14: Trucking Great Journalism

0:03Hello and welcome to Mat's Trucking Great Podcast. I'm your host Mat Ireland. Just before we get started today I'd just like to say a quick thank you to all of the regular sponsors Creasy Drainage, QDUK, GoFetch, all the companies that have supported them by sponsoring an individual episode, everybody who's donated via Buy Me A Coffee and Patreon. It all really does help with the running of it and if you'd like to consider a donation it would be really much appreciated. Also, a big thanks to Todd, the editor, but that's enough of all the thank yous for now, I think. So I'm going to introduce today's guest.

0:35Today is a little anniversary as well, which is nice. It's my good friend Pip Dunn. Pip, how are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm very good, mate. I'm very good. So today is the 30th anniversary of you becoming what? Today is the 30th anniversary of me becoming a professional journalist. Good Lord. It is, particularly as it's something I'd never actually intended on doing. I just stumbled into it. And then 30 years ago, I started and we're still going. Excellent. So how do we get to this point in time? Because you obviously have an interest in trucks. Where did that begin from? Well, the interest in trucks started when I was about eight or nine.

1:16We were living in Birmingham and my dad was relocating offices to Warwick. and obviously we needed to move house so my dad was looking at houses in Kenilworth, Warwick, Leamington surrounding area and we're going back to 1978 here so I dare say he got phone calls at work from estate agents saying we've got this property do you want to go and see it and he'd get home from work we'd be home from school he'd bundle me and my brother and my sister and obviously my mum into the Ford Cortina with the pie chart rear light setup and what a machine and we would poot loft down to Warwickshire and that was basically junction six spaghetti junction six down to junction four and then off through Borsal Common towards Kenilworth or Warwick or Leamington and we'd go and see a house and then obviously my parents drew up a short list of what they wanted from houses and this sort of thing and we plumped on a house in in the town of Kenilworth which is halfway between Coventry and Leamington.

2:27Now during those journeys even though they were probably only about 35 minutes long they seemed to last an eternity I just started watching the lorries on the road which would have back then in 78 would have been ERS and Foden's and Leyland's and Bedford's and DAF's and Scania's and Volvo's and everything and when we plumped on the house in Kenneworth obviously I went to a new school I started a new school and there was a kid in he was actually in the year below me we moved there in May 78 and this so I would have just turned nine so this lad would have been eight and his dad operated a small haulage fleet all Volvos but he did Middle East and European work mostly European but he did do a fair few Middle East trips as well and he'd got uh he'd got an F88 and F89 which was quite rare in those days left-hand drive with a big 12 litre engine and then he'd got an F10 and an F12 which were pretty new new they'd only come out in 1977 so they were they were very new so I got to know this kid and uh I used to go up to the farm that his dad ran the haulage company out of was actually visible from my bedroom would you believe because our house was right on the edge of Kenneworth looking out onto fields and then in the distance was the farm where he kept his trucks there and I could just about see the trucks when they were parked there and I used to go this this lad Dave Jackson who I'm still friends with today thanks to the wonders of Facebook what was the name of the company was it right Jackson's or something like that the company was kenworth international transport kit right and dark blue colors often the trailers were were other companies trailers but they did have their own tilt trailers two or three of those i think so yeah we used i used to go up and play i mean i was only nine so i used to play in in the trucks with with dave and what have you and his dad used to give me copies of truck magazine which were um i mean i guess i was mostly looking at the pictures really i don't think i age nine i was really working in depth at the uh the test reports and things like that the break performance of a marathon or something and then my gran in 1980 my gran started buying me truck magazine every month and i'd pick it up from my local news agents and i'd read it well i say cover to cover i wouldn't read the really boring stuff but i i started to sponge up all the information about all these trucks you know so i knew that an f10 had a smaller engine than an f12 and the uh scannier 80 series had the smaller cab and the 110 series had the bigger cab and what have you and then i bought the bible at the time the observer's book of commercial vehicles i think the first one i got was the 1978 edition which i'm going to take a punt on had it was either the leyland t45 no it must have been the one before that with the, I think it actually had a Peterbilt on the cover.

5:33Anyway, and that suddenly opened me up to all these weird and wonderful names of companies. I mean, some of the American stuff was featured quite heavily in truck, but when you start learning about Sauer from Switzerland and OAF from Austria and Steyr from Austria and all these weird and wonderful companies, you know, and then just as a kid, you'd suddenly see one of these things you'd see a pagasso or a stea which come over from its homeland you'd see a service station i even bizarrely saw a stea parked in a residential area in kenneworth once a little it was a four by two tilt but it was obviously a drawbar um i even managed to get a photograph of that and so that's where my interest in in trucks and lorries came about right and sort of age 10 11 i just wanted to be a long distance lorry driver i wanted a volvo f12 and to be going off to wherever on the go you know I mean before I got into trucks obviously I'd never heard of countries like Oman and Qatar and probably even some of the Baltic states and what have you yeah so there's a bit of geography lesson in there as well and the the only reason I never became a truck driver back then was yeah kind of peer pressure from my parents particularly my mum was kind of i i think she was just thinking that truck driving was a bit of a dead-end job which it most certainly isn't and she kind of sort of said oh you need to go into engineering you need to do um math qualification yeah uh go and get a degree in engineering or something and i kind of blindly sort of followed that for a little while and then one day this was in 1984 so I was 15 at this point I suddenly saw that there was this thing that truck used to do it was inside the back cover it was called a life in the day of which I at first I thought they'd got the wrong way around but I saw it was actually a play on words and one of you know usually it was some of not necessarily a lorry driver as such but some of the people associated with the industry but also maybe some of the obscure jobs or something you know yeah maybe somebody whose main job was something else but they drove a lorry to support their job or something you know the guys who put out the cones on motorways that sort of thing yeah and there was this interview with this lad who was doing a degree in transport and distribution and so i actually said to my mom i said well what about this you know um and she said oh yeah that sounds good so but by this point i was doing the wrong exams and then i really kind of cocked it up by then going to do the totally the wrong a level so i was doing math physics and technology at a level and i wasn't enjoying them and i wasn't understanding them and also at age 16 because it was a different world back then i could go to the pubs and you know yes and so i was going to the pub every weekend trying vainly to chat up girls and not getting anywhere but i then i did get my first serious girlfriend and then i did you know and i just wasn't interested in school and it wasn't because I didn't want to learn it was because I was doing the wrong subjects and so I flunked my A levels a bit American word there flunked so I didn't do very well in my A levels I got one E out of the two of them yeah and I wasn't going to get by this time I'd applied to go on for the transport distribution course at Huddersfield in well it was polytechnic back then and obviously I hadn't got the grades there was a hnd at bolton which we looked at but it required you to pass all of 12 modules and i just said to my parents i said i can't see me doing that i just cannot see me doing it so i went to re-sit the a levels the two that i'd failed but you know your paper over the cracks it's exactly the same still didn't understand it still didn't enjoy it and i hated it and midway through I just a friend of mine came to me and said oh just so you know I've just got a job at this warehouse in Warwick and they're taking on staff it's only just opened a big book warehouse called Heathcote Books serving in fact I think it was actually owned by WH Smiths but it was you know supplying books to to all customers so I applied for a job there and it was meant to be a fairly tame job just picking the orders and putting them in boxes but within a couple of weeks I'd managed to wangle myself into the goods inwards department you know and so I spent my day processing the orders off the lorries which is great because I took my camera and got some nice pictures while I was there did my full lift licenses but deep down I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do long term it was a great job for for me at age 19 getting out my system I left home my dad relocated again and moved up to Manchester so I stayed down there and I lodged locally and And I kind of, it was great, actually very good learning experiences in life, you know.

10:27Yeah, finding a way in the world sort of thing. It's funny, I'm teaching my daughter to drive at the moment. Well, not just me teaching her, obviously she has lessons as well. But I was telling her only the other day that I had, for my learning to drive, because I didn't actually learn to drive a car until I was 20. In fact, I was 21 when I passed. I funded all that myself, you know. And then I funded my first car, I funded my insurance. and she's just sitting there moaning because she's got a 12 year old car and i keep saying christ you're doing better than i did so anyway as well as working in the the warehouse i had a part-time job in my local pub which again i did for the social side of it as much as anything else although the money did come in useful and it was there one night i was working away and um some of my old college sixth form tutors came in obviously on a on a social and i got chatting to my old headmaster and he was really nice and he said to me you know oh what are you doing I told him he said you know and he said oh you wanted to do transport I said yeah I didn't get the grades he said well look you do know education never closes its door on you and that phrase has stuck with me ever since and he said and if you want to have a chat about going back to university my door's always open so I thought I'll take you up on that offer and the following day I went down to see him and he was brilliant and he rang the the university up and they'd remembered I'd applied four years ago or three years ago this was and they said look it's a bit too late to get on this year's course and we'd like you to do an A level at evening class to show show that you're willing to get back into education so that's what I did so I managed to get onto the economics A level at my local college which was one night a week I think maybe two I think it was just one and we went from there and I passed the A level and I got on the course so I trotted up to Huddersfield to study transport logistics management and that was my plan and maybe it was because of those days as a kid looking at all these lorries going over Europe and the Middle East and everything I really wanted to do European transport um yeah so I graduated part that year I had a year out in the industry which I went to work for a parcels distribution company in Glasgow they went up uh halfway through my year I ended up working at Curry's of Dumfries a well-known Horace company and uh so I spent eight months working with them on their European traffic desk and to be honest with you it wasn't the job to make, you know, I think the degree really wanted, but it was experience and it was helpful.

13:09And I did learn a lot. I really did. And, you know, so I did that. That was 94. And the summer of 94, I went back to Huddersfield to finish the last year of my degree and graduated in 95. And my plan then was to get a job. I wanted to stay up north. I was really enjoying my time in Huddersfield. I liked the town. i foolishly started supporting the football team and um you know i had a lot of good friends up there now my girlfriend was there at the time and so i was looking for sort of northern jobs ideally leeds bradford huddersfield wakefield that sort of thing and hit this was a bit where i was a little bit naive i i i was offered a job because the university does help you know they go out to employees and say we've got this batch of fresh meat for you um if you want to take any of them on and this company Skelmersdale approached me right Alan Munro Transport so I went I went and interviewed and everything and they offered me a job and it wasn't ideal the location wasn't ideal and I really and where I really struggled was finding accommodation so Wigan unlike Huddersfield because Wigan's not a university town it didn't have a lot of sort of accommodation I was looking for a bedsit or a shared house or something it just wasn't and I did find this bedsit but it was absolutely awful it was really pokey but it had no central heating and it was really grim but yeah you know I thought well it's a start and you know and unfortunately I joined in sort of November and it was absolutely freezing and uh and I went to work at this this company and quite frankly they were shocking they were they they'd just been raided by the transport police after an investigation in the observer newspaper showing they were running dodgy so and this is how bad they were they said right your first job is you've got to sort out the tachographs and he said sort them out by vehicle i said no you need to sort them out by drivers the drivers are the ones who are restricted by the hours the trucks aren't and he goes oh right and he literally just gave me this box of tachographs you know a lot of them were damaged because obviously they they're easy to damage you know so i'm doing this pretty mind numbingly dull job to start with you know then my next job was i had to sort out the drive's expenses which didn't make me very popular because most of them were on the fiddle because you know the receipts were either non-existent or quite clearly not genuine you know so we had to get the expenses under control which i did do But when it came to a head for me personally, every time I came up with an idea, I was always told, no, no, we've always done it this way.

15:55We'll stick with what we know. And I said, well, in the interview, they said they wanted me to come in with ideas as a graduate and everything. And they just wouldn't, my direct line manager, the transport manager, just wouldn't implement them. And then it really came to a head when IBM were a big customer of theirs. and that's who my dad worked for and i remember listening to my boss on the phone to say yeah yeah yeah that'll be in milan tomorrow and i was sitting and he put the phone down i said how's that going to be in milan tomorrow it's sat in our yard and he said and he said oh well we'll double man it and then we'll just ring them tomorrow and say they broke down so it's going to be a day late and i just thought is that the way you way you run you you book your customers you you know you've got no regard for them and and the reason that trailer is in in our yard and not in Milan, it's because you haven't planned properly, you know.

16:46But anyway, so in March 96, I'd had enough. They'd had enough with me as well, I think. It won't work. So we just parted company, you know, and they didn't sack me. I didn't resign. We just sort of said not pursued after a trial period or something, and off I went. The good thing with that is I could sign on straight away. So I came home. I'd actually, about a month before, actually had had so much hassle with the the bed sit i'd moved back out and i'd actually gone back to my parents who were an hour away from skelmersdale but the money i was saving on the rent i was spending on the fuel to go but you know an hour commute from from greenfield to skelmersdale every day was pretty pretty horrific so anyway so i came i basically had a day off and then thought right better get back on the horse i started basically just we didn't have email then uh so just no cold calling companies and writing to him saying look I'm a graduate you know and I decided I wasn't just going to take any job I was going to get a job where I wanted to be so I was applying in as I say in in West Yorkshire mainly and then the quirky bit came the week that I left Alan Monroe Transport on the Monday on the Wednesday as you may know I've got an interest in railways I've had an interest in railway since I was a kid and um there's a magazine i used to read called rail and they were advertised for news and features writer and i thought well hang on i'm unemployed i'd done some writing i've done the odd railway article but i'd done writing at the university i'd done the football reports and gig reviews and things and um so whereas i wasn't a trained journalist i'd written a bit you know so i thought well i'll go for it what's the worst that can happen you know you've got enough to lose yeah and um and i haven't heard anything and four weeks later the magazine was fortnightly and it came out four weeks later the issue came out and said oh we've just appointed this guy i thought oh bugger well the job's gone then anyway i did know a guy who worked on it and i just rang him up and said oh i'll see they have a point that's he said well actually i'm leaving as well so there's another job so okay i came home one day and my dad said oh kath rang for you i thought i don't know anybody called cath and i'm going through my diary katie and whatever you know i messaged one or two young ladies and they hadn't rung me and um i didn't know uh who this cath was so you know there's nothing i could do you know and um anyway so she rang back about three weeks later my dad said oh he doesn't know anybody called cath and she go oh my i'm ever so sorry i didn't tell you who i was you know i'm the receptionist on rail we'd like to come for an interview so it all moved very quickly there they rang me on the thursday i rang them back straight away say yeah yeah i can come for an interview when you want me and they said what about monday so yep so i drove off to nottingham on the sunday stayed at my mate's house drove over to peterborough early on the monday morning very early i was there like about three hours before i needed to be and had this interview yeah and it lasted two and a half hours you know um which was good because it wasn't you know i was obviously making an impression uh and they wanted to find out more so i assume you know anyway so So they said to me at the end of it, they said, look, how would you fancy doing four weeks trial on a freelance contract?

20:10And then if we like you and you like us, we'll give you a permanent job. So I said, yes, yes, because I haven't got anything else going on. And so they said, could you start on, well, it was a bank holiday week. And they said, could you start on the Tuesday? I said, I've got nowhere to live down there. And that was part of the problem I had with my previous. don't worry don't worry we've got that sorted so this this guy she said somebody this somebody will ring you about a room they've got in their house so this guy rang me up and uh he seemed all right so yeah yeah so i drove down on the sunday no it wasn't a bank holiday monday i'm lying because i definitely drove down on a sunday drove down on a sunday turned up at this guy's house and he was really nice and pretty much the first thing he said once i'd sort of unpacked my car was should we go to the pub and we did always a good start and I've known him for 30 years and so yes I got this job on rail in the four week well after three weeks they said look you know do you want the job I said yeah and I never looked back and then yeah that was 96 obviously 30 years ago and so I enjoyed that and I got some good training there that was with EMAP who a big company so i guess at this point sort of trucks had sort of faded from the forefront of your mind because you've got this new job to concentrate on i was still reading truck every month i still read i was reading truck and driver which was obviously had been going then as well and and i was still really interested in it but i was quite happy doing the railways but yeah there was a little quirk of fate came in 2000 when truck advertised that they wanted a writer and I applied for it and I got it but then when I went to hand my notice in at rail they they made me a better offer and I didn't I'd bought my house by this point I didn't really want to move to Sutton which was what was going to happen to work on truck and so when I worked it all out you know I got you know I got a decent pay rise and I didn't have to move and so I stayed and that kind of um I think that upset Andy Salter a little bit because I did send an apologetic email and said look I'll be happy to do some freelance for you and he never even replied but um so I carried on but after a while I got headhunted for another railway magazine which was a promotion in terms of i was going to be editor of it and it was a slightly more magazine slightly more catered to my taste so um so i took that and that was on a freelance basis and when i went because that was on a freelance basis i was free to work for anybody except i had a gentleman's agreement of not working for other railway magazines obviously yeah but trucks were fine um i'd already actually done a first job for trucking when steve hayes was editing it i think i'd done that while i was actually still at rail i forget but i did it on a on a company local to me who ran a lot of fodens at the time but anyway so i i um i thought to myself i wonder if i could get any uh truck work you know because i just enjoy doing it i say i did the odd bit for trucking but not a great deal and then i thought i'd try truck and driver you know even though they're still part of the same empire as truck which had now closed obviously by then that closed in 2004 and um i didn't get anywhere you know and then funnily enough i started sending just sending them pictures to their picture post selection yeah and none of them were getting published and and it confused me because some of the pictures i was sending were very interesting and you know they were a rare truck in the in the uk or something or something or or they were just a nice picture and without being arrogant they were they were better than some of the pictures that were being published i thought you know yeah i'll get you and i just thought you know maybe i've been blacklisted and then suddenly the editor was dave young at that time i think he was off ill for uh three or four months and the subject the production editor uh deputy editor chris turner was running the show and he obviously just found my pictures and just printed them thought right okay and then dave came back and then nothing and then i kept sending pictures in nothing getting published and then i sent one in under a fake name i the highly imaginative john smith and not only got published it was picture of the month i thought so there's definitely nothing wrong with the technical the actual images i'm sending it's purely um the name yeah and then i didn't think much of it and then dave young left and will shires took over yeah and will did some brilliant features in truck and driver and he did this he did this feature um where he got other people to drive a truck a train driver a caravan driver a school bus driver i think a school run mum or something you've got these five people i think a pilot might have been one of them to drive a truck obviously on a on a a private airfield or something yeah and the train driver was a friend of mine and i sent him a message how the hell did you get this he said oh i've known will for ages blah blah blah right i said so i said to him look can you have a word with him and ask if i'm blacklisted you know and i told him the story and he came but he said i've spoken to will he said uh he says he says you're not blacklisted he says he's never heard of you but he did say he'd like to have a chat with you so um he gave me his number and i rang will and we had this chat and uh uh will said right how do you fancy write me 21 years of the magnum ran in a magnum which so this was 2010 i think it was so i wrote him 20 uh wrote in that article as as he requested it got published it was my first interaction with the truck industry as such because i had to ring the pr girl from renault penny brooks who's still a good friend of mine today and then he started offering me you know do you want to do this yeah and then i started pitching features to him and he'd say oh yeah i really like that and then and then he ran me says i've got some uh bad news and good news and so go on this he said i'm leaving truck and driver oh bloody hell i've just got my foot in the door and you go and he says but the good news is colin who's taken over wants to use your stuff and i'll be i'm going to commercial motor so i'll be needing some stuff there so right and he immediately gave me a two commissions for commercial motor and then i spoke to colin and colin bless him lovely guy a bit disorganized i don't think he'll mind me saying that but i'd send him something and i'd never hear anything and then he suddenly ring email me say oh yes can you i have that article all right okay so i did him you know i did an article about naming trucks you know like um after our knights of old used to name them after knights and Stobarts obviously named them after women and all that sort of thing so I did an article on that and then I did an article about um a really kind of weird juxtaposition when steam trains are on the national network they need water which can only come by lorries because there's no water facilities like they used to be so road tankers take the water to them and in 2009 a brand new steam loco was built a thing called tornado massive really big thing yeah brand new to the old design it was um um exactly to the old design and that had been built and was running on the main line and the guys who the guys who um managed it were very pr savvy and you used to get press releases all the time but one of them knew i like my trucks he said oh i photographed the truck which delivered our water at the weekend is it any of any interest and it was a t-cab scania i said well yeah and he said oh right i'll give you the guy's number and i gave he gave me the guy's number buxton tankers i rang them up yeah i would happily love to do an article so i got trained up to wakefield where the truck was i met the driver we went got the truck drove to newcastle tyne yard in newcastle to fill this steam engine up with water in this t-cab scania the the headline was t for tornado which i thought was quite a good headline and um and that was a really good feature and then i did um i'd been on holiday and i'd stumbled across a working bed for tl coal lorry down there and i did an article on that i even had a drive of that and then me and will did this article we raced a truck and a train and will went up on the train on the freight train and I went up in the truck which was a Mercedes Actros this this was 2010 so it was a version 3 Actros top of the range and we raced it so basically the minute the signal went green at the yard in Daventry on that for the train to go we set off in the truck and it was really good it was a bit top gearish you know and it was really funny as we got on we went obviously onto M1 and then as we went on the M6 we went over the west coast mainline just as the freight train went under which was brilliant would have been fantastic with a drone but obviously we didn't have that then and we had a really good run in the truck we managed to get to Gretna before we had to take our 45 and because the train runs to a schedule unlike a lorry we knew where the train was going to be and will could message us and the train started running early because it had lots of these little stops where it's meant to wait for other trains to overtake it but they weren't they were late so they just let it run so suddenly it's an hour and a half early so when we pulled into the freight terminal at coatbridge in near glasgow we didn't generally didn't know whether we'd beaten it we had we beat it only by 20 minutes but it was a great article but during that that feature will said to me said have you got your hgv i said well funnily enough i've only got provisional because if rewinding back to that brief stint i had at curry's when i was at curry's i asked if i could get L plates and learn to drive and they miraculously said yes so I used to do driving after work I used to go from Dumfries to Glasgow or Aire or somewhere and back but I never got to do my test and then when I was at Alan Munro again I went I had a couple of trips out in the FL10 but I never got around to do my test before I went back to you know you know and I never had the money to do it and then now I was self-employed I had the money and I checked with my accountant and said can I put this through the company said yes it's legitimate training which it quite clearly has proved to be yeah and I did my test and luckily because I had to do ridges and arctics as was the law then I passed them both first time so 2012 I got my arctic test January 2012 and whereas it wasn't suddenly will give me loads more jobs because I've now got a license what happened in 2015 is he approached me to take on truck and driver he said the technical editor of commercial motor i think it was david wilcox was his name was leaving he was retiring and colin who was editing truck and driver was going to take that on so there was a vacancy on truck and driver and i i was the perfect fit so i i was also coming up to the renewal on my freelance contract on the rail magazine i was doing at the time and i knew they were going to cut the money down and they'd been been we'd been taken over by this new company and this that and the other so i just thought well my contract is literally going to finish at the time they want me to start truck and driver so i thought well that's perfect timing yeah you know clean break and a change and i'd always wanted to do truck and driver i love truck and driver as a magazine i'm gutted it's been closed down recently yeah you're not the only one and and so i took it and the first year was brilliant i really enjoyed it and then it kind of went a little bit sour in the second year for reasons i won't say on on air and we parted company i was about a couple of months shy two years doing it and we parted company and i went back to being purely freelance and luckily the wonders of facebook i just happened to mention this on facebook and a friend of mine who was a magazine editor of a classic magazine mentioned it to his bossy because he was looking for somebody to edit truck stop news the free newspaper that came out every fortnight so yeah i took that on which was great because it kept me in the industry um it was pretty much seamless from truck and driver there's only a couple of months breaking them and during that period i also got offered to take on classic truck which steve hayes had launched for kLC yeah and that was right up my street because that was all the all the kit i grew up with in those days in the 70s and 80s you know Scania 112s and all the trucks I remember being launched in the early 80s you know the Scania GPR series the DAF 95 all these things which I can remember reading about in truck magazine were now the restoration projects for my generation so I loved that magazine I really enjoyed it I was getting I got some really good feedback apparently I got an uplifting sales in the first couple of issues you know so I must have been doing something right and I really really enjoyed it this episode of Matt's Trucking Great podcast is proudly sponsored by Creasy Drainage if you're dealing with block drains flooding or drainage problems Creasy Drainage is a team to call they provide professional drainage services for homes and businesses including drain unblocking repairs septic tank emptying and CCTV drainage surveys they're known for fast response times honest advice and getting the job done right the first time for reliable drainage services you can trust check out Creasy Drainage the details will be in the show notes and then the pandemic came and then in the pandemic I got a phone call to say we're closing classic truck and truck stop news is going to four weekly rather than two weekly and you suddenly think oh my god what's going to happen here i'm you know that's the biggest part of my work you know so um luckily i'd been doing some freelance for some other rail magazines as well and i was um so i just sort of um did what i could and i i had a book project which i was writing i was writing a railway book which i was going to self-publish and i thought the book had essentially been written but it kind of got held up because i hadn't taken the plunge and there were a few things i needed to clear up on it so i just decided i'm going to finish that book so all the things which were holding it up which were basically queries i decided i'm either going to rewrite i'm either going to find out the answer rewrite it or take it out or whatever which is what i did and so i published this book and it was a big success thank god and then i started getting some bookazine work i did a series on railways and then i did a series on trucks i did the classic trucks of the uk series and then funnily enough during all that trucking came up but i didn't apply for the trucking job because i had too much work on at that time if trucking had been five six months later it would have been perfect because having let the trucking job not apply for it let it go essentially although i still writing for them at that point i'm still am today the book has got kiboshed they again they i just started a new series we did one and they said oh we're just pausing this so that you know suddenly and and i was doing stuff i started doing a bit more for commercial motor as well and and even the odd thing for truck and driver again and a few other bits and pieces here but it was at the end of 2024 i was actually beginning to i suddenly realized i was struggling a bit here i hadn't got enough income coming in and luckily then my friend said who was editing railways illustrated which is a magazine i'd edited from 06 to 2015 he said he was leaving so i applied to get my old job back and luckily i did but again it's on a freelance basis so i do i do regular stuff for trucking i tend to do then one or two features a month test drive and an operator profile i do bits for commercial motor i was doing bits for truck and driver obviously not now um i do stuff for heritage commercials and well that's now been rebranded classic truck and um which is also now finishing yeah which is also now finishing i didn't say that because i wasn't sure whether it was public knowledge but obviously it is and heritage commercials sorry classic vintage commercials i'm doing a bit for them and i think hopefully i'll be able to fill the void of classic truck by doing something a bit more for them there is bizarrely talk of bookazines coming back as well so suddenly i'm in this i'm in this real because when you're freelance you you kind of don't turn work down unless you can't do it and that means you can't do it because you haven't got the time or you can't do it because you haven't got the subject knowledge so a commercial motor came on to me and said oh could i write about um early electric trucks of the 1930s and probably not i'll leave that to somebody a bit more experience but if they ask me to do something about the Scania 113 range or something then yep I can do that straight for you when do you want it that sort of thing so luckily I've got a good client base and I've got good contacts in the publishing industry and the truck industry and on top of all that I've got my HGV license so I still do a bit of casual driving I was actually out the last weekend which is the first casual drive I've done this year I did it wow I did a bit over christmas um it tends to pick up in the summer when drivers want holidays and what have you and they need a bit of cover and so and i like that because it keeps my hand in it gives me it shows me the industry in the real light so i can write about it a bit more authoritatively so you know i have an opinion piece in trucking every month and that's about the industry and i feel like i can get a little bit more respect from drivers and operators if i'm talking about real life situations yeah if you're actually driving the thing yeah and you know and um and i do get those real life situations i do get rdcs which are badly managed and rdcs which are very well managed i do you know i there's certain things in the industry i don't like i've actually just written a piece actually i was actually driving my car at this point but i drove home the other week and i saw one of the what i think a really irresponsible driving by an arctic driver really bad driving and i've written a piece about that because you know you can't lose sight that whereas this industry is 99.9 percent angels there are some people who think that they can drive like a lunatic and not drive with due care and attention and other road users in an articulated lorry which is is is wrong yes definitely you know and i i will fight the corner truckers with my last breath but I also won't tolerate idiots you know I mean I never understood drivers who oh I don't put my seat belt on I don't just sit there and think why and you know drivers you know it's it's less so now but the drivers used to fiddle their tacos and you sit there and think why would you do that because the you know driving for nine hours a day just physical drive not mentioning all the other stuff you do in a day which makes it a 12 13 hour day is absolutely draining why on earth would you want to keep going and put another card in i just don't get it i mean i i always stick to my brakes i i had one instance a while back where because of roadworks i was running late and i was going to miss getting to my rdc in my four and a half by about seven minutes and you know i said oh do i do i just crack on and print out saying nowhere safe to stop or something i thought well that's a lie because there are safe places so i pulled up into in a residential area because on this diversion around bolton and i could see there was room for me to park my lorry up and i parked up and had um the 45 minutes i needed legally and you know i i think that if i'm writing and i'm preaching to a degree to to other drivers about being having pride in the industry and it properly i can't then flout the rules just to suit suit me you know well you've got to practice what you preach exactly i mean i i had one day i had one of those days and every driver's had them where everything went wrong you know the job that i was planned to do the night before when i got into the office or just needed to detour to pick up this pallet at such and such which meant a detour and then a wait and it put two hours on the day and then being two hours later i then got caught up in a major carnage on the m62 where i sat there for another hour or so and then oh all sorts of things it's just you know even one of them days yeah and oh that was it when i'm coming home you know um the m62 is closed in the other direction so i end up having to go over woodhead which i don't mind except over the woodhead pass in the dark and i'm really it's been a really long day i still got plenty of driving time because i've been sat around a lot but by the time i got into the yard i'd done a 14 hour day and you sit there and think wow you know and i can earn i can earn more writing an article in a fraction of that time but from the experience point of view and the as i say the experience to write about it that actually is kind of priceless you know yes so and i'm paranoid about low bridges because i've written several pieces over the years saying there's very little excuse for hitting a low bridge so the minute i get diverted i pull over and check that i'm not going to go anywhere where i'm not necessarily going to hit a bridge but i'm going to might get to a situation where i have to turn around and it's not easy you know funnily enough i had this on a mercedes test drive about two or three years back there was no advance warnings to say if you go down this road there's a low bridge you just keep going down and then you get the signs it's a low bridge now luckily it wasn't that low and we could get under it but i sat there and thought if that had been if i'd had a double deck trailer on or car transport or something i would have had to turn around and it was in a residential area i think it was in mossley near oldham and you know and i wrote a piece saying you know signage about low bridges needs to be earlier than that you know because yeah you're you're at the point of not necessarily no return but you're at the point of inconvenience i should say whereas if i'd have seen at the junction low bridge ahead well i mean i would have said okay right i'm okay to go but if i'd been driving that double deck trailer or something i would have think i can't go down there what do i do well i carry on down here and i'll pull over and find out you know i mean luckily we have all you know smartphones and everything you can get all the information pretty much straight there but um that wasn't the case back in the day but you said the old truck truckers atlas with the bridge heights marked on it but um you know and they're they're only as good as the the people who update them um but you know yeah i love driving lorries i i've always said that if if i needed to that would be my job if you know if if the writing dried up to the point i wasn't making a living you know i would go behind the wheel get behind the wheel and i might not do full time and i probably wouldn't do tramping or something but i might do enough but because i hadn't driven since christmas apart from two i did three or four test drives but even those were actually in the last month to get out on the road on a commercial job being a truck driver behaving like a truck driver and appreciating truck driving was was really enjoyable and i had a nice little truck um yeah so you know and and you know i'm very lucky because um a little bit less so at the moment but certainly when i was doing truck and drive and truck stop news and and that sort of thing i was going to a lot of press events i was driving brand new launch trucks so you know i'm dry i drove the i drove the very first scania new gen for a magazine which bizarrely a day before the press launch i you know so i've driven i've driven the new updated daffs which were launched about 18 months ago i drove them on their their first event in spain i've driven i mean my favorite drive ever was the scannier winter drive up in tristel in norway where you're driving 70 ton timber trucks you know in the snow yeah in the snow and ice uphill fully loaded a six by two rigid with a dolly and a full 40 foot behind it and then even they even had a it wasn't um it was a heavy haulish truck it must have been 60 70 tons it had a massive great big digger on it but that was oversized because the diggers tracks were over the width of the truck and you're going downhill on a snowy road as other trucks are coming up and it's a bit of a eye-opener and it's a bit of a white knuckle but but when i took on truck and driver i said i wasn't going to shirk any driving so i mean we never got to that stage but if they'd have said to me right right we're going to send you out to do what those ice road truckers did in columbia or somewhere in south america that really ridge road i'd have had a go i'd have probably been cacking myself as they say politely but i'd have had a go i never shirked anything and even that bizarrely when i did start my casual truck driving we used to joke in the transport press you know we're good at driving them for us but we can't drive them backwards because you never really have to reverse them and you certainly don't reverse onto loading bays on a test run or a ride and drive event but so when i first started my casual driving i was a pretty bad at reversing but you soon get the knack the problem is for me i was driving one sunday and then maybe the next sunday or maybe three weeks or something so there wasn't that ability to get the continuity if i was reversing day in day out i'd have cracked it within two weeks but i now have cracked it thank god and i don't you know i don't shirk about it i get annoyed when i get given the the tightest bay possible but that's just the job and you know i think every driving it yeah is the same with that i remember on on one of my um very first days or out on my own i was delivering um a place called g's at barway and um they line you up and then they call they tell you bay and you go on and i'm going on this bay and i'm making an absolute hash of it and i can see the drivers behind me tutting and everything anyway i got the bloody thing on the bay and then i just went up to the guy who's right behind me and i just said look i'm sorry mate it's my first day on the job it was actually my second but i fibbed i said it's my first day on the job and you could see his face change from this angry say what are you doing to no problem mate we've all been there which we have all been there you know and i'm that now so i'm not sitting there cursing any driver because they can't get onto a bay i'm just sitting there thinking take your time to and i remember from my my hgv test and excuse the language but this was the quote the bloke the bloke just say don't be a take shunt you know and and that's what i did and it was funny because when i did my artics test i i did exactly that i took an eternity to do the reversing maneuver but i knew i'd passed it because i hadn't gone over the yellow lines and i hadn't clipped anything and it might have been slow and sedate but it was safe but then when we went out on to do the road test i was convinced i'd clipped a curb or something when i'd left the test center so i thought oh my god i failed it so i just sort of um sat back and uh i said to myself i might as well enjoy this drive it might be my last one for a while yeah um and they hadn't told me whether to use cruise control or anything so i'm going down the a1 i slipped my cruise control on and anyway i get back to the test center he said oh i'm pleased to say you've passed and i'm pleased i was really pleased to see you using your cruise control i thought right okay um and that was the minute he said oh you've passed this was my arctic so that was such a a weight off my mind because all i was thinking about that is if i failed it is I was going to have to find the expense to do it again which obviously was academic then and I still maintain it cost me two and a half grand to do the two tests the rigid and arctic but I maintain it's probably the best two and a half grand I've spent because of the opportunities that it's opened up I mean Will said it wasn't a clincher for me him approaching me for trucking and driving me having a lysis head but it's a bloody big help you know so um it's uh it was definitely you know and i say i do enjoy driving lorries i don't want to do it every day particularly mainly because i enjoy writing you know and you know i work from home which is very nice so and very helpful but i do love getting out on the road driving and if somebody said to me do you want to try to take a volvo f12 to the to uh qatar i probably would yeah why not i'd probably rather go in an fh 500 aero than a an f12 if i'm perfectly honest but yes and that's another thing i have driven a volvo f12 which was my dream truck you know martin tomlinson who's a good friend at volvo he set up that for me back in in in my truck and driver days and i was like the cat who got the cream i had finally driven an f12 which was the truck i i really loved as a kid you know and i've driven driven a guy big j4t which was well i mean it it just gave you total respect for the guys who drove the guys who drove guys and atkinsons and erfa series and all these 180 gardeners with not enough power and a horrible gearbox and no power steering and no night heater or no sleeping you know it gave you it gives you such respect i know a lot of these old timers still hanker for those days but i think deep down they would rather drive a daff xg than an atkinson border and anybody who says differently is probably lying yeah with a nice auto box yes you know and that's you know auto boxes i love them people you know they behave like manuals a badge of honor you know i've got manual license i've driven manual lorries i don't mind driving manual lorries but i prefer an automatic you know same with the digital mirrors people don't like them i understand why they don't like them they're not perfect i like them but even you know i i do find there's the odd little glitch with them not glitched but there's an odd you know you can't necessarily see if somebody's flashed you in or something but you you know you know you're safe to flash in because of the lines but you don't want to appear rude or ignorant by not flashing or appear sarcastic or something by doing your indicators when the guy I said, well, I didn't flash you in, but I think, you know, I look at modern lorries now and they're just amazing.

51:37You know, I did a sleeper test on an XG Plus the other week, you know, and I, you know, I don't sleep very well in unfamiliar surroundings, but I slept really well in that, you know. And, you know, I still think cabs could be even better, but I think they need legislation changes before they do. but you know i understand why we've got the xg and the xg plus and we've got the xxl fh and the bigger cabs because the you know just the wider bunk is a is a uh is a godsend for um for driving oh absolutely you know and i i i get still get a real kick out of going to see a new truck for the first time or maybe even just seeing the first one on the road for the first time you know um and uh it's it's just uh i love the progression and it's funny coming back to the railways you know new things on the railways the the people don't like and they love the old kit yeah and everything but this is sounding familiar yeah but on the trucks you know i love an f12 but if it was my day-to-day job i'd have an aero any day of the week over an f12 and you know i i remember driving a Actros version one with the that EPS gearbox yeah and it was I said I got the knack of it just about I didn't like it at all I did say if I was driving it every day you'd get used to it and it might once you got used to it you might suddenly think actually this is you know it's a bit like when you listen to an album for the first time you can't really appreciate it till about the 10th listen so with with uh with any new truck you know it does take you know and that's you know i like to do road tests with trucks in real working conditions you know the road tests i do with press vehicles are you know they're not always loaded to be honest with you and some you know always press trucks always have all the bells and whistles and they're top of the range spec even yes even if it's a fleet spec xd daf xd it will have you know the leather steering wheel and all this sort of stuff it will be all options ticked whereas the trucks you drive in real life won't be but i was thinking about this when i drove this x daf xd on on saturday even then though a basic fleet spec truck now has got so much going for it's got electric windows it's got cruise control it's got dab radio it's got plug sockets it's got you know air conditioning and You know, all these sort of things, which some trucks, you only got if you tick the box on them, you know.

54:11I don't think there's an option for air con now. It's just standard on a truck, you know. Same with cruise control. It's standard. But, you know, the options now are, do you want digital mirrors or not? And I think that will soon slowly change to, well, if you want conventional mirrors, it's a special build. It's going to cost you two grand more. And they'll just say, no, I'll stick with the digital mirrors, thank you. you know i mean i don't think anybody builds a manual now no i think of echo they say they do but i don't know of anybody who's ordered one scania dropped it with the super range so that they were pretty much the last volvo hasn't had manuals for years daft dropped it with the uh their new generation range in fact a few people were snapping up xfs and cfs with the manual gearboxes on 72 and 73 plates because they were the last manuals I could get yeah so but uh but you know I've been doing I say I've been doing um right writing about lorries now for nearly 15 years professionally I've been writing full stop for 30 years which is makes me feel bloody old but for a career I didn't intend to go into I enjoyed it too bad yeah I mean the other thing that I've also done which I'm going to do a bit of a plug here I've also published a book on the Middle East I didn't write it a guy who most listeners will probably know Ivor Whittle he'd written his first book on the Silk Road runs which was published a few years ago by Old Pond and Old Pond and Ninehead which were the two sort of big truck publishers in the UK both stopped Old Pond I believe got sold out to a company who stopped the truck side of it and had just retired and so Iver had written his second volume of memoirs and um needed a publisher so I had a I had a chat through Paul Rowland who you must know because he's over your way and um he said would I publish it and I said yeah and then we he said look the problem is there's no real pictures because he used all his pictures in the first book I said well in that case let's just do paperback novel you know and uh so he sent me through the manuscript and i've written i've read all the middle east books the george bennett books the um ashley coggill books the um paul roland's books and i've loved them and they always make you think oh i wish i'd done that that would have must have been fun and then i read i i read either's first book in fact in fact actually sub-edited it for for old pond and then i was reading the manuscript for the second book and And this was the first one where I thought, God, I'm glad I didn't do that because of the challenges he had, you know.

56:50And there's this bit where he's been out to the Middle East, either Iran or Iraq. I forget which one. And then he's coming back home and they turned him around at you in Turkey, said, I need we need you to go up to Yugoslavia, pick up this trailer, take it down to Saudi. And then he was just I'm not having that. You know, I've been out for four weeks, you know, and they eventually persuaded him with a with a healthy bonus. and deep down you knew he was going to do it because you put the job first. So he doesn't get home, he gets halfway back and then turns around and goes back to the Middle East and he's been out like six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks or something and everything finally gets home and then he has a week off and goes back out.

57:32And they sent me the manuscript and it just finished midway and I said, hang on, what's going on? And then Paul said, oh, hang on, hang on. And he hadn't sent me the full thing. So a few days later he sent me the rest of it and I read it and it was just you know and i could actually picture him there's this bit where he said it had to strip down a tilt um in 45 degree heat you know and the the metal poles on the tilt was so hot you couldn't hold them you had to have gloves on you know and and i can i can actually picture him when he said luckily there's a vending machine which had ice cold cokes he seemed to live on ice cold cokes and everything and it was just such a great story and if anybody wants to buy one they can if you want to head to www.eastfieldmedia.com you can buy a copy there i hope you don't mind me plugging this book i've got a few not at all not at all i could do my shifting of the last ones um but yes so that is a really really good read i mean um i i've had nothing but positive feedback i've had people saying oh i got it i couldn't put it down i read it in in a day you know you know somebody said oh god the missus is pissed off with me because i went we went on holiday and first day one i pulled out this book thinking i'll have a read of a chapter and i just couldn't put it down and and it was it is a very very infectious read it's it's brilliant it's well written and it's just really really sums up what that era was and you know i look at all the facebook groups for the middle east drivers and everything and the great photos that they put on there and you see the trucks that they were driving i mean there were some who went out in day cabs but even the guy who was who went out in mercedes m cab sleepers those really pokey sleepers and the daft 2600 with a really tiny bunk and what have you it's a whole other world wasn't it yeah and and and i always say this though but at the time that daft 26 was probably the best truck on the road you know that and the scania 110 or the 140 if you wanted the v8 or the f88 you get into an f88 now and it looks so poking tiny there's a massive engine hump and the bunk and the mattresses are like you know you probably get way for thin yeah you probably get a better one in on death row you know it's just um they're just so that's how it was you know and briefly sort of into i remember i say when i was at alan munro with with these drivers we had a job and the only thing we had to take this trailer to belgium was an fl10 and this guy said i'm not driving an fl10 on the continent it's tiny and we said you're only going to belgium i mean it's no further than going to cornwall you know and and uh and he wouldn't have it he was an agency drive so we just rang the agency up said don't send this bloke again yeah you know absolutely and you know yes as an employee you need to give your drives a basic you wouldn't ask somebody now to do a night out in a day cab no you know you'd expect a sleeper but you know and most drivers get a good truck to drive but you know if your scannier s cab is off the road and there's a job that needs doing and it's a night out and the only thing you've got is a scannier p cab but it is a sleeper can can you do it for one night any drive so of course i can boss you know we've got to get the job done you know um if the guy's saying i'm selling your s series and you're having a p cab for forever now then I understand some driving that say well I don't think that's big you know that's fair for me tramping so you know and then they might you know and it's not good for you because your driver will deem it to be a lack of respect and move on and truck drivers seem to be back in demand again I see from the amount of job adverts I've seen on Facebook and other things saying we need a driver yeah certainly seems that way so yeah you know so So, you know, this industry, the guys, I think, are all heroes.

1:01:32You know, I got really frustrated. Well, I've been really frustrated for years. We talk about teachers and nurses and everything who do fantastic jobs, and I don't deny that, but so do truck drivers. We got a tiny little bit of recognition in the first week or two of the pandemic. we were at nights of the road we we were key workers and heroes and everything but that soon stopped and oh yes you know and the the i you know i see car drivers who just do not understand how lorry drivers need room on the road how they need to um you know they can't turn around you know uh you know if they've started their their movement they even if you might have right away by the point you see that truck if he's already doing the maneuver he's got to keep going why can't you just let drive us through you know people are too impatient well they are you know and i see it you know i see it on the road you know they they overtake you and then they leave at the last minute cut straight across you and then down the slip road they they thought they could get past you you know oh yeah oh it drives me nuts and i dare say it drives every driver nuts the lack of education i mean i always say you know i think when you pass your car test you should go out in a lorry for a day but i do appreciate that's wholly impractical but you know and you know i've had to explain to my wife and now my daughter why truck drivers have to do certain things you know and most of it is pure physics they have to swing out wide because otherwise the trailer is going to cut straight across a lamppost or something you know they're not doing it for hits and giggles they're doing it because that's the way you got to do it you know yeah exactly and and you know i i do think the horror stories that are at dc's kind of well they certainly outweigh the the the good stories i think but occasionally you do get a horror story at an rdc you know i had what i had one was i don't know if you call it a horror story but i had one where i sat in my cab waiting to be unloaded the light was red and it wasn't until this driver came out said oh they want you inside mate there's you need to do something to your trailer and yeah what they'd done i'd got a fridge on and i've got two different temperatures so i've got the dividers in so they'd unloaded the first bit and then they didn't come they didn't tell me i needed to come and move these dividers they didn't tell me that at the point when i gave my paperwork in or when they started unloading it or when they finished the first bit of unloading they just sat there and it wasn't thank only thanks this driver telling me that i went in and that cost me half an hour just sat around you know sitting around on my backside i mean i've got to admit i'm quite lucky when i go out to work i always take some of my writing work be it proofreading or my laptop or whatever so i can always do something while i'm sat on a bay i had it in fact i had it on saturday you know i'd been asked to get there for eight o 'clock so i get there for eight o 'clock or you're not going to be loaded till 10 o 'clock driver oh for Christ I mean yeah this place was literally two minutes from home you know if they'd have told me you know it's going to be 10 o 'clock I could have had two hours extra at home you know yeah exactly you know and I don't think it's in this day and age of communication if that company has booked a lorry for eight o 'clock and they know it's not going to be 10 till 10 o 'clock can't they ring the company say I'll just let you know uh it's going to be 10 o 'clock now and they can ring me and say oh job's still on but you don't need to be there till 10 now luckily i've actually i had two jobs i had to i had to ring a haulier i needed some quotes for an article i was writing so i rang him and got that out the way and then i'd got some proofreading for a book that i had to do so i got a lot of that done so luckily i didn't waste my time and yeah you you know i've got a bunk in the cab i could have had a kip if i'd have wanted to but it's it's not just a frustration it's just the fact it was avoidable yeah it was totally totally avoidable and we live in this age now you know where everything you know i went to an rdc at um at uh wakefield once they had 34 bays there but only four bays were being used the rest of them were full of their trailers so they had four bays that they'd allocated for for goods inwards two of them were knackered and the other the two had lorries on them and there was eight or nine lorries so i actually went in and said look can you move can you do something you've got we're all sitting here if we have to go one in one out for nine lorries we're going to be here for four or five hours and to be fair to them they they got a the guy out in his dock spotter i call them i don't know what you call them tugs or whatever and he cleared off four trailers and four trucks got straight on and then and it all eased and then another RDC a similar situation where and this was actually really impressive and this was Aldi so I've had my gripes with Aldi but I'll give them credit for this one they let us unload even though we were now unloading in the bakery section and we were bringing chilled goods and it meant they had to drag them through the warehouse a bit longer so it took longer to unload but they got us on bays earlier you know yeah but those those RDCs they need people in there people like me with a transport logistics degree to sit there say right we've got all these loads coming in have we got the bays currently we've got four bays but i can see there's 12 trucks coming in you know well can we clear up at least four or five bays because they're just trailers sitting there you know oh yeah you know yeah yeah or if they're waiting to be loaded get them loaded and if the loads aren't ready get them off the bays and let you know just good planning you know yeah um oh yes and i still it's the world of transport yeah and i and that that actually coming back full circle to where we started kind of reminds me why you do need graduates and and logisticians you know yeah oh absolutely it was funny actually my in when i studied my degree my one of my lecturers i said i'm gonna do my hgv test she said oh don't you dare she said she said that was the worst thing you could do i said well i said i don't believe i can manage lorry drivers i can't do their job she said if you've got an hgv you will just use that as an excuse to get you know not find a solution just oh well that load needs moving i'll have no driver i'll do it whereas if you haven't got an hgv you've got to solve that problem and i thought well i don't actually quite understand your logic there but um you know but i think a transport manager will get a lot more respect if they've got a license and i also finally in hindsight i always also say i don't regret doing my degree one iota and i did enjoy my university years that certainly i lived them to the full shall we say um yep but i would have been a better transport manager if at age 18 i'd gone to a decent sized company which needed transport managers said i'm fresh out my a levels i want to become a transport manager i've got choice going to university or you can take me on and basically give me an apprenticeship and i think i'd have got a better education as an apprentice transport manager working day in day out within the company and getting paid for it at the same time and progressing up to become a transport manager yeah you know because a lot of transport managers fall into it they've done driving and then they want to either move into the office because they don't want to carry on driving because of the family implications and then you know and that's how they become and some of them most of them become very good transport managers some of them not necessarily some of them still want to go out on the road and actually will make excuses to go and do a delivery which probably isn't solving the problem but there you go no so no there we go right Pip well I've taken up more than enough of your time I was going to say we have we have well I've rattled on for an hour and a quarter now I hope that's been interesting to you and your listeners yeah I think so let's do it again sometime if I've got yeah If I've got anything else left to talk about, I might have been all tired.

1:09:28We shall catch up with you at the show, no doubt, in the upcoming months. Well, I'm at Truckfest this Saturday. And then I shall be at Gaydon, no doubt, in June. And certainly at the Retro Truck Show, which is my favourite event of the year. I'll be at Kelsall this year. So, yeah, I'll still be going. Yep, fantastic. Well, lovely to speak to you, Pip. No problem, Matt. Always good to chat. We'll speak soon. Thanks a lot. Bye. Cheers, mate. Bye-bye. Thank you.