Dave Payne parked his tractor-trailer for the night at a gas station near Orenburg, just west of the Ural mountains and north of the border between Kazakhstan and Russia. About 4am a man knocked on the door.
"Rubles!" The man rubbed thumb and forefinger together as he spoke. "Rubles!"
When Dave waved him off the man mimed pushing a knife into the front tire.
"Psst", he said.
Dave thought the man must be drunk, and he got out of the truck to chase him away.
"There was only one of them", he says, "so I thought I'd get out and sort him out, like".
That was a mistake because the man was not drunk, and he had a friend hiding nearby. The two robbers beat Dave up and searched his cab. They didn't find his money but they took all his baggage.
Then they walked back over the fields to their village. Dave saw where they went, and drove to a police post.
The cops woke a local high school English teacher to interpret Dave's story, then went to the village. Dave figures he reported the robbery about 6 AM, and he identified the robbers in a police lineup before noon. By late afternoon he had most of his stuff back -- all but his watch and the money that had been in his pants -- and he was on his way.
He lost most of a day to the robbery but he had good luck on the borders and he made it from England to Tashkent in ten days. I met him when he pulled in to park beside us, in the outer court of the head office of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan.
Mickey Gill took 15 days to do the trip and, counting two days in Minsk while Mike Morrell visited his girl-friend, we took 17 days to cover about 8,000 km.
Dave, Mickey and Mike are all truck drivers for Ralph Davies International of Cheltenham, England. Along with other international truckers from Holland, Turkey and Iran they run the route that used to be called the "Silk Road."
I'm a journalist and I came along for the ride, partly because I like trucks and partly because I'm fascinated by the Silk Road.
I got involved with trucks by accident. As a general-purpose free-lance writer working for trade magazines I liked to get three or four stories out of each trip. I was always looking for something extra, and most times that something extra was trucks.
When I wrote a construction story there were trucks on the job, so I wrote about the trucks. When I wrote a mining story there were trucks at the mine, so I wrote about the trucks. Same for logging, farming and so-forth.
And gradually I began to realize that trucks are a part of everything we do, or have, or make. We all know that trucks deliver the goods we use, but we may not realize that trucks are also a vital part of the production process.
They are, because nearly everything we use contains materials and components from many sources. The trucking industry is so big that governments, and even truckers themselves, have no idea how big it is.
That's partly because of the way it's organized. Government figures can tell you something about the for-hire trucking industry and we all know it's enormous. In the U.S.A. for-hire trucking makes up four or five per-cent of the gross domestic product.
But that's just part of the story because government figures don't include the trucking that truckers and government both call "private". When the Consolidated Widget company buys their own truck to take fragsnozzles from the foundry to the widget assembly plant they don't need a business license or a separate company to do it. Because the truck hauls only Consolidated Widget's own property it's just part of Consolidated Widget, and it doesn't show as a trucking operation in government figures.
And if it's a big company even Consolidated Widget may not know how many trucks it has. The management of Coca Cola knows that they run either the third or fourth biggest trucking operation in the world, but they don't know exactly where they stand because they don't know how many trucks they operate. Every bottling plant has at least one fleet of trucks to deliver the product and, even within bottling plants, maintenance departments may have their own trucks that don't show as part of the plant fleet. The total must be tens of thousands of trucks, but you will never see Coca Cola listed as part of the trucking industry.
At the other end of the scale most of the farms in North American have their own trucks, and they haul at least some of their own raw materials for the farm, and produce to market. This is a vital part of the economy but it's not "trucking" as the government measures it. By most estimates at least half of all the trucking in North America is "private" and does not show in government records of the trucking industry.
Trains, ships and planes are transportation too, but trucks are the core of the modern system. Ships and trains take bulk freight and planes take high-value freight but trucks take everything. Even the freight that goes by train, ship or plane goes part of the way by truck. Modern trucks are a key factor in technology, and the men who drive them are part of a tradition that goes back to the dawn of time.
By the late stone age flint tools from what is now England were used in Belgium and Holland. Amber from the Baltic sea is found in caves in Crete. Beads, bracelets and pendants made of the shells of mussels from the Black and Aegean seas were traded as far north as Poland. Stone age men had no trucks, of course, but the men who carried the goods -- on rafts or skin canoes or perhaps in leather bags on their backs -- made the technology of the day possible and they spread the ideas of their civilization.
In the Americas Anasazi Indians from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico traded with the Toltec who lived south of Mexico City and the people of Cahokia, near St. Louis, traded throughout the Great Plains from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.
But the greatest trade route of all was the Silk Road. Actually a network of caravan routes connecting the ancient civilizations of Europe, India, Africa and China, it was the first major intercontinental trade route and, for more than a thousand years, it was the backbone of world trade.
Ancient civilizations on three continents traded goods and ideas over the Silk Road, and the route spawned its own civilization that may have been more advanced than any of the others. Tashkent, Samarkand and other cities of Central Asia were considered near-magical in their day, and the names still evoke an air of adventure and mystery.
Flying carpets. Magic potions. Genies that come out of bottles. There is no evidence that any of them existed, but there were so many real wonders in Central Asia that Europeans would believe just about anything they heard.
Along with silk and spices the traders of the east brought roses, azaleas, chrysanthemums, peonies, camelias, oranges, pears, the crossbow, gunpowder, printing and paper to Europe. In return they carried grapes, grape wine, alfalfa, figs, pomegranates, cucumbers, sesame, chives, coriander, safflowers, horses and Bactrian camels to China.
Chinese Jews and Nestorian Christians got their religions over the Silk Road and both Buddhism and tea came to China from India over a branch of the Silk Road.
They say that nothing changes and the Silk Road is a perfect example of that. Probably the greatest caravan route in the world, it was also the prototype of the modern trucking industry.
We think camel caravans slogging through the sands of Central Asia are exotic, but in fact most truckers around the world would have been right at home with them. I began to understand that one summer about eight years ago, at a truck show somewhere in Southern Ontario.
A few days before the show I had read a historic account of the great Central Asian caravan fairs and, as I wandered around the show, things seemed somehow familiar. After a while I realized what it was.
This was a Canadian truck show but, with a few small changes, it was also the kind of caravan fair they have been holding for more than 2,000 years in Central Asia.
The differences between a truck show and a caravan fair are obvious but the similarities are more important. In the old days camel-pullers used to travel hundreds of miles to the big fairs. Old friends who might not see each other all year would meet to buy, sell and compare camels and just to talk. Alliances were made, scores were settled and travelling merchants set up their booths to sell goods not normally available on local markets.
Today many truck shows across North America and in England too are social events where truckers camp with their families and visit with other truckers they may otherwise meet only by CB radio. Kids come along because they love truck shows and wives -- including some who hate trucks -- come to be with their husbands.
Most truck shows include country music and dances, and most have booths where local truck and equipment dealers and travelling merchants offer their goods. Some of the merchants offer vicious-looking knives, hand-cuffs and leather clothing, but they're not just for truckers. The merchants sell to everyone who comes to the show and, in some areas the locals can buy these goods only at the truck show. It was probably the same at the caravan fairs.
In the old days camel breeders showed their stock at fairs. Now truck dealers show theirs.
Some caravan traders raced camels and horses at their fairs, and some truckers compete in pulling competitions. There are several types of pulling competitions but my personal favorite is the "Rodeo du Camion" in the village of Notre Dame Du Nord in northern Quebec which features drag races, between loaded lumber trucks that weigh up to 70 tons, up a steep hill.
In the old days the caravan traders rigged out their favorite camels with decorative harness. Now truckers buy custom paint and accessories for their trucks and some take days off work to polish their truck for a "show and shine" competition.
Some of them do it because they're proud of their trucks. Others consider it a social event and they bring family and friends to a truck show where they camp for days at a time. Some groups clean their trucks as a community activity.
Ten or twenty trucks from the same company will come to some shows, and truckers may set up a pavilion to entertain their friends and impress their customers.
The village of Notre Dame du Nord has only about 1,500 inhabitants but the Rodeo du Camion attracts about 10,000. Truckers who live thousands of miles away plan their runs so they can pass near Notre Dame du Nord, and they detour from their route to spend a weekend at the show as they pass by.
The Rodeo also features big-name bands and two nights of country dancing, and a lottery draw that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for local projects. Top prize in the draw is a brand-new truck and trailer, worth more than $125,000.
But the comparison between the old caravan traders and modern truckers goes beyond the fairs. Like modern truckers the old caravan traders worked in several different ways.
Some traders owned their own camels, and ran caravans that we would compare to today's private trucking. Some caravan operators just owned and worked camels, and like today's for-hire truckers they carried goods for whoever paid. And, like today's owner-operators, some individual camel-pullers owned one or two camels which they hired out -- with themselves to work them -- to private or for-hire caravans.
The parallel between trucking and the Silk Road continues to truck stops, which are modern versions of a central Asian caravanserai.
A big caravan might have several hundred camels and as many men and, even though they lived on the caravan trade, the towns and cities of the Silk Road didn't want caravans in town any more than the caravan masters wanted to cope with crowded town streets. Over the years most towns on caravan routes developed special-purpose complexes, called caravanserais, just outside the city limits.
The typical caravanserai was a walled compound built around a well with a hostel, stables, a tavern and other amenities. It might have a detachment of troops stationed there, and perhaps tax collectors and other officials. The local ruler probably had a couple of spies and informants working there too, because the travelers who stopped at the caravanserai were his best possible source of foreign news.
Most caravanserais were also centers for dozens of local trades and businesses. A tavern, obviously, and whores to comfort a weary traveler. Scribes, to read and write letters, camel traders, tinkers, smiths and leather and cloth workers to repair caravan equipment; traders, moneylenders and probably a few thieves, cutpurses, con men, muggers and professional murderers. Even if the camel-pullers didn't need the service it would probably be available, because a big caravanserai would also be a center of local business.
A modern truck stop serves the same functions for the same market for the same reasons. No small town wants a hundred or a thousand big trucks a day in the downtown area and no trucker wants to drive in a town if he can help it, but a big truck stop can be a source of wealth to the town and a real comfort to the trucker.
The town of Effingham Illinois is a good example of that. It's near the center of the U.S., at the intersection of US Interstate Highway I-70, which runs coast-to-coast across the middle of the country, and I-57, which joins Memphis and Chicago.
With about 12,000 people it's a county seat, home base to a National Guard Unit, regional center for U.S. Social Security Administration, market center for a regional population of nearly 200,000 people and home to more than 60 manufacturing industries.
But the key to the town is the location, at the intersection of two main highways which carry about 25,000 vehicles a day.
Some of those vehicles are on local trips but a lot are on long runs and Effingham catches the traffic with a concentration of four big truck stops, more than a dozen hotels and more than 100 restaurants.
Trucks may take a hundred gallons or more when they fuel up but cars take much less, so let's suppose that a million vehicles a year buy an average of 20 gallons of fuel each at Effingham. That's 20 million gallons of fuel, at a conservative estimate. If -- say -- an average of two people in every car that fuels up buy a meal, that's a million meals a year and if one car in 100 rents one hotel room that's 10,000 hotel rooms a year, just from the pass-through trade.
The truck stops operate 24 hours a day, and they hire at least 200 people each. If the hotels and restaurants hire an average of 15 people each, that's a total of nearly 1,200 jobs based on the highway trade. Other jobs in town, such as the social security administration, don't depend on the highways but they are in Effingham because the highways cross there.
I suspect some people in Effingham would resent the suggestion that their town is little more than a truck stop, but it's no insult. Most of the fabled cities of the ancient world -- Petra, Babylon, Bactra, Bukhara, Kashgar and Lop Nor, Samarkand, Damascus, Tashkent, Baghdad and others long-lost in the sands of central Asia, began as caravan stops.
I've never seen concentrations of truck stops like Effingham in Europe but some individual truck stops are as big as any in the US. You don't see many truck stops in Europe but that may be because distances in Europe are generally shorter, and a truck that carries fuel for more than 1,000 miles does not have to fuel up on the road.
That makes truckers a nuisance to most highway stops in Europe -- because they take more parking space than cars, but most truckers stop only for meals. A small car with three or four passengers which stops for gas and a meal would spend much more than a truck with one or perhaps two drivers.
Real truck stops are in business to serve trucks that may take 200 gallons or more fuel at a filling. Because many trucks have tanks on both sides some fuel islands may have double pumps -- with a "slave" to fill the right-hand tank while the "master" fills the left and records the fuel delivered to both sides.
Some truck stops may also have "cardlock" pumps, which can be turned on by the right credit card, and which record sales automatically on a computer. Some "cardlock" fuel stations are completely automatic, with no attendants at all.
But most fuel stations have attendants to pump the fuel or at least to take the money. Because the cost of a single filling can run several hundred dollars, most truck stops also have a variety of credit facilities.
Bank machines are routine, and where there is no machine the truck stop itself may offer special services. When I needed cash in one small town in northern Ontario the cashier at a truck stop said "We're the only bank around here -- how much do you need?"
There was no regular bank in town but, even though I was driving a car, he sold me $100 worth of mythical diesel fuel on my MasterCard. He should have taken a cut on the deal because he had to pay a percentage to MasterCard, but I got the full $100 as an interest-free cash advance.
Most truck stops also have 24-hour restaurants, sometimes with a special section "for truckers only." They may also have a "truckers store" where they sell everything from truck parts to T shirts, and most will also have a laundromat and showers.
A few years ago most big truck stops also had bunkhouses but now most truckers have their own sleepers or, if they don't, go to regular hotels. Truck stops may also offer truck and tire repairs, tow trucks, truck washes and other services, but the trend now seems to be for these services to run as independent businesses, near the truck stop but not part of it.
Most truck stops also have bulletin boards, where truckers can post notices about trucks and other equipment they want to buy or sell and where drivers can advertise that they're looking for work and employers can advertise for drivers.
Some stops also have CB and stereo shops, brokerage offices where load brokers make deals with shippers and truckers to have goods hauled, insurance offices, barbers and other services. One truck stop near Walcott Iowa has an in-house chiropractic clinic.
A big truck stop may even have a few spies, but they would work for big trucking companies rather than for the government. It's a small investment for a big trucking company to keep one man at an important truck stop to track the competition. When a stranger shows up with a loaded truck the company agent might chance to sit beside him at the coffee counter and, in casual conversation, find out what he is carrying and where he loaded. Trucking itself is not a cloak-and-dagger business but the biggest of the big American truckers counts their revenues in billions and big companies use every means they can to spot new trends in business.
And like it or not a big truck stop also attracts con men, whores, thieves, drug dealers and other criminals. That's no surprise when you consider that a truck driver may carry $1,000 or more in cash, his truck is worth more than $100,000 and his load may be worth millions.
I know one Canadian company that would be upset if I named it here, because its average load is worth more than $5 million.
If 1,000 trucks a day pass through a truck stop that's close to $100 million worth of vehicles, probably carrying several hundred million dollars worth of cargo and driven by 1,000 men who carry more money on them than the average. If a thief can't steal something from the truckers on the lot he may be able to sell a "hot" stereo, CB or whatever at a truck stop.
A big truck stop is also a good place to make connections because on any given day trucks from every state in the U.S. and every province in Canada will pass through. If drug dealers don't make some of their connections at truckstops, they're missing an obvious bet. Because the police are also part of the drug business, it's a safe bet that some undercover policemen spend some of their time at truck stops.
And whores. Most truck stops insist they don't have any, but most truck stops have them at one time or another. I once watched a pair of girls operate for a week on the lot of a truck stop near Edmonton, Alberta. They were well known because they had a station wagon with smoked windows and a mattress in the back, and every trucker who passed through learned that they had one price for the station wagon and another for the trucker's own sleeper.
Most truck stops try to discourage prostitutes and some hire private guards to hustle them off, but prostitution has been around for a long time and nobody has yet found a way to stop it.
And as long as it does exist, what better place than a truck-stop? Where else can you find one location where 1,000 or more unaccompanied men, all with money and most of them either single or away from home for several days, will pass through every day and where hundreds will spend the night? When trade moved by ship girls worked the ports, on the Silk Road they worked the caravanserais and in the modern world some, at least, work the truck stops.
Throughout most of history the Silk Road was just a route, with no cohesive plan or administration, but the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan organized it. As ruler of most of North and Central Asia he controlled most of the Silk Road, and his troops patrolled it.
He established a series of 1,000 caravanserais along the route, and a pony express messenger service which could take a message from China to Europe in a few weeks. In his day travel on the Silk Road was probably safer than travel on most main roads in Europe.
But the Mongol empire broke up after Kublai died in 1294 and the system on the Silk Road broke down. Local warlords took control of sections of the road and charged tolls for "protection" and bandits raided other areas. In some cases, the bandits worked for the warlords.
The bandits and the warlords thought they controlled the only route to the east but they were wrong. Until the 15th century European ships could not sail far out to sea but with the magnetic compass and the center-post rudder -- both of which came to Europe over the Silk Road -- they could.
While warlords across Asia milked the traffic of the Silk Road Persian and Indian sailors developed sea routes from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf around India. Then Portuguese sailors working for Prince Henry the Navigator found they could sail around Africa, and Spanish sailors looking for another route to the east found America. The new sea routes pulled most European trade off the Silk Road, and the Central Asian cities that used to be among the biggest and most advanced in the world withered.
Some of those cities were bigger than any in Europe, but they flourished because they were way-stations on a trade route. When caravans travelled from Khanbaliq, (now Beijing) to Constantinople the goods of the world passed through Samarkand, but when the caravans stopped Samarkand lost it's commercial advantage.
That was a major change in world history but we're in another one now because, with the collapse of the Russian empire, the Silk Road is coming back. The truck route across Europe and Russia is a long haul but it's the only way to reach the once-great cities of Central Asia. Even Western China is about as close to Europe as it is to China's Pacific Coast, and the roads to Europe are better.
The main route of the old Silk Road ran south of the Caspian Sea and Turkish and Iranian trucks still travel the old route. Iran is now closed to western trucks but a secondary route north of the Caspian Sea is actually shorter for trucks from most of Europe.
This trip Mike and I cross the English channel to Belgium and drive through Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. We cross the Ural mountains near Chelyabinsk then swing a long loop through western Siberia and Kazakhstan nearly up to the Chinese border before cutting south and west back to Tashkent.
Our cargo is part of a big computer system for the Central Bank of Uzbekistan and the Uzbek National Research Foundation. It's a rebuilt IBM mainframe with 75 terminals, and it takes three tractor-trailer trucks to handle it.
The trucks are owned by Ralph Davies of Cheltenham, in southern England. Once a truck driver himself Davies had his own truck in the early 1980's, which he used to haul English goods to Spain and Spanish fruit back to England.
He was doing all right but his luck changed one day in 1982 when he ran his truck off the road in France. He wasn't hurt and his truck wasn't damaged but he decided to take a couple of days off and he hired a friend to drive the truck. When other friends heard he was sitting home they asked if he could round up a few loads for them.
He did, and he earned a couple of hundred English pounds in commissions for an afternoon's work. Now he has 40 tractors and 60 trailers hauling across most of Europe and into Asia and Africa.
His trucks are all new and top-of-the-line, with refrigerator trailers, and they're worth more than a quarter million dollars each but Davies is still an owner-operator trucker at heart. He buys trucks for his drivers, not for his accountants, and he runs the business himself -- usually standing at the dispatch desk in his office in Cheltenham.
The Volvo FH16 tractor is smaller outside than most North American big rigs but it's one of the best trucks in the world. Like all Ralph Davies trucks Mike's was painted black with red trim and the name -- the Lady Deborah -- was painted on the front.
The FH16 is a short cabover with dual tires on the single drive axle but the inside is a different "feel" from North American cabovers. The engine is dropped between the frame rails and instead of a big 'doghouse' between the seats there's a low platform, below your elbow height when you're sitting down, with a flat top that opens so you can store papers inside.
Three big bins above the windshield hold lots of baggage and curtains run around the front and side windows, so you can make the whole cab into a private bedroom. There are two narrow single bunks behind the seats, and the upper bunk folds up when it's not in use so you can recline the high-rise seats. A second curtain separates the bunks from the rest of the cab so one man can sleep in the dark while the other drives. With more than six feet of headroom inside you can stand up to dress and undress. It's smaller on the outside but it offers more room inside and more comfort than the usual double sleeper on a North American cabover.
Both seats are on air suspensions and the driver's seat has all kinds of power controls, but the real surprise is the passenger seat. You can recline the back if you want but for real comfort you can tilt it back -- like you might lean a chair against the wall.
It's the most comfortable seat I've ever used in a truck, car, plane or train. It's so good that I can easily fall asleep on a rough road and still wake refreshed.
Like other long-haul truckers Mike usually keeps a refrigerator in the passenger seat and his baggage on the second bunk, but not this trip. To make room for me he left his fridge and most of his baggage at home. That was a sacrifice because the trip would last more than five weeks through weather that ranged from sub-tropical to sub-arctic.
The old time camel pullers took several years to make a round trip, but they travelled with little more than the clothes on their backs. As they headed into cold areas or cold weather they would buy the clothes they needed, and when they came back to warmer climes they might find it easier to sell winter clothes than to carry them.
Like some other modern trucks Davies' Volvos have satellite locating systems with two-way digital communication. While the trucks are in range the system shows their location on a computer map in the company office in England, and drivers can send and receive messages on terminals in the trucks. The terminal is a lap-size box that normally slides into a holder under the dash. It's on the passenger side of the truck but the coiled cord is long enough to allow Mike to use it in the driver seat, or even in the bunk.
The system works on a geostationary satellite south of the Central U.S.A. and it covers most of Europe but doesn't work very far east of the Ural Mountains.
Davies' trucks also have an extra security key which locks the brakes and the engine when it is removed. Trucks are broken into and stolen every day, and in fact some would-be thief tried to open the passenger-side door of Mike's truck with a screw-driver last trip. He didn't get in, but he jammed the lock so the key won't work from the outside. Later this trip, the lock of a friend's truck will be damaged by an attempted break-in.
Like many other English trucks Davies Volvos have an extra air-lift axle under the tractor. The extra axle does not allow the truck to carry more weight, but it reduces taxes in England.
Power in the FH16 is a 520 horse six-cylinder diesel with a fully synchronized 12-speed transmission. The truck was built for a gross weight of 40 tons in Europe or 38 in England, but this trip we grossed only 25,680 kg with a full load of fuel and we could accelerate about as fast as some cars.
Mike's trailer is a 13.6 meter German-made Schmitz reefer with big "super-single" tires on the three axles and a baggage-box slung under the back end. He needs lots of baggage space because he makes most of his own meals on the road, and he carries several weeks' supply of groceries and even water when he leaves England.
The Volvo carries 550 liters of diesel fuel in its tanks but for long trips Mike carries an extra 1,400 liter "belly" tank slung under the trailer. Other truckers in Russia carry belly tanks of fuel too -- the Iranians carry 3,000 liters, so they can burn cheap Iranian fuel all the way -- but Davies does it better than most.
Most belly tanks are just storage tanks, and when the tractor runs dry the driver has to use an air line from his tractor to pressurize the tank, then a fuel line to carry fuel from the belly tank to the tractor tank. It's better than running out of fuel but it's a lot of work.
The belly tanks on Ralph Davies' trailers are fitted with regular fuel lines, and the trucks have special fittings so you can run the tractor directly off the belly tank.
With 1,400 liters in the belly tank plus 550 in the tractor we had a total of 1950 liters, 418 Imperial gallons or just over 500 U.S. gallons, good for about 3,500 miles of normal driving. Even that wouldn't be enough to take us to Tashkent but it would take us about the distance from Toronto to Vancouver, or Miami to Seattle.
While the tank was being fitted I met Mike Morrell. Now 48 years old, he was born on a farm in south England and he learned to drive the farm truck.
He trained for three years as a mechanic but he hated the work and when he was 21 -- the minimum age in England -- he began to drive truck. After seven years' hauling around England he hauled international loads for one company for 17 years, until the business was sold and the new owners went broke. When I met him, he had been with Ralph Davies for three years.
Lean and good-looking with a mop of wavy brown hair and a ready smile he stands about five foot seven inches and weighs about 160 pounds. Most of the time he wears wind pants -- England's answer to American jeans -- jogging shoes with no socks and a T shirt or sweater. He doesn't like coats and several times I saw him shiver through freezing weather in a T shirt rather than put on a jacket.
Mike was married but is now separated. His daughter, 23 years old, works as animal welfare officer and his son 25, works in a battery factory.
About a year ago Mike and another English trucker dated a couple of girls in the Russian city of Minsk. One thing led to another and now Mike's girl, Riassa Jarkova, is pregnant.
Mike plans to marry her and bring her back to England but there are forms to fill out first, and Mike is swamped in a sea of paperwork. Meanwhile, he supports Riassa in Minsk and visits her every chance he gets.
This was one of the chances. Mike had pushed through the loading of his truck and he was pushing the installation of the belly tank, so we could leave a couple of days ahead of the others.
We left the yard about 10 at night and wound through the narrow streets of Cheltenham to Mike's favorite fish and chip shop. There was no room to park a tractor-trailer at the shop but Mike left the rig at a bus-stop while we ordered codfish and chips -- wrapped in newspaper, of course -- and ate them in the cab.
Driving in England always seems strange to me, and not just because they drive on the left. I've been raised with wide roads and they have wide roads in England, but they also have a lot of narrow lanes with no shoulders. The English don't think they drive fast on these roads and they don't seem to have more accidents than we have in Canada, but it often feels to me as though they're driving too fast for the road.
Driving on the left is different too, but of course Mike is used to it. The big difference for him is that his rig is left-hand drive, because he spends most of his time in countries where they drive on the right.
Nobody knows for sure why the English drive on the left but one story says it's because right-handed knights find it easier to attack to the left in combat. That means the knight who plans to attack will probably keep to the right, and the knight who keeps to the left is probably not planning to attack.
There are similar stories about other greeting traditions -- that soldiers salute with the right hand and that civilians shake hands to show that they have no weapons in their hands, and so-forth.
But if English knights passed to the left to show peaceful intentions, what about German and French knights? Were they all left-handed?
Traffic in most English colonies and former colonies also keeps to the left and so does traffic in Japan. Traffic in Sweden used to keep to the left and that was really confusing, because Swedish cars always drove from the left. The closest I've ever come to being hit by a car was in Sweden, in the mid 1950's, when I looked the wrong way as I stepped off the curb.
The Swedes changed to drive on the right in the late '60's and there are some jokes about that -- like the story about the government plan to have all cars move to the right one week and all trucks the next -- but the change seems to have been an easy one.
You'd think they would have had some bad accidents for a while but in fact the traffic fatality rate dropped by 17% in the next year. The numbers slowly went back to normal, but the change still resulted in a net decrease in accidents.
Mike likes driving on the right. He says he's never tried to drive on the left in Europe but he has goofed in England, a couple of times. Both times he came back late from France, stopped for a sleep and then started in the wrong lane early the next morning. When another truck came at him he thought some fool Englishman was making a mistake and he flashed his lights, then realized he was the one in the wrong lane.
My pet hate on English roads is the traffic circle interchanges, or roundabouts. I have to admit that they seem to work well in towns -- because traffic weaves through without stopping, and I haven't seen any accidents -- but they're a real hassle on highways because you spend a lot of time slowing down for them, or accelerating away from them.
They can be dangerous too because you have to swing left and then right to get through them and if you go too fast or too slow, some trucks will sway out of control. Most drivers know how fast they can go but when you change the load you change the speed, and some drivers get caught.
Mike doesn't mind the roundabouts but he says it really ticks him off when cars try to pass him on one.
Traffic on the M25 Ring Road around London is usually hell during the day, but about midnight we cruise through with no problem. Near 1am we stop for coffee at the Elf gas station at Clacket Lane. They have a restaurant but Mike says coffee is too expensive there, so we go into the store.
It's comparable to the store in a North American truck stop and as we leave I see a problem most truckers around the world could sympathize with. An Italian trucker has bought 218 English pounds -- more than $400 -- worth of fuel, and the station won't accept his credit card. The trucker and the cashier are still arguing as we pull away.
It's about 2:30am as we wind through the seaside town of Ramsgate and over the weigh scales to the ferry dock. We have about three hours to wait for the ferry, and Mike needs nearly half the time to sort out the 64 separate invoices for our load.
Bureaucrats love paper and it makes sense that truckers should carry paperwork for their loads, but it is a lot of bother. Big computers are a real problem because they have a lot of components, and most of them have separate invoices.
On one trip to Turkey the Turkish border guards refused to look at Mike's wad of invoices. They told him to get a fax from IBM showing the value of the whole load.
Mike knew he could never get it, so he went back to his truck and slept until the guard's shift changed. When he came back with the same invoices the new guard was suspicious -- he asked why Mike had not gone through before. Mike said the border was busy when he arrived so instead of waiting in line he had a nap and waited for a quieter time.
The guard bought the story, and Mike got through.
North Americans hear a lot about the famous channel tunnel and it is a great accomplishment, but few English truckers use it. We can't this trip because we're carrying a belly tank of fuel and that's not allowed in France, where the tunnel lands.
But even if we could use it, the tunnel would not offer us much. If we could drive through it would save time and be convenient, but we can't drive through it.
To use the ferry you wait in the ferry yard, then drive aboard when the ferry is ready to leave. To use the tunnel you wait in the train yard, then drive aboard when the train is ready to leave.
On the train you lock your truck and get off, then wait for a bus to take you to a club car for the trip, which probably takes about an hour when you count unloading time.
On the ferry you lock your truck and walk upstairs where they have restaurants, bars, a casino and movies. Truckers get free meals and a free sleeping cabin on the ferry and most of them use the trip to catch up on some sleep, then have a breakfast of steak and eggs in the morning.
Sleep is a real problem for truckers everywhere because most governments specify "hours of service" with rigid rules that do not work in the real world. Probably the worst rules anywhere are in the United States, where drivers are required to take an eight-hour break after a maximum ten-hour shift.
The ten hour shift is one problem because no-one can drive that long without a break, but US hours of service regulations do not demand a break. Drivers in most countries outside North American have to stop for short breaks every two to four hours.
The other problem with American regulation is that ten hours driving and eight hours sleeping add up to 18 hours total, and the driver who wants to push the regulations to the limit would have to start six hours earlier every day.
That's obviously not practical, because it means the driver would have to sleep at different times every day. When American drivers are in a hurry, it's much safer for them to break the law and fake their logs than it would be to drive according to the regulations.
European regulations make more sense than the American ones, but they're still a problem. Mike says he has been caught several times in spots where it was impossible to sleep -- because of noise or the stink from a chemical plant -- but regulations would not allow him to drive on.
This trip we have to stop in Ostende, after several hours sleep at Ramsgate and about seven and a half hours on the ferry, because Mike's "rest" was broken when he had to start the truck and drive it onto the ferry. Then because he had to drive off the ferry before his time was up, he had to take an extra two hours' rest in Ostende.
Later this trip he will be in flagrant violation of European driving rules when we wait 16 hours in line to cross the Polish border. We drove only about a half hour to reach the border but, according to law, we should have pulled out of the line after about ten hours to sleep, and then tried to break into the line again. That would have been impossible because there was no place to pull out of the line, but the law requires it.
That's the trouble with hours-of-service regulations, Mike says. To stay legal and still make the best use of his time he often has to sleep when he's not tired, and to make up for that he has to drive when he's tired.
"Last week", he said, "I delivered beside a slaughterhouse near Almiera, in southern Spain. The place smelled terrible and I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't drive because I was out of hours.
Then to make my schedule to England I had to drive a full shift the next day. I was too tired to drive, but I'd wasted so much time at Almiera that I couldn't stop to sleep.
"You just can't switch off and on to suit the regulations. Sometimes you end up trying to drive when you're tired, and trying to sleep when you're not tired. I don't sleep as much as I would if there were no regulations, but I have to obey the law."
As we drive off the shop Mike waves his passport. The guard is satisfied with the sight of his, but he wants to inspect mine. He looks at it, then smiles at Mike.
"Family?"
"Yes", Mike says, and the guard waves us through.
The common market is a big change from the old days. In the very early days of trade simple courtesy and common sense suggested that any stranger with goods to sell should have some gifts for the chief of any tribe he visits. As society became more complex the gifts were called "tribute" and still later they were "duty" to be collected by "custom".
Some rulers took control of all trade that passed through their lands. Through most of the late stone age two or three tribes in what is now southern Germany controlled most of the trade of the Danube basin, by the simple expedient of not letting other traders pass through their territory. Carthage controlled the tin trade for the whole of the Mediterranean for nearly 300 years, until the Greeks found a way around their blockade of the Straits of Gibraltar and, after the death of Kublai Khan, dozens of warlords and minor princes lived off the trade of the Silk Road.
And through most of the world and most of history, border guards and customs officials have also made a good living off unofficial customs duties. Some still do, as I discovered five years ago at Irun, on the border between France and Spain. Spanish customs was closed to trucks when we arrived and a dozen or so truckers who had come late and parked in the compound had gathered at a local bar.
One was an Irish trucker, with a load of Guiness beer.
"I'm a dead cert for inspection," he said, "but it will just take long enough to lose a couple of cases."
Next day I saw Spanish customs officers openly carrying armloads of goods away from trucks they inspected.
Drivers who have nothing to give may pay in cash, and one told me he paid the customs inspector 2,000 pesetas, or about $20 U.S., to get through in a hurry.
"He said he couldn't inspect me until late afternoon," the driver explained, "but for 2,000 pesetas I could leave without inspection. Of course I paid."
But they don't consider it bribery.
"Bribery is a bad word", one trucker told me, "so we never use it. Instead we may offer to buy someone a cup of coffee, or a drink.
"We all do it because they have us by the bollocks. They can always hold us up for a while, and if they delay us a couple of hours here it could mean an day's delay somewhere else, or we could lose a load.
"And they don't ask much, so if I can drop a tenner somewhere and save the company couple of hours, it's not my money anyway -- is it?"
Shippers know the system too, and they usually add a couple of extra cases to the load to allow for loss along the way. I saw that myself in Seville, where the foreman of the crew that loaded us with oranges told us we had three cases more than the manifest showed. We made a profit on that, because we only lost one case to inspectors before we left Spain.
But the customs that pay governments and border guards so well keep countries poor, by raising the cost of imported goods and isolating them from trade. In a fragmented world customs duties encouraged local production and helped develop local industries, but in an integrated world customs just get in the way.
Mike used to haul frozen food to British Army units in Berlin and 20 years ago it took him a week or more make the 750 km run from England. Even though his load was sealed he had to wait up to a day for inspection and clearance at each of the Belgian, Dutch and German borders, and often more than a day to enter East Germany. With delays like that, trucking was hopelessly expensive.
But truckers hauling from England to Berlin now stop only to get on and off the channel ferry -- or the train that carries them through the tunnel -- and the roads of Europe are filled with trucks. Since the collapse of the USSR trucks from England can go to most of the former satellites and Mike has hauled right up to the Chinese border with Kazakhstan. This trip we take about a day to cross most of Europe -- about 900 km from Oostende to the Polish border.
But first Mike needs that "two hours rest", to make up his legal minimum. The law doesn't say that he has to rest, just that he can't drive, and we spend a couple of hours wandering through the dock area of Oostende.
A fishing village since the 9th Century it was fortified in 1583, and was the last Dutch outpost in Belgium until it fell to the Spanish in 1604. In 1714 it was taken over by the Holy Roman Empire, controlled by Austria, and in 1722 Emperor Charles VI founded the German-Ostendische Kompanie in an effort to trade with Asia and Africa. The company established two colonies in India and a major business smuggling into England, but it was dissolved as part of a complicated political deal in which other countries recognized Maria Theresa's right to the Austrian crown.
In later years Oostende became a popular seaside resort and it's now booming as a gateway from England to Europe. Outside the ferry dock the downtown is now mostly shopping mall.
Our run across Europe is easy driving on six-lane super-highways through a light rain that Mike calls "English weather". The road is good, with a steel fence and small trees in the narrow median, and the traffic is generally fast. Cars can legally cruise at 120 kph -- 72 mph -- but trucks are limited to 90 kph or 55 mph.
The signs are pictorial and at night I can't even tell what country we're in. The cars are a mix of European, Japanese and some American, not too different from what you might find in North America, but the trucks are different.
They're almost all cabover design, and generally lower-slung than North American trucks. Most European highway tractors have single drive axles but some English truckers, like Ralph Davies, add air lift idler axles with single tires.
European semi-trailers are mostly about 45 feet long with three axles and "super single" tires. The king pin is set further from the front of the trailer than on an American rig and the rear axle is further from the back, making a short wheelbase and a very maneuverable rig.
I got my first demonstration of that at the customs yard in Irun, with English trucker Colin Berry who drives for Livestock Sales Transport of Lamberhurst, in England. We got to Irun late Sunday night and there was no room left in the three rows of trucks parked side-by-side in the customs yard to wait for inspection Monday, so Colin parked in one of the access lanes.
But others had the same idea and by the time we cleared Spanish customs, about noon Monday, the lane was plugged with trucks. Even if we could find all the drivers, we'd have to move more than a dozen trucks to get out.
Our only hope was to the side, where two trucks had just enough room to pull forward and leave a hole maybe 25 feet wide. Even that looked impossible but, with about 15 minutes of jockeying, Colin turned his 50-foot rig sideways through the hole and got out to the next lane.
I saw it again in England, with Paul Hinchliffe of J & H Hinchliffe of Bury, near Manchester. We were on a two-lane road, about 25 feet wide with a curb on both sides, and Paul wanted to turn round.
His trailer was about ten feet longer than the road was wide but Paul drove to an intersection that gave him a bit more room, then pulled a U turn. No backing and filling. No fuss, no muss. Just a U-turn, with a full-size tractor trailer. Some pickup trucks couldn't have done it.
On the other hand North American tractor trailers are generally more stable on the road that European tractor-trailers, because the tractors are longer and the trailers have longer wheelbases. Some American tractors are very long, because American regulations set no limits on the length of the tractor. The regulations encourage longer tractors, because they are more stable.
But the truck and trailer combinations that Swedes and other northern European truckers prefer for long hauls are more stable than North American tractor trailer combinations. I learned how stable they are on a test drive in Finland, when I came too close to the weak edge of a side-road with a fully-loaded truck and trailer. The pavement crumbled, my trainer had a mild fit and we headed for the boonies.
I eased back to the left and we came out of it. No sweat until I looked back, and saw that I had about fifteen tons of loaded trailer swinging back and forth across the full width of the road. If I'd been in a tractor trailer I don't think I could have held it, but with this rig the truck tracked true and the trailer had to follow along, because the truck had a wheelbase nearly as long as the trailer and it weighed more than the trailer.
The European truck and trailer is still at least as maneuverable as a North American tractor trailer, because neither the truck or the trailer is as long as a North American trailer. The hitch is that they are harder to load and unload at docks -- because you have two units -- and they are a real bitch to back up. European drivers do it, but I can't.
European highway stops are generally closer to the road than North American highway stops, and the restaurants are often very expensive. Most truckers skip the restaurants and buy coffee from stores, (in France they sell vile espresso from machines), and cook their own meals. That saves them a lot of money but it also means they don't sit and talk in truck stops the way American truckers do. Trucking can be a lonesome business anyway, and it's more lonesome in Europe than in North America.
One difference is that most American and Canadian drivers use the same kind of CB radios, and any one truck can talk with almost any other truck on the road. They don't talk all the time, but they are in touch.
European drivers use different types of radios, and even if he speaks the language a driver from one country may not be able to call a driver from another country. Mike doesn't even have a two-way radio -- it was stolen and he never bothered to replace it -- but even when I've ridden in other trucks in Europe I notice the lack of communication.
This trip we stop for coffee at a highway stop just over the German/Dutch border. The border is barely visible and there are no formalities, but a couple of German cops with a van and a motorcycle sit by the exit and watch traffic entering Germany. Dutch cops coming from behind us finish their patrol here but have to swing past into Germany to turn round, and German cops coming the other way have to make their turns in Holland.
And the money is mixed. We buy coffee and buns with raw spiced hamburg on them, and pay with Belgian Francs.
German roads are good, but it's hard to tell the difference between Belgium, Holland and Germany. The wide-open speed limits on German Autobahn main roads is well known, but most German cars travel about the same speed as cars in other European countries. Trucks are limited to 90 kph on the Autobahn and they often have to travel slower, because it is illegal for a truck to pass another truck on some German roads. That means that if one truck runs slow, they all run slow.
We cross the former East German border about supper time and Mike points out the old line, now marked by a slash through the forest. The former West German border post is now a public rest station, and the former East German post is an Esso Station. The road through the East German post led only to Berlin, Mike says, but every time he came through the East German guards would ask him where he was going.
About 10pm we stop for the night at the Autohof Eilsleben, 180 km from Berlin in the old corridor. The paved yard is jammed with hundreds of trucks, and after circling the lot several times Mike finally pulls off the pavement and into a field at one side. By next morning there is a full line of trucks parked beside us.
The most important difference I notice between big truck stops in Europe and in North America is that you can buy liquor, beer and wine in most truck stop stores in Europe. You can buy a drink at many truck stops in the US and Canada but very few sell liquor, and it's illegal for American truckers to carry even beer in their baggage compartments. North American trucking regulations specify the same penalty -- 24 hours out-of-service -- for a driver caught with an un-opened bottle of beer in his baggage compartment as for one caught with an opened bottle in his hand as he drives.
That regulation is a favorite of Kentucky Public Service Commission inspectors, who routinely search the private possessions of truckers they stop for safety inspections. In 1989 they inspected 120,000 trucks and arrested 999 truck drivers on alcohol charges -- but only 11 drivers were charged with driving while under the influence. Fines for a trucker found with any alcoholic beverage anywhere on his truck can run over $500.
Penalties for drinking and driving are stiffer in Europe than in North America but European truckers are allowed to carry beer in their baggage compartments or even in their cabs.
After a light meal we have a beer and talk with truckers in the bar. The regulars say you have to get here by 5pm to get a good space. By seven it's crammed, and if you come much after seven you have to go out to the fringes, like we did.
It was probably the same on the old Silk Road. When traffic was heavy the first caravans would get the best spots in the caravanserai, late-comers would get less-desirable spots and some might even have to camp outside the walls.
You meet a lot of interesting people at truck stops, but also some blowhards and fools. We can see that some truckers didn't know where Tashkent is, but they won't ask. One driver tells us that it's a great run -- he's done it himself, but we are way off track because we should be going through Turkey. If he went through Turkey he must also have gone through Iran, but Iran has been closed to western trucks for about fifteen years.
But the classic fool is a young English trucker who is hauling a $600,000 McLaren sports car from Berlin back to the factory in England for a tune-up. He not only tells us about his load, he also takes us out to his truck, opens it up and shows us the car. I don't know what the owner of the car would think about him letting strangers sit in it, and starting the engine to see how it sounds, but I know what I think.
That guy led a couple of strangers through a dark truck lot in a foreign country to show them that he has a truck worth maybe $150,000 and a car worth $600,000 if they were both new. They're not new, but together they are probably worth an easy $250,000 for the man who sticks a knife in the kid and drives off with the truck.
I guess the equivalent in the old days would be the trader who took strangers out to a dark spot to show them what a big pile of gold he had. This time the English trucker survived, but he may not last long.
By the time Mike and I get back to the truck this night a Russian with a reefer has pulled in next to us, and he keeps the diesel-powered cooler running all night. The noise is loud, but at least it's regular. In northern Canada where trucks idle all night in winter, I usually sleep very well in a truck with the engine running.
We pull out early the next morning and as we roll down the road Mike looks at his fuel gauge and swears. He figures someone siphoned about 50 liters of fuel -- worth nearly $100 in Germany -- from our tank while we were parked.