around
the North West. In those
days you would have 30 or
40 drops, but each drop
would only be four or five
outers and the shops
themselves, in those pre-supermarket days, were
close together. You might
have four drops on one
parade: a sweet shop, a
tobacconist, a newsagent
and a small grocer.
The last “drops” of the day
were the collections. This
was so you didn’t deliver any
of the “faulty” chocolate to
anybody. The faulty
chocolate was nearly always
chocolate that had been
stored incorrectly. The sugar
in the mix rose to the surface
of the bars and it looked likemould. It was perfectly
edible and just went in
the pig bin back at the
yard. It didn’t look nice to
eat and the rep always
gave the customer credit,
advised them on storage
and arranged for it to be
picked up.
However, after Easter
there were the unsold eggs.
The rep wrote out a credit
note and broke them into a
box to be picked up; the
packaging went in the
customer’s bin. The box sat
in the cab and you dipped in
for the pieces as you drove
back to the depot. After three
weeks of eating 2 lb of
chocolate a day, I’d put on
over a stone in weight and
never touched another piece.
Then I went working as a
drayman delivering beer, but
that’s another story... n