Friday, November 28, 2008

Railway Skip Hire

By Railway Fishern

Being a skip lorry driver isn't easy. They have a massive job on their backs as they drive around with a skip. A skip hire company is expense to run, the petrol, the permits for the different locations, the masses of staff needed, the list goes on! It is true, it's a very tough and responsible job to do.

With all this in mind, you cannot expect the company to be good at everything, and its this point that brings me to the curious incident of the skip on a railway line.

I was driving along one day, in my ford mustang, and was stuck by the amazing sight of an 8ft skip lying sideways on a railway line, and one man single handedly trying to push it off! Can't be done you say? I disagree.

This guy thought he was on The worlds heaviest man tv show or something. He stood no chance whatsoever of moving that skip. It was funny to see him even try! An 8 yard skip is pretty heavy you know.

By this point, I had stopped my car and got out to help. I couldn't really push it by myself, I am only small. Thankfully soon other drivers stopped and got out of their cars to help. There was now 8 men pushing this huge skip up to the right hand side and off the tracks so that the skip lorry could transport it to the back of the lorry.

Alas, all was not celebrations yet, for in the process of pushing the skip hire skip of the tracks, we managed to damage the railway lines to such an extent, a train would not be able to successfully pass over. According to the train timetables, a train was en route, due to arrive near the skip hire van in 10 minutes! We had to think fast, or we could have a disaster on our hands!

We managed to avoid any deaths by contacting the relevant people. We had a job making them believe us, that a skip had actually fallen onto the tracks. The skip hire lorry driver was almost in tears, he couldn't believe he hadn't secured it properly. Apparently he was in a rush, really that is no excuse. The unsecured lorry had caused the skip to fall off onto the lines

mush inconvenience later the the line was fixed, and service resumed as normal. I got a mention in the skip hire magazine and the driver got a disciplinary! - 16035

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