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Moving Muck Old School Style: Real Life Hell Drivers!

Most of these venerable old trucks had long since seen their days of roadworthiness, but were still more than capable of doing a good job on these types of contracts and shifted some incredible amounts of muck in the process.Checkout these two examples pictured below, with the often painted on fleet numbers and one fitted with timber greedy boards for extra capacity! 

Photo: Courtesy of Truck Planet.

What used to amaze me about the trucks was the general state of them, a scenario that just wouldn’t happen these days with the health and safety regimes we all face now. It was not uncommon for these trucks to be running with no silencer box, doors hanging off and generally having rough bodywork.

A vast majority of these trucks were driven by owner drivers, most of which in those days of mass road building projects, would travel from job to job living on the sites in caravans. Dad and I would often be leaving the site and the truck drivers would be spending their evenings doing running repairs to have them ready for another hard day shifting muck the following day.

Despite the age of the trucks, they were not spared a hard day’s graft, and these adrenaline fuelled drivers certainly didn’t hang about that’s for sure. I often witnessed them racing each other back to the excavation area like latter day Hell Driver’s reminiscent of the late 1950’s film of the same name which starred Stanley Baker.

These were the glory days of earthmoving in the UK, the men were hard, tough and a different breed, the likes of which I doubt we will ever see again in our lifetime. Generally, they knew how to graft and get the job done, often way ahead of schedule, the way things used to be done.

I was inspired to create this post by a series of videos I found posted by Soi Buakhao on You Tube. The grainy footage was taken during construction of the A12 Chelmsford by-pass back in 1986 and is a brilliant lookback at how these trucks were used in those days, enjoy!