They wanted me to fit a new quarter panel to the cab off one of their 400 series Sed Atkis that was prepared for MOT the following Tuesday.
The plan was to paint the truck on Sat afternoon, sign write it on the Sunday Morning, it was going to Scotland on Sunday afternoon and coming back on Monday ready for a quick check over Tuesday before the test.
I duly fitted the panel went home and thought no more of it. The driver however had other plans he was seeing a lady on the side and so he decided to set out in the early hours of Monday morning and do the trip in one run with disasterous results
The news that greeted me on Monday morning when I got to work was that the driver in question had killed five
(two more died later).He fell asleep behind the wheel and ran over the top of a Ford Transit minibus which had broken down on the M6 and was on the hard shoulder. The truck ran through the Transit as if it wasn't there ran up an embankment to a golf course where the load rolled off and then back onto the M6 where it jack-knifed.
I can still see in my minds eye the shattered glass of the Lucas tachograph that the driver smashed with his fist, the police never found the tacho card they reckon he ate it
I completed much of the repair work to the truck concerned, it was originally a 1975 'P' reg Sed Atk 400 and had been bought by H Fellows Transport as an insurance right off. It had been invloved in an accident in which its driver had been killed and the driver of the vehicle it hit had also died.
So it had now killed a total of nine people
Fellows transport had rebuilt it and re-registered it as COP921V ironically it was written off again six months after I rebuilt it when the new driver had to brake sharp and put the load through the back of the cab fortunately nobody was hurt.
Yep it was again rebuilt and lasted a few more years before it was due to yeild its parts for other members of the fleet, however fate came into play once more and it caught fire and burned out whilst in a layby. The driver had gone to phone and report it had broken down when he got back the fire brigade were hosing it down!
thats haulage companies for you 
Well the driver had taken a wrong turn and decided to try and back into a small side road (behind the truck out of view) unfortunately he got the truck stuck down the soft verge to make matters worse there was a pond the other side of the greenery. Sadly the pics don't really do the situation justice but if you look carefully you can see that the trailer is resting on a telegraph pole which has now taken on an appropriate tilt 
