Part 40 TRUCK DRIVING IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES 2nd installment
Modern trucks although being huge (the petrol tankers out here can carry up to 60,000 litres and weigh over 55 tonnes) can be driven like a car, power steering, and power brakes. Fully synchromesh or automatic gearboxes, electric wipers with blades 18 inches to two feet long and a 90 degree sweep that cleans 90% of the windscreen, soft driving seats with air or spring suspension with dozens of different positions, cabs independently mounted on the chassis with either rubber pads or airbags and computers that tell you everything about the vehicle, radios and CD players and very good noise insulation and even petite women drive them.
When I try to describe what it was like driving in the smog in London in the fifties the modern day drivers think I’m pulling their leg but the smog was so thick that the bus conductors walked in front of the bus and guided the driver along the kerb, with the tankers being "cab-over " or forward control it was a bit easier to see the centre line and creep along it, the hard part came when you got to a corner or a roundabout and had to find the correct exit, many a time I have driven around the Chiswick roundabout three or four times until I found the right exit for the Great West Road.
In one particularly thick pea sourer it took us nearly 2 hours drive through London from Canning Town to The Chiswick roundabout
Another problem was abandoned cars people just gave up driving, left their cars and walked home, and quite often you drove into the depot and found out that a lot of cars had followed you in, cars tended to follow big trucks because as they drove through the smog they dispersed the smog and left a relatively clear area.
I will digress from driving now and tell you about the great London smog of December 1952, it contaminated a huge area for 48 hours and caused 4,000 official deaths in that period but it is acknowledged that up to 12,000 (including the 4,000) died in the following months from respiratory problems due to that smog.
This was the catalyst that started the legislation of the Clean Air act of 1956 and although there was a few more smogs after that, the one I got caught in was in 1962, there was a bit improvement in the atmosphere
I was a bit of a chauvinistic pig in the old days and I got annoyed when I saw women driving big rigs (is nothing sacred) the only women that drove trucks in the fifties and that wasn't many looked like huge dock workers. Sorry all you women drivers I hope you don't report me to the equal opportunities or anti-discrimination board, but I have mellowed with age and even accept girls playing in my grandson’s cricket team (reluctantly)
It’s a wonder that all of the drivers those days didn’t end up with stomach ulcers (I did) as the standard breakfast was fried egg, fried bacon, fried sausage and fried bread and all of this sat on the plate in a sea of oil, you ate this full breakfast plus about a dozen cups of tea and then sat in the drivers seat for a long period without any exercise.