Memory of the month the way things were. (Part Eleven)

Continuing with our monthly instalment of memories from retired plant man William Peters, told in his own words and supported with photos from “Bills” historical archives.

The Plympton Bypass.

In 1969 Whites were awarded the contract to do the earthworks on the A38 Plympton bypass, this work was urgently needed due to the appalling nature of the existing main trunk road.  If you want to know how bad our main roads really were take a trip on the old A38 were it still exists through the centre of the following towns and be amazed, Plympton, Leemill, Ivybridge, South Brent Buckfastleigh, Ashburton, Chudley Knighton and Chudley, then at the top of Haldon Hill just past the filling station turn left and go down the very steep hill to come out at the bottom back onto the A38 this is a real eye opener and shows how we used to have to travel about and how difficult it was to overtake any lorries or slow moving vehicles on single carriageway roads. From memory we started preparatory work in March and I forget what machine I was on at the time but may have been a Komatsu D65s track shovel, a direct drive machine.  At this time Whites needed to hire in some dump trucks so got some Eucilds from Mid Cornwall Contractors aka (Mr Crotties Craftsmen) we always had lots of banter with them as to who were the best earth movers and some IH 100B 35 tonners from Cripps of Nottingham arrived. A large wheel loader was needed to take advantage all this extra capacity and to really shift some muck. We heard on the grapevine that one was on its way, well we were agog to see what was going to turn up and when the day arrived, a low loader turned up with a large bucket that took up pretty well the whole trailer bed and we wondered how big the machine must be to handle it. After a couple of hours it arrived having been driven down from Savills in Exeter after being driven over from France and before that from a show in Paris as it was too big to go on the low loaders of the day, it was a big one, a IH Hough H400 the largest loader available to buy in those days with a 10 yard bucket and one of only two in the UK 

The next thing we wondered was who would be lucky enough to operate it and consensus was a certain chap who always seemed to get the new paint, well it took all that day and part of the following day to fit the bucket and prepare the machine, then Horace White came over to me and said well boy there it is get on and have a go it’s yours, well no one was more surprised than me and I’m sure a nose or two was put out of joint.

Well this machine was a hell of a tool and I believe years ahead of its time as it would load a 35 tonner in 35 seconds and later on a 50 tonner in 80 seconds and that was digging out its own material. Things really started moving with this machine on the job, I reckon even today a same size machine would not better those times. This shovel could load 1200 tons an hour and even though we had several dumpers it was not enough, so a bunch of six wheeled clay lorries were hired in from ECC, this was a shock to the drivers system as they were loaded before they could go from reverse gear in to forward gear when they returned they all parked in a line and said I was over loading them and would have to go back to their yard, so I said how much can you carry as a bucket full looked very little in the large clay carrying bodies, particularly as it was small blue shillet I was loading, answer 12 tons so I said I would only put on three quarters of a bucket full and this placated them and off we went again.

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It was apparent that more and larger dumpers were required so Whites bought some International 180 Payhaulers, four wheel drive and double wheels front and back. These proved to be really excellent machines able to travel fully loaded over quite soft ground, just the tools for road works when the haul road can be a bit poor, also weighing in at 31 tons they didn’t burn loads of fuel when running empty unlike a twin engine motor scraper of the same capacity and limited usefulness. The giant shovel even made the local newspaper as this cutting from back in the day shows.

The Co-Operator