At approximately ten pm on the night of Sunday the 20th of December 2009 I was driving a Scania with a fridge trailer containing twenty one ton of fresh crab meat from the UK, bound for Portugal, I was on a mountain road, near the summit, at a place called Amarante, the weather was extremely bad with heavy rain and gusts of wind in access of one hundred miles per hour, the elevation was 1000 metres, suddenly I noticed that my mirrors were icing up and I realised that the surface water was turning to ice also, so rather than use the brakes I selected the full retarder, this worked ok but unfortunately cars which had preceded me were skidding and crashing into the side of the mountain and the opposite safety rail, to make matters even more precarious a single Decker bus with a full load of passengers also lost control, skidded and collided with the other vehicles, the road was totally blocked, I had no choice but to apply my foot brake and my vehicle started to jack-knife and skid, I was on the wrong side of the road on a viaduct and close to the metal safety rail which if collapsed would send me over a 150 metre drop, It was during this time that a Portuguese articulated tractor and trailer also got into difficulties on the icy road and smashed into the rear of my fridge trailer, the force of the impact sent my vehicle hurtling into the safety rail……….
I started my trucking career back in 1951 as a trailer mate when I was just 15, started driving at 17 and retired in 2011 when I was 75, I drove lots of various trucks, had lots of adventures, some good, some bad, trucked all over the UK and most of Europe, the stories related here over that 60 year span are from my personal memories, I hope you enjoy them.
I started my trucking career back in 1951 as a trailer mate when I was just 15, started driving at 17 and retired in 2011 when I was 75, I drove lots of various trucks, had lots of adventures, some good, some bad, trucked all over the UK and most of Europe, the stories related here over that 60 year span are from my personal memories, I hope you enjoy them.
