The Tale Of The Long-Distance Dodgy

Trucker’s quick thinking and resourcefulness called on after being stranded in Europe

- Ron Chapman

When I started driving lorries in early February 1957, there were three types of drivers: night trunkers, day shunters and those that went tramping.

Those that went tramping usually were away from home for a week or so, sometimes more. When these chaps were making their way back to base, they would get to within shouting distance of the depot, park anywhere that was handy, and then hitchhike home, spend the evening and night with their family, then hitchhike back to the lorry next day to return to the yard. For some reason or other, which I will leave to the reader’s imagination, some of these nights at home were called “Dodgies”. As I was in digs at base, I didn’t ever bother with hitching lifts home, as one set of digs were as good as another.

Typical digs were ‘Durose’ at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Kempsey Café near Tewksbury, Mrs Carr’s at Manchester, The Sunset at Stafford, and Vera’s at Grimsby. The transport digs in Devon and Cornwall were like holiday bed and breakfasts, so it was no hardship to stay out.

Fast-forward to October 1969 and I was going quite a bit of continental work to northern France, Normandy, Brittany, Holland and Belgium. During this period, I had a weekly job taking fresh hanging beef and lambs from Scotland to Brussels’ wholesale meat market. If there was no load available to Scotland, I would run up there empty to load for Belgium on the Friday, for delivery in the early hours of Monday morning. Deliveries would usually take until midday, after which I would wash out the trailer and make my way back to Zeebrugge and park up.