So having ditched the massive contract of zero profit I had to get another vehicle to cover my two distribution areas.
I wanted a panel van, cos they're easier to drive and I needed a big one to trunk parcels from Birmingham.
I had a shortish wheelbase Iveco 35-10 on hire, and made the fateful decision to buy its bigger brother, the 45-10 Turbo Daily.
It was a decision my fledgling business would never recover from.
I bought it from a big Ford dealers. It cost £15,000, £5,000 off the new price, and the payments were £400 a month - £300 less than it cost me rent one.
It was a one-year old ex-demonstrator with 25,000 miles on the clock. I knew these vans. They weren't Mercs, but they were pretty good.
And I'd had it three weeks when one of the injectors fractured and spat the end into the engine, destroying it completely.
No problem, you might think. I've had it three weeks. Surely the sale of goods act protected me?
Not according to the salesman. They said I'd mistreated it, and refused to pay for a repair. I had it towed to my nearest ford dealership. And there it sat, for the next six months. I argued with the dealer. I argued with Iveco Ford Trucks. And all the while I was paying for a truck I couldn't use, and paying £700 a months to rent the replacement. I wanted the dealer to pay for the rental, and repair the truck. They refused. Ford agreed with me, after pressure from my local dealer. But the sellers were having none of it. Eventually, after six months, the dealer agreed to pay £2,000 for a replacement engine. But I'd have to pay the truck rental. Ford agreed with them. By now the impact of a £8,000 in extra charges had all but crippled the business.
I caved in.
In the meantime, I'd picked up a bunch of small but profitable contracts I was servicing with my cheap as chips Freight Rover.
But its advancing years were starting to show and its age didn't quite fit the image the network was trying to portray.
So I flogged it. For twice what I'd paid for it. More than once it crossed my mind that I should have gone into the second hand truck business.
Using the cash as a deposit I bought a newish Citroen C25 van. The comparison between the Iveco and the Citroen could not have been more marked. It was an incredible vehicle, which was driven well and truly into the ground over the next two years. It was small outside and huge inside,
I and my team of fairly useless drivers put 170,000 miles on it round Cardiff, Swansea and later West Wales, it never broke down, and by the time I'd finished with it in 1992 there wasn’t a panel on the van that hadn’t been damaged. I was driven over into and through things. It had been rolled twice, at speed, but it still ran, despite enduring 40,000 mile servicing intervals (though it was driven so hard we got through brake pads every 8,000 miles) and did 50mpg. Never missed a beat.
I ran the company from the cab of that little Citroen, with a mobile phone the size of a cornflake packet that I had to drive to the tops of hills to use.
As the Haulage industry got more than a little wobbly, other pressing issues were coming to a head.
It has to be said Sainsbury’s were getting more than a little miffed that I was popping down to their supermarket in a 7.5 tonne lorry for the weekly shop.
And as well as the truck taking up four parking spaces, the missus was six months pregnant and was having trouble getting in and out, and there are no baby seat mountings in a lorry cab.
So a motorcar was most definitely needed – and looking at the state of the bank account, it would be a cheap one at that.
I settled on a fairly ancient Mitsubishi Colt Lancer, which I had seen in a garage in Haverfordwest.
The Lancer must be one of the great "World Cars" as it's also been the Dodge/Plymouth Colt, Chrysler Valiant Lancer, Chrysler Lancer, Eagle Summit, Hindustan Lancer, Soueast Lioncel, Mitsubishi Carisma, Mitsubishi Mirage and Lancer Fortis and the Proton Saga.
Cor, eh?
It was cheap at £300 and the dealer promised that he would provide a 12-month MoT and tax it for six months too.
When he said “provide” he didn’t mean he was actually intending to put it through an MoT test, he meant he would just write one out, as I soon discovered.
The penny was starting to drop on the drive home as after a few miles on bumpy west Wales roads the car bounced around like a hyperactive gerbil. The rear shock absorbers were shot to hell.
Then I went shopping in it and popped the bags of tins into the boot, where, with a crunching sound, one of the bags went through the floor.
"Oh Christ, you've bought a Proton"
This was not a motor car, it was a collection of rust, held together with paint.
That being said, the interior was spotless, the engine was sound, and I was quite partial to the little Japanese car’s collection of gadgets and flashing lights.
Besides, Haverfordwest was a good 100 miles away and I could not be bothered to drive it back and argue the toss with the garage.
I fixed the boot issue with a sheet of quarter inch plywood and managed to fix a new shock absorber to one side at the back, but didn’t dare touch the other side in case the rusty mounting crumbled into dust.
The Lancer did its job efficiently and I kept it till the “MoT” ran out when an old bloke needing a set of doors for his own rust bucket offered me £50 for it.
The £50 went on that well-known jewel of a motorcar, an Austin Allegro 1300. Much has been written about the Allegro, little of it complimentary, and all pretty much true.
" tell you what, guv, how about we put all the ones we know will start at the front"
Mine was “bracken” in colour. This is a shade of brown similar to the contents of a baby’s nappy.
It had an MoT and tax, and was £50 because it had blown a head gasket. The oil was the colour of cold coffee because it had been contaminated by water.
I drained the oil, whipped off the cylinder head, slapped in a new head gasket – after cleaning the rust from the inside of the engine – and it was ready to go.
Unfortunately the previous owner had been running it for some time with a blown head gasket, and just kept topping up the radiator.
The water, mixed with the oil, did not make the best lubricant in the world, and the oil pressure warning light would stay on until I reached 20 mph.
It smoked like Bob Marley. I even got pulled by the local constabulary, because of the high level of pollution the Allegro produced.
In the end I just gave up on this dreadful little motor car. It never actually died, or broke down, but it was so horrible to drive that going by bus was a more attractive proposition.
It sat outside my house for a while and I eventually called up a scrapyard who were offering £20 for any old car.
The wrecker truck turned up and the driver loaded it onto the back. When I asked for my £20 the driver just laughed and said “For an Allegro, Butt? you gotta be joking.” I had to admit, he had a point and I was glad to see the back of it.
The Allegro was replaced with something even cheaper, but nowhere near as nasty – a Fiat Panda. The Panda cost £25.
Originally the neighbour selling it wanted £50, but when we opened the passenger door it fell off the hinges, so she settled for £25.
A spare door from the scrapyard costing a tenner was procured. The Panda was almost as rusty as the Colt, and you didn’t dare poke the bodywork in case your finger went through.
Mind you, it was a lively little runner, and enormous fun to drive.
twenty five quid? you were robbed mate...
Apart from the rotting body, the only other fault was a disconcerting tendency for the petrol to freeze on cold mornings.
When this happened I would pop the bonnet, whip off the air filter, unscrew the fuel feed, extract the internal in-line filter, wipe off the ice that had formed round it, blow it through and slap it back in, reconnect the fuel-line and filter and I was good to go. Four minutes was the record. I think the local filling station was taking water into its fuel tanks.
Then the MoT ran out on this too and once again wheels were needed.
But it was the start of a particular affection for Fiats and complemented my adoration of things Italian.
I know I shouldn't but I’d really like an electric motorcycle.
I’ve got a 45 mile round trip to work every day – its all on country lanes so I can’t get up too much speed, and it currently costs me about a fiver every day to get in and out in car or on bike.
I want something with a bit of class, like a Brammo Empulse.
I think it looks the business, and certainly seems to go pretty well.
So why is it I can get £5,000 of taxpayers money off an electric car which would struggle to get me in and out, but I can’t get anything off a Brammo which would take me twice as far?
It does seem a bit daft that electric bike design seems to be strongest in the US, where distances are greater, but ridiculed over here, where journeys of less than 100 miles are the norm.
I wouldn’t be using the Brammo exclusively of course – I’ve got my 750ss for real motorcycling over a distance, but the idea of whirring silently to work for a few pennies a mile certainly appeals. Especially as I could plug it in and charge it at work at my bosses expense.
Any chance of a long term test bike, chaps?
I love the name as well. Sounds like an offshoot of the Acme Corporation.
So, back to the tales of the road.
It's the late 80s economic miracle.
If you haven't bought a house, if you haven't started your own business, well, you are nothing. This is the time for chancers.
twat
I was working by this point out of the parcel company's South Wales depot, and looking to buy a house in the valleys. Been promoted to depot manager, (Which essentially just meant longer hours for an extra thirty quid a week,) Me and the missus signed up to a mortgage on a Valleys terrace, which was great, cos we'd never have afforded a house in Bristol. And two days after we move in my bosses tell me they're selling up in Wales. Gulp.
Wales was full of opportunity once the mines closed
But all's not lost, because to be fair to them, they are honourable men.
They offer me the business, for a pittance. Contracts, franchise, the whole shebang for a couple of thousand.
Of course I'll need start up capital, vehicles, etc, but they give me the cushiest patch, with (apparently) the best contracts.
But where can I find start up capital?
Well, watch while we play "find the lady"... And you should not try to use this method of raising finance. Its very naughty indeed .
First to my bank to borrow £2,000 to "buy a car".
Then a chat with my soon to be ex-boss, where we create a splendid work of fiction dressed up as a business plan.
Then off to the Welsh Development Agency who at that point are handing out money like confetti to anyone who'll start a business in the Valleys, depressed as they are because someone closed all the coal mines.
I've got my £2,000, so they give me a development grant of £2,000 and a promise of a development loan once I'm ready.
So its off to a different bank.
I've got £4,000 start up capital, so they give me a £4,000 business overdraft free for 12 months.
Now back to the WDA, who, as I have now got £8,000, give me a low interest loan of £6,000 re-payable over 10 years.
So I've now got £14,000, all unsecured, and I had no assets anyway, apart from a Moto-Morini 350 and a half chopped BSA A65.
Most of this cash gets swallowed up in start up costs, and there's no money for vehicles, so its off to a new local hire company, who rent me a virtually brand new Mercedes 814 curtainsider lorry. This is gorgeous - and stupidly cheap. The rental is less than it would cost to buy one. What I don't know is that the rental company is trying to crush all local opposition, by offering vans and trucks at stupid prices.
"Give me 40 acres, and I'll turn this truck around..."
Lovely truck, the 814, easy to drive, comfy, fast and built on a ten-tonners chassis, so that if you did have to put that little extra on it, it didn't show.
I did drive it through the Forest of Dean on back roads with quite a lot of weight on board a few times after being warned the Department of Transport were waiting at the weighbridge at Ross on Wye.
My apparently profitable contracts promise an turnover of £12,000 a month, and there's plenty of other money to be made. Can't fail, right?
So I become the newest part of a fifty company parcel delivery network.
And the first of the fifty goes bust seven days later.
Still, no matter. I put in 18 hour days on the road, breaking every rule in the book, and the missus does the paperwork and drives as well.
The end of the first month comes. Off go the invoices. I wait a month, and there are no big payments.
I contact my big customers. "Oh," they say "we only pay on 90 days. We can pay earlier, but we'll want a 15 per cent discount."
Ah. I hadn't been told this. So I'm going to have to wait four months for the first payment, and buy fuel, and rent the truck in the meantime. Good job I didn't spend all that £14,000, eh? Just most of it.
Then the neighbouring member of the network goes bust.
This isn't so bad, actually. With a hole in the network I get offered his area. I can't afford it, but the other 48 companies cant afford a hole. Telephone calls are made, faxes despatched. A few invoices are paid on time for the first and last time. A grand is raised. I go down the truck auctions and buy a Freight Rover former bread van for £800.
I think they made Freight Rovers out of bits of old Battleships. They had the turning circle of HMS Hood and could be more easily driven through things than round them. Robust is one word for them. Sluggish is another.
chunky...
Parcels are hauled round Swansea in this van by a neighbour who needs a job on a "self-employed" basis.
We're getting by.
The first big cheques come in. We're rolling. A couple more network members go bust. A couple join. My accounts say I'm making more money delivering than collecting. But it's quite difficult getting anyone to actually pay me on time.
Then one day I sit down with a sheet of paper and do a little maths. My biggest contract takes £8,000 a month. But, I'm paying the rest of the network £7,200 to deliver it all. And then there's renting the Merc. And fuelling it. ah. The contract is costing me £1,000 a month to service.
This is foolish. I ask them for more money. They refuse. I ditch the contract. My bank manager is appalled, and can't quite understand why I'd give up an £100,000 a year contract...
I keep going, with the Sherpa and a rented Iveco 45-10 to service the profitable contracts.
The overdraft grows.
More people go bust, owing me money.
Things start to bite, recession-wise.
Thatcherism withers on the vine.
There's a baby on the way.
Winter approaches.
Rummaging around in the bottom of boxes, looking for old photographs for this thing I found three old copies of Motor Cycle Scooter and Three Wheel Mechanics which I found originally in the attic of a house in the South Wales valleys about 15 years ago.
I love these old mags for the articles about how to tune your Lambretta or exploded diagrams of the Norton ES2 engine, and for the adverts, which rarely get a look in online.
Anyway for the bikers coming on here, here are a small selection of what I'm babbling about.
I'll post some more another time. Let me know if you want to read any of the articles on the cover...
click on the pics to enlarge the image
I'll take a pair of those swept back pipes and a sports dolphin please
Well that's done amazing things for that Royal Enfield 250
one for the Ducatisti
Not sure I'd survive riding that for 24 hours...
mmm I'll take a jacket in yellow and some blue leather trousers
Hell's Angels patch anyone? remember your punctuation, though
This wouldn't look out of place today. but Square exhaust pipes?
