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George Spenceley recalls his years as a long distance lorry driver, the friends he made and the incidents that happened along the way.
In 1976 owing to an E.E.C. ruling, Shell Mex and British Petroleum parted company. I opted to work for BP. Working for BP Oil had many advantages, I had a good set of mates, enjoyed their company and working with them.
We each at some time experienced some sort of incident. One driver had a tanker load of heavy fuel oil to deliver to the glassworks in Sunderland, on arrival he found the gates to the delivery point locked. Instead of contacting the security personnel he scaled the fence and let himself in, then seeing an offloading outlet he started to discharge his load.
The security man on his rounds challenged him and then informed him that he was discharging the oil into the wrong tank and so contaminating the oil in that tank. The following evening Tom, my work mate and I had to return to that factory to empty the storage tank and then replace the oil.
This was easier said than done. The storage tank was situated on the top of a building and a fitter had disconnected the pipes to the tank so we had to climb up a vertical wall, drag our hoses across the top of the roof, attach the hose to the storage tank and draw off the fuel.
It took us a number of hours to empty the tank. By 3.30 am that part of the operation was completed so I contacted the fitter to reconnect the dismantled tubing. An hour later he said we could refill the tank with the fresh fuel. It had started to rain and a strong wind was making our work very difficult.
Tom started the vehicle engine and put the pump in gear to discharge the oil. I climbed to the top of the building and in complete darkness fumbled my way across the roof top. I could see reflections on the roof, they were shining and I thought it was rain collecting on the flat surface. On closer inspection I realised that it was oil spilling across the roof, the pipe work had not been reconnected.
I scrambled quickly back across the roof top shouting to Tom to stop the engine. I told him what had happened and for some reason he saw it as a joke, he kept looking at me and laughing. 'How did you get like that George?' he shouted above the noise of the wind.
I couldn't make out what he was going on about. I felt what I thought was water trickling down the side of my face so took out my handkerchief to wipe it. Tom pointed to my handkerchief and shouted, 'Take a look'. It was black with oil.
On returning with the fitter I realised what had happened, when I was on the roof and thinking it was raining it had been oil that was escaping like a huge fountain, it was being whipped up by the wind and we both ended up looking like something from the 'Black and White Minstrel Show'.
It took us some time before that work was completed. It was the afternoon before we returned to the terminal, it had taken us nineteen hours. We filled in the necessary incident report explaining what had happened, for Tom and I were not to blame.
We thought the Manager was a little insensitive after all that we'd been through, we had put ourselves at risk for the good of the company. If one of us had fallen we'd have been told that we shouldn't have put ourselves in that situation, self-preservation is the name of the game, however he did give us the night off.
George Spenceley, 2002
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