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An Introduction........
After retiring (in the spring of 2001) until the winter of 2008, I had a part-time job delivering (mainly) buses and coaches throughout the UK and overseas (if you include the exotic Isles of Sheppy, Wight and Man) and the original intention of this web-site was to record the work I did together with a selection of photographs - in addition to some other features with which I have a connection of sorts. In the meantime, I'm adding new pages from time to time - the latest being a journal of my drive across the USA in 1997.
An Explanation.....
The company for whom I worked delivered vehicles for specific sectors of the commercial vehicle market throughout the UK and Europe and, although some of their business involved mobile cranes and fire appliances, the majority of their work was for the Passenger Carrying Vehicles (PCV) industry. In that respect, their main function was to deliver vehicles to and from bus and coach manufactures and bus and coach operators.
Most of the buses and coaches which were moved were brand new or very old; so, they were sometimes not licensed or taxed. In these circumstances, trade plates are used (temporary registration plates issued by the Department of the Environment to registered operators and are a legal requirement for the vehicle to be driven on public roads.)
Often drivers using trade plates (red letters and numbers on a white background) can be seen at the side of the road thumbing lifts as they try to make their way from one job to the next. Fortunately, however, my employers usually provided a hire-car for their drivers to get home from the point of delivery. This might seem extravagant - however, this enabled the company (often at short notice) to divert drivers if another job came in near where they might be at the time. As a consequence, there were occasions when a driver might be away from home for a few days and, in that event, the company paid for the drivers' accommodation.
Although there was quite a high turnover of staff within the company, generally, there were about a dozen drivers 'on the books' - two or three in Scotland and similar numbers in the north of England, the midlands and the south respectively. They comprised of a mixture of full and part-time drivers employed directly by the company along with some who worked on a self-employed basis.
For my own part, officially retired, I let the company know when I was NOT available and, for the rest of the time, I was 'on-call' - as it were. When I was needed, the office telephoned to make sure I was still available and sent an e-mail containing details of the job (contact names, addresses, post codes, telephone numbers and type of vehicle etc.....). Then, if there was time, I found maps on the interenet and printed a copy before leaving home.
One of the major customers was based quite close to where I live in the south of England. Their engines and chassis are assembled down here and transported north to factories in central Scotland and east Yorkshire to have the coachwork added. Quite often when a local driver collected a new vehicle from the factory in Scotland, for example, another driver would head north in a hire-car and meet at a convenient point. After exchanging vehicles, each driver headed back and got home for the night.
I was quite often involved in the aformentioned change-overs. However, being quite close to the capitol, I was also required to move buses in and out of London Transport garages and, on these occasions, I usually used public transport - because hiring a car would be uneconomical.
In conclusion, I have to say I enjoyed the work immensely. However, a combination of factors - not least the realisation that an youthful mind doesn't always compensate for an ageing body - led me to suspect that reaching the fabled 'three-score-and-ten' might be an appropriate time to put away my overnight bag and exchange it for a golf bag.
WHY OMNIBUSOLOGIST ?
Those who were in the UK during the eighties might recall the actress Maureen Lipman's series of adverts for BT where she played a Jewish grandmother called Beatie (get it?).
In one of them, her grandson was bemoaning the fact that he hadn't done very well in his examinations. He had, however, passed in Sociology.
"You got an OLOGY!" his grandmother proclaimed, "That's not a failure."
Anyway, I was involved in the passenger transport industry at that time and, partly as a consequence of that advert, the word Omnibusologist formed in my mind and I've adopted it as a 'User name' ever since. So far as I can tell (from Google) only one other person has done the same.
Watch the video (below)...............