Their Nightly Drive Helps to Boost the Export Drive

Men Behind the Wheel Defy Fog

They don’t issue medals to the hard-bitten, weary-eyed men whose night-by-night routine in the cabs of roaring ten-wheelers takes them to the docks at London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, but if you see one you can shake him by the hand.

Shake him by the hand and thank him for a job well done. Upon his nerve and initiative depends your daily bread. While you are reading your evening paper he is preparing for the struggle ahead; while you are between the sheets he is groping his way through the darkness.

He may meet his arch-enemy, fog; he may skid on the ice-coated roads; but he will see that his heavy load, whether it is machinery for India or boots for Capetown, arrives at the docks on time.

Rushden, as the headquarters of Messrs. P.X. Ltd., is a vital link in the chain between workbench and buyer, and it is there, in the flood-lit yard of the Washbrook Road depot, that you will meet such men as Jack Ashby, of Finedon, “Ginger” Wheeler, of Irchester, and Harry Curry, of Irthlingborough – the men who keep the wheels turning.

Throughout the day red and green lorries have been picking up chemicals from Wollaston, crumpets from Kettering, tyres from Wellingborough, boots, shoes, leather, machinery. All these have been docketed, sorted and stacked on the wooden loading bay.

Loading Up

Goods have arrived from Leicester, Birmingham, Northampton, Manchester depots which in turn have made local collections, and scurrying workmen are loading up the trailers. Hand-trucks rattle, the red weigh-bridge creaks and the thunder of warming engines fills the petrol-laden air.

We found Jack Ashby standing by the shed, his peaked hat tilted on the back of his head, his hands in the pockets of his blue overalls. Jack had just reported for duty, and while he went off to check his tyre pressures, the running of his engine, and his load of leather for Calcutta and soap for Singapore, we chatted with manager George Jackson.

“Jack Ashby has been with us since 1931,” he said as we smoked a cigarette and glanced at the firm’s “area-book” which reads like a travel guide. We estimate that he has done three-quarters of a million miles in our service. And he was driving for fifteen years before that.

“We’ve got 77 vehicles with us, and P.X. Eastern have about 60. It all started, you know, with grandfather Peck, who drove a horse and cart from Wollaston to Wellingborough. That was in 1896. He also had one of the first cars in the area.”

George Jackson, with the organiser’s taste for facts and figures, was obviously on a favourite subject when he spoke of the complex internal office “machinery” behind the vital industry which originated with a plodding horse and an ambitious driver.

Forms, time-sheets and consignment notes all played their part in keeping transport moving, and George Jackson felt they were too important to be forgotten.

Keeping Warm

The map-decorated office was comfortable, but outside Jack Ashby, flailing his leather-clad arms to keep warm, was waiting to go. He had made a final check and his documents, handed over by the night staff, were in order.

A diesel engine roared into life a few moments later, and eighteen tons of lorry and cargo moved onto the road.

“I don’t smoke,” said Jack, as his lorry groaned its way up the hill out of Rushden, “but if you want to there’s nothing to stop you. I don’t drink either, on a run. It’s a mug’s game on the road. If you do have a smash-up they’ve only to smell your breath, and you’ve had it.

“I’ve been driving since I came out of the Army after the First Great War, you know, when the road transport business really started up and I’ve never had an endorsement.

“I’m usually on the Manchester run – now that’s a trip for you. We go up one day and come back the next. No, it’s not a bad life. I’ve got my own lorry as well, a Standard Utility. Me and my son – he’s a driver as well – keep some pigs up by Rushden football ground. We feed them before we go out at night and when we come in.”

As his truck warmed up, so did Jack, for it’s not often a transport driver has someone to talk to through the hours of darkness.

To the accompaniment of his apparently tortured engine he gave the transport driver’s view on life.

“Things are better than they were,” he said. “We used to do more than 1,000 miles a week in the old days; just carry on working every hour that God sent. Now, if anyone does more than they should, it’s their own fault.”

Cat’s Eyes

A whisp of fog drifted across the Bedford Road as Jack dragged on his wheel to round a bend. “Bit patchy,” he said. “Still, this run’s nothing – not like the Manchester run. See these cat’s eyes – the best thing they ever brought out. Look at that bloke pulled into the kerb. That’s the way to cause accidents.”

Jack chattered on, doing most of the talking, and at times sounding like a Cook’s guide. Every village, every town, every hamlet linked up with some little tale in his memory.

There was a discussion on the merits of Henlow Camp, the varying quality of road lamps at Hitchin and the antecedents of private motorists who failed to dip their headlights.

At last the transport drivers’ home from home, the Welwyn snack bar, came in sight, and P.X. 136 joined the other vehicles parked on the ashes.

The café, open all night for the men of the road, was nearly empty, but the drivers peered curiously at the camera. “Newspaper men,” snorted someone. “You can always pick ‘em out, can’t you? Come to the best café of the lot. I could show you some cafes.’

“You should come at three o’clock,” said friendly Mr. Kenrick from behind the counter. “That’s when the market folk come in. We’re full up then.”

It was in the snack bar that we met “Ginger” Wheeler and Harry Curry, two other P.X. men who had travelled on in front.

They had steaming cups of tea in their hands and were munching cheese rolls. A radio was blaring out some thing about a plane crash.

Fog Menace

The men seated around the tables had worries of their own. They had heard one word passed from driver to driver, and the pennies were not clicking into the pin table. It took us half an hour to learn the full meaning of that word.

Back on the road in a small convoy, we ran into trouble, the sort of trouble which gives less experienced drivers nightmares. Fog. Earlier on it had come in translucent waves. Now it became a pall, obliterating everything but the sparkling cat’s eyes.

“There’ll be some smashes to-night,” said Jack. “Hundreds of them. It’s just a matter of luck. We’ll probably be all right.” He kept his foot down but the rear lights of the petrol driven wagons in front disappeared ahead.

“The main thing is to keep on going,” he added. “If you stop someone will bash into your back. It’s all right where there are cat’s eyes, but when they break off then you’re for it.”

We did keep going, following the track of a white line that sometimes appeared on the left, sometimes on the right, and playing the transport driver’s game of “get behind the other bloke.”

A level crossing loomed up, and with it a traffic jam. A saloon car with a buckled front was moved out of the danger area, there was a lorry with a smashed cabin standing between lines of rumbling traffic with a solitary policeman as guardian; two more lorries had become united when the leader had jammed on his brakes.

So it went on, mile after mile. At one spot a passenger was leading a bus waving a white handkerchief; at another a policeman was performing the duties of pathfinder with a flaming torch. A truck in front narrowly missing a lamp post on a jutting corner, another came to a sudden standstill when its driver completely lost his bearings.

We were somewhere along a road. There was a kerb on one side and, sometimes a line on the other. Sometimes there were lights glowing in the haze and enormous unidentifiable black bodies came dangerously close. The road seemed interminable.

Suddenly, like the dawn in the tropics, the fog lifted and we were in London. Barnet, Finchley, Holloway Road, Highgate, Commercial Road and West India Dock Road were before us.

Darkened Shop

As a dressy night-hawk of London’s back streets tried to jump the lorry Jack pointed out the Finchley Dance Hall. “That’s quite a place some Saturday nights,” he said.

There were few people on the pavements in front of the darkened shops whose signs became more and more foreign as the vehicle probed deeper into the heart of lesser-known London.

The blanket came down again and obliterated everything in a hollow, but cleared in time for Jack to announce “We’re here.”

Light beamed out under the roller door of the London depot – a friendly light in the mist of unwholesome-looking buildings, some of them derelict and showing traces of the time when Hitler tried to stamp out the area.

Within there was a replica of the scene at Rushden. The premises, though shabbier and smaller, were equally busy. There was the same sound of warming engines, the same rattle of hand-trucks, though in the distance could be heard the occasional bleat of river sirens.

Loaded trailers, ready for the return journey to Rushden, were standing by the high wooden platform under bright lights and brisk workmen, going about their business, made the bystander feel uncomfortable and in the way.

It was at the London depot that Jack Ashby and his mates faded out of the picture. He hitched his engine on to another trailer and went back through the fog. Into the picture stepped Foreman Kelly, another Jack with a Sunderland accent.

Strong Tea

“We shift a hundred tons a night,” he said as we poured out strong tea and watched the early morning scene. “There’s one thing I can say for the boys here. Through the whole of the war they never went into the shelter.

“It was in the blitz I got this” he added, fingering his scarred jaw. “That’s plastic surgery. I was six months in hospital. That was on the 26th of November, 1944.”

At four o’clock Kelly took us to his place of pilgrimage and pointed out the items of interest.

Now the P.X. London depot is sandwiched between a Chinese restaurant and a Chinese lodging house. Ming Street is to the front; Pennyfields is to the back. The West India Dock gates, the ruins of a bombed Chinese cinema and Oriental Street are all within a couple of hundred yards.

“They play ‘Fan tan’ sometimes all night,” said Kelly, indicating the lights still glowing behind drawn curtains. He spoke of Charlie Brown’s, a pub whose name is known all over the world.

“Chalkie” White, who had brought the tea, announced that he lived within “free miles of Bow Bells.”

“Coo, you ought to see ‘em comin’ art of the boozers. It ain’t half a lark sometimes. Flog anything for a drink, some of ‘em will. Then they’ll run art of cash and flog their jackets; flog their shoes, sometimes. Then they’ll be broke again in an hour.”

At six a.m. it was clear in Pennyfields, but when the trailer started on its second journey with 52-year-old Bert Hunt at the wheel and 17-year-old Jonnie Seymour keeping guard at the back, the fog came down again.

Bert had been on the job for ten years, the local goods were first in the queue which formed before the “dockies” signed on.

The queue is a favourite grouse with the drivers. They must leave their beds before six to get a good position, but the dockers, many of whom sign on day by day as their services are required, put in an appearance at about 8.30.

There was much threshing of arms while the transport men stood by their giant trucks whose nameplates showed that they come from all over England.

The fog obliterated everything but the three-storied warehouses, the shadows of trucks and railway wagons. Somewhere in the darkness a hoot gave away the presence of a ship; in whose hold our cargo would eventually be stored.

But the job of the moment was to get it into the warehouse and checked by the Port authorities. First came the checker; then the dockers. In a few moments their vicious hand-spikes were digging into the boxes of soap and dragging them in pairs on to hand trucks. It was a five minutes task, and the space on the loading bank was soon occupied by another ten-wheeler.

The soap was for Singapore; the bales of leather had to be taken to another warehouse and wharf hidden in the fog. The truck nosed its way through massed dockers, dodged slowly-moving shunting wagons and bumped over hidden lines. It stopped within ten yards of the water but a giant grey ship was invisible.

As the last bale thudded down from the tailboard, the transport driver’s job was completed, the custody of his cargo was in the hands of dockers and stevedores. Soon it would be on a ship.

Back in Northamptonshire the boot operatives and chemical workers were busy – and so were the transport drivers, busy picking up their next load ready for their next midnight journey.