Hello one and all, it is me Mr Ben Sheldrake. I’m 28 years old and i’m currently driving a heap of an old 8 wheeled Iveco Eurotrekker, yea its rubbish! but how did i get to where i am now, well let me tell you.
Well i’ve grown up in a transport family, parcels and courier type stuff really but none the less a very good grounding for what is involved in the transport world. Always wanting my own business running trucks, i set off for college on a business course which i completed in 1997, with a business plan for running a 7.5 tonner. I went to work with DFDS, then still in Coggeshall, Essex, on south-east distribution work. This again was a good grounding and was almost in at the deep end, it was flat out from day one, i loved it! I cant remember how long that lasted , a year or two before DFDS moved to Purfleet and we parted company, although i continued to do odd jobs and days. I took the plunge to work with my own customers, using a contact from my father, moving computers around the country i was off, lots of cold calling around Braintree, Chelmsford and Great Dunmow soon gave me enough work to be busy every day for the next 6ish years until 2004. During that time i found myself every where moving everything, just what i always wanted, UK general haulage with back-loads now and again, although i did always struggle as at that time there wasn’t much internet help and most back-loads were all for artics. I was moving everything,
- Computers
- Tills for new Safeway Stores (Greenock to Plymouth)
- Taillifts (thanks Frank Pope)
- Sunbeds (Glasgow 3 times a week and lots of beauty salons!)
- Baseball Caps (even to the Jordan Grand Prix team, C/O The Pit Lane, Silverstone Circuit on the Friday night before the big race)
- Exhibitions (Gibson Guitars, Sunbeds, Tailifts)
- Removals
- Machinery Moving
- Carwash Equipment
- Office Products
I could go on and on i’m sure and probably will at some time in the future. I took on an employee for a year and bought a lovely airbrushed customised Merc Atego, which will appear again, i even took my brother on for 3 months, but to no avail as in those 3 months the customer went bust and i lost £15k! I struggled on til 2004 when i couldn’t go any further with rates plummiting with the increase of pallet companies and diesel prices on the up, i left the 7.5’s and bought an 1846 (Chips with everything 1855!) Merc Actros Megaspace 4×2 with big tanks and i was off into the world of docks, trailer and Belgian shipping companies. I loved every second of that 2 years every part of the mainland UK, Belgium, Northern France, Holland, Western Germany and Luxembourg. Honestly the best 2 years of my life, until once again i was done for nearly £15k and couldn’t recover this time. Enough was enough and in August 2006 the big German was hired out to Harwich Express for a year while i got into the 8 wheelers. That Brings us up to date and how i got to where i am now. Apart from the Scania 141 i have bought and am restoring.
Busily looking for a new job or career in trucks and/or transport i decided to set up a blog for one and all to read. Hopefully some of it will be informative, fun, interesting and just trucks, trucks, trucks.
Please email me, ben@truckblog.co.uk
www.truckblog.co.uk 