Now you folks think that was rather cute. Let me tell you a true happening back in the seventies here in Adelaide.
I was the one & only mechanic for a family trucking company who owned twenty old Dodge tray tops, six KGL Bedford tray tops, five Dodge & Bedford single axle semi's & a Fordson petrol tractor, six dog trailers. Some were local carton freight deliveries, the semi's were carting steel plate off the wharves to Hume Pipes & the Fordson tractor towed two dog trailers of steel plate from Port Adelaide up along port road to Hume steel. Those trailers were eight ton each & he is pulling them with a tractor that had two small brake drums about a foot in dia. If he had have jammed his foot on the brakes, those trailers would have pushed him 50 metres. Anyway, that was the fleet.
The two old boys who owned the Company, old Wallace was the eldest & wore glasses like the bottom of a bottle. This day, they could not start a truck at the Mile End rail yards, Wal was going there anyway & gave me a ride. Between Beverly (Workshop & the rail yards there were seven sets of lights. The worst were Port Rd & South Rd crossing. 4 lanes each way. He was driving, & the trip went like this.
Wal, "Was that a set of lights we just went through?
Me, "Yes Mr Wal,"
Wal, "Were they green?"
Me, "No Mr Wal, Yellow."
Wal, "We missed em' all though"
Me, Yes Mr Wal, we did."
Next set of lights was Port & south Rd
Me, "Lights here Mr Wal"
Wal, "What! What'd you say?"
Me, Much louder, "There's lights in front of you, you'd better stop!"
Wal after much squeeling of everyone elses' brakes & horns blowing. "Useless drivers, can't they see the lights."
This went on at all the lights that we went through & how we never got T boned was everyone elses good evasive driving.
By the time we got to Mile End I was not smelling it, I was sitting in it. & you know he drove on like that for months till he finally decided that the traffic was stupid & having a new Mercedes, he did not want to dent it.
In those days here in Adelaide, how old George never lost his old Fordson in a jacknife stop. It would have rolled & killed him. No roll cages then. Baggie.
