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Page context: Home > Transport International Magazine > Issue 26 January 2007 > Working life
I entered the macho world of international trucking on international women’s day 1994. For 10 years I drove a 40-tonne truck throughout Europe. I loved the joy of being away for three or six weeks at a time, not knowing where I would be that night or even knowing what country I would be in at the end of the day. Now at the age of 66, semi-retired and doing part-time night trucking, I still think of myself as an international truck driver.
Modern trucks have air suspended seats with electric motors so you can adjust them, as well as adjustable steering wheels, so they are more comfortable than even the most expensive car. They usually have cruise control and there is now a tendency for automatic gear change, (most trucks have 16 or so gears), air conditioning and CD changers. As a lover of Wagner, I used to play the complete 16 hours of The Nibelung Ring between Calais or Cherbourg and somewhere in Spain.
Heaven to me was pulling 40 tonnes over the Pyrenees with the sound of 450 horsepower underneath you. I used to drive in bare feet, which was sort of sensuous. I feel immensely sad that at my age I will never do this again. I could fly to the Costas in Spain for £25 or so, but it would just not be the same as doing it in a truck.
I first obtained an HGV licence in 1973 but for family reasons moved to south London in 1983. I obtained a job as a council housing officer and was elected as a local councillor.
I had it made in a way, with a job with a pension, but something inside me wanted to do international trucking. I started as an owner-driver, then went bankrupt. But a man I pulled for bought me a Scania truck and paid me to do Spain.
Tough work
I had to survive in a world where very few drivers were members of the union. I believe I went bankrupt because I just couldn’t do without sleep, like most of the blokes on international haulage do. Lots of them put an interrupter switch on the tachograph so they could show they were having a break when they were driving. They pulled the fuse out of the speed limiter and ran on “cherry” – red un-taxed diesel that costs a third of the price of taxed diesel. Most trucks do about three kilometres to the litre, and a legal days work is 800 kilometres though most people do more.
Going from the North of England to say, Taranto in southern Italy, it is typical to tip, load, and drive back, having slept only during loading and unloading. I’m not saying all firms are like this, but as a one truck owner driver, if you are not prepared to get the load there when the agent says, then you won’t get work. You will sit in some place in Spain or wherever, thinking about how you are going to pay off the cost of your truck (around US$140,000 new) and your trailer (around US$34,000 for a basic semi-trailer).
I’ve been a member of the Transport and General Workers’ Union since 1968, but I first became active after sitting in Spitalfields Market in London one day with 23 tonnes of onions from Zaragoza, talking with two Willi Betz drivers from Bulgaria. They were doing the same work as me, but double crewed, for less than £100 a week, the two of them living in a cab the size of a prison cell for three months at a time and working 20 hours plus a day. I talked to another international driver about it and we produced a leaflet saying “Blame Will Betz, not the Drivers”.
My union involvement is very important to me. I am a delegate to our lorry drivers regional trade group, and a member of the regional women’s committee, as well as of the regional lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender working party. “I was delegate to the last two Labour Party conferences and my union’s last bi-annual delegate conference.”
Campaigning
I am involved with international trade union truck drivers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Republic of Ireland in what we call the “Baltic Project”. We are fighting for equality of wages and working conditions throughout the European Union for truck drivers. We obtained European Union funding for a series of conferences in 2005, and we hope to extend this work. I was also TGWU delegate to the ITF conference for women transport workers in London in September 2005.
I believe we must deal with low wage labour undercutting our pay and conditions in such a way that we also fight against any sort of racism or national chauvinism – that is we need the traditional principle of proletarian internationalism, not nationalism.
Another important issue in the UK is that in spite of various laws such as EU3820 (the tacho) and the “48 hour working week”, the British Parliament has framed them in such a way as to allow “Periods of Availability” not to count towards working. This means we are still working 16 or more hours a day. Some firms just fiddle and I know firms who pay drivers to work two or even three days and nights without sleep, driving a 40 tonne truck. We must stop this.
My hopes for the future? They’ve been the same since I took part in the night time picket line outside Dow Chemicals in King’s Lynn, Norfolk in the 1979 lorry drivers’ strike. It was one of the coldest winters I remember. When you tried to get close to our brazier you burned yourself, if you moved an inch away you shivered from cold.
There was an older driver just coming up to retirement on the picket line. One of the younger drivers said to him, “Go home Pop, go to bed or put your feet up in front of the fire. You’re going to retire next month and you’ll get your pension anyway, this isn’t your fight.”
“Pop” puffed on his pipe and said, “I’ve waited all my life for lorry drivers to stick together. Now it has happened I’m not going to lie in bed at home.” That’s my dream for the future, truck drivers showing solidarity with one another, not being macho and competitive and carving the job up so they can prove how long they can go without sleep and so forth.
Section home:
Issue 26 January 2007
Other pages for Issue 26 January 2007:
Comment: gender barriers | Representing the unrecongnised | Breaking point | Winning for all | Future secured for German railways | Taking the strain | Big push for rights | Border dialogues | Waiting and hoping | Tricks of my trade | Reflections on women in trade unions
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