Beyond the Bosphorus: British Drivers on the Middle-East Routes (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In recent years there has been much interest in the long-distance road haulage routes that became collectively known as the Middle East runs. The objective of this enterprise, which really got into its stride during the mid-seventies, involved using trucks and trailers to deliver goods and materials all the way from Europe to the countries of the Middle East; notably Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States of the Arabian Peninsula, with some deliveries going as far as Afghanistan, and Pakistan being the most distant country of all!

As suggested by the title of this book, travelling across the waters of the Bosphorus straits in Old Istanbul was a defining feature of travelling any of the different Middle East routes. This was achieved by boarding one of the drive-on/drive-off ferryboats that transported trucks and also any other vehicles together with passengers across the busy sea lane of the Bosphorus.

The Bosphorus could be crossed at a considerable height above the waters by driving across the suspension bridge built in 1973 which linked Europe and Asia. But this wasn’t the preferred option: the approach roads to the bridge had not been properly developed, so the ferry service remained the route of choice for drivers long after the construction of the bridge was completed. Using the ferry came with the advantage of this form of transport being an enjoyable experience in itself, as the views to be seen when crossing the Bosphorus offered an unsurpassed panorama of Istanbul together with all of its splendid Islamic architecture, with many towering mosques, minarets and Ottoman palaces to be seen along the shoreline and the far horizon!

It could be said that crossing the Bosphorus became a rite of passage for any new driver passing this way. And whether they were outward-bound to the Middle East or inbound back to Britain, taking a stopover in Istanbul was an ideal opportunity to indulge in a well-deserved rest and some eastern-style recreation.

There were times when crossing the Bosphorus and also passing through Turkey altogether were bypassed by choice owing to political and internal issues, so travelling by roll-on/roll-off ferries from Greece to Syria became an attractive option, providing shorter overall journey times and far less time spent behind a steering wheel, while enjoying the comforts of shipboard life.

The boom years of transporting goods out to the Middle East lasted from 1975 until 1982, and it is from this era that most of the drivers who have contributed to this publication have provided their reminiscences of what soon became the greatest adventure of their lives. The stories they have recounted include the good times and the bad times; moments of elation as well as those of despair; and in particular, the high value placed on the comradeship or ‘camaraderie’ that existed between drivers, which could make light of even the most tricky situations or difficult working conditions which could always be anticipated somewhere along the way!

It was decided to limit the time-span covered by this book to the Middle East run’s glory years between 1975 and 1982 when the business was in its prime, with a seemingly unending convoy of trucks passing from East to West and then back again, with new internal transport systems developed to serve throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

Many of those who were interviewed expressed the view that any stories they provided should not be exaggerated in any way, which may have something to do with a certain television series that concerns the work activities of North American truckers. In this television series there has always been a tendency for commonplace events to be blown out of all proportion by the commentator suggesting these are chillingly life-threatening when this is patently untrue! A tank of diesel fuel requires an awful amount of encouragement before it will explode in an engulfing fireball destroying everything in its path!

On the other side of the same coin, the bravery of those drivers who were prepared to drive thousands of miles to those far distant destinations should not be in any way understated. They endured hours and hours of solitude that often lasted from dawn until dusk each day, with the possibility of some form of hazard suddenly occurring around each bend in the road or when a rapidly approaching vehicle coming the other way threatened a nose to nose, high-speed collision.

The story of how Michael Woodman and Bob Paul trail blazed the Middle East route in 1964 with a Guy Warrior and started Astran International is well known and as this topic has been extensively covered to good effect in Ashley Coghill’s book, The Long Haul Pioneers, which engagingly tells the story of how Astran, a firm that’s still involved in the freight haulage business today, first set the ball rolling by hauling freight to the Middle East, half a century ago.

Following on from what Ashley managed to achieve so successfully concerning the history of Astran together with the firm’s drivers and sub-contractors, the intention of this publication was to throw the net even wider and draw attention to many other British operators and drivers who took on the challenge of travelling the Middle East routes, as reflected in the book’s choice of title.

Whichever of the many firms that the Middle East drivers worked for, they had to adapt as quickly as they could to a wandering lifestyle which must have seemed very strange at first, as they were no longer working a regular day and perhaps tramping a few hundred miles a week; they were taking on journeys covering upwards of 8000 miles, and maybe as many as 10,000 miles on each round trip; deliveries that took a month to six weeks to complete, and maybe a lot longer if things went well! And all the while they would be continually aware of the sobering reality that any kind of mechanical breakdown, road accident, or intractable problems with local officialdom could seriously disrupt the timing of their trip, dashing any hopes of returning home to their loved ones by a prearranged date or to meet a promise they had made to attend a particular occasion or function.

Some took to the unusual style of life that the Middle East run offered like ducks to water, as they became so carried away with the adventure of what they had become involved with, the passage of time did not seem to matter at all – prompting a blissful unawareness of any other way of making a living which lasted until the day arrived when they finally decided to call it quits and declare an end to their great adventure. This could be due to family commitments, ill-health, incapacity, or simply admitting to themselves that they had finally had enough of roughing it out there!

Not everyone took to the life of course, and for many, their first trip was also their one and only trip, as this wasn’t the life for them: a big mistake that ultimately resulted in handing over a truck’s ignition keys after arriving home in Blighty, to seek alternative employment at a rather less demanding pace! But this was by no means something that could be described or classified as failure, as they always had the reassurance to fall back on that they had given a most difficult and demanding job their very best try.

So what was the incentive that explained why many ordinary working blokes from all over the United Kingdom subsequently found themselves driving lorries over thousands of miles across Europe and then all the way across the lands of the Middle East? The motivation to introduce this form of transport can be traced to a significant improvement in the trading position of the oil-producing Middle East countries with the rest of the world due to the increases in oil revenues that made these countries so rich.

With so much money coming into the coffers of those Middle East countries, the time was ripe to go on a spending spree. But although the money was there in abundance, getting any Western goods out to the Middle East was difficult at the time owing to a particular restriction that had been applied to transporting goods by ship from Europe. This situation occurred because the Suez Canal had been blockaded by the Egyptian government as a reprisal for the American support given to Israel during the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt in 1967.

The Suez Canal was sealed off to any through traffic by shipping from 1967 to 1975, so rather than ships being allowed to pass from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea along this man-made waterway, any ships carrying cargoes bound for the Arabian Peninsula ports along the shores of the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea had to make a long detour around the coast of Africa, adding many thousands of miles to the sea journey, delaying the delivery of cargoes, and increasing the cost of shipping due to the extra time and the increase in fuel that the longer sea journey demanded.

In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, announced an embargo on the supply of oil from these countries, which was in response to the support given to Israel by the United States during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when the Israelis defeated Egyptian and Syrian forces.

This will be remembered in the United Kingdom as a time when all registered motorists were issued petrol ration coupons with the intention of preserving remaining petrol and diesel fuel stocks, although these coupons were never actually...