I HAD A bad run with the Transit vans, starting not long after I broke my back at the Ulster Grand Prix in August 2015. It was one thing after another, with the first coming on the way to work one morning. I’d had the use of Transits for years, but they’d always been work vans, either my dad’s or Moody’s, none with my name on the logbook. But FT13 AFK, a black Transit Custom, was mine. Before that I’d owned Vauxhall Astravans and a Volkswagen Transporter, but Transits were the vans I liked the most.
I was still getting over my back injury, so I was only biking into work a couple of days a week and driving the rest of it while I built up my fitness. It was September, earlyish in the morning, and the autumn sun was dead low, just rising, when I turned into the industrial estate. I was 100 metres from the work gates when I drove into the back of a parked car transporter. It was a hell of a shock. The impact ripped the nearside of the van out, demolishing the headlight, pulling the suspension wishbone off and the driveshaft out, and buckling the floor up. I’d only just turned the corner, so I wasn’t going fast, maybe 20 mph, but I hit 15 tons of lorry that wasn’t about to move and bounced off the transporter on to the other side of the road. I’d been there about a minute, still trying to work out how I’d managed to crash into a parked truck, when another van came around the corner and did exactly the same thing.
The transporter was parked opposite a junction, where it shouldn’t really have been, but it was my fault. He wasn’t moving, and I’d driven straight into him because I was blinded by the sun.
The police turned up, heard what happened and were accusing me, and the other bloke who’d crashed, of driving without due care and attention. What could I say to that? I’d just driven into a stationary truck. Luckily, matey boy who’d crashed after me had an onboard video camera in the cab of his van, and it showed you could not see a thing, so the police became a bit more understanding. Still, it didn’t change the fact that my van was a write-off. I couldn’t be without a van, so the same day I bought one from a local dealer who owed me a favour and got a good deal on a plain white Transit, with a poverty spec.
I ended up buying the wreck from the insurance company too. It had been labelled a Category B write-off by the insurance assessors, which meant there were strict rules saying it couldn’t be used on the road again. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I’d owned it from new and driven it carefully – it had just clocked 95,000 on the original brake discs and pads – so I reckoned it was too good to scrap. I managed to buy the wreck back for £900 and got paid out decent insurance money too, so it could’ve been worse.
The next Transit disaster, or near disaster, happened in December, when I went to my favourite butty van, Gina and Nicky’s, close to work. I’d driven up to get something to eat and parked all of 40 metres from the butty van. I climbed out and walked halfway to it when I remembered I’d left all my change in my van and walked back to get it. Then, when I opened the Transit door, I realised I had the money in my pocket after all. I emptied everything out of my overalls on to the front seat, picked out the loose change, left the work and van keys on the front seat, closed the door and walked back to the butty van.
I got my grub, turned around and said, to no one in particular, ‘Where’s me van gone?’ A woman in the queue for her own dinner said someone had just climbed out of a car, jumped in the van and driven off. Keen fucker! There was no sight of it, and it was obvious it wasn’t just Moody or Belty playing a trick on me. It had been nicked. I ran back to work thinking, How am I going to tell Moody this?
I got into the office, rang the coppers and told them exactly what happened. I knew that if the van was gone for good it would be coming out of my pocket. The insurance wouldn’t cover it because I’d left the keys in it. All that was going through my mind was, Shit, bugger, bastard! Then, half an hour later, the phone rang. It was the police, telling me they’d found the van. It turned out the thieves had driven it off the industrial estate, round the corner and parked on a posh street, or as posh as it gets in Grimsby, locked it up and left it. The police reckoned the thieves would leave it there until the dust settled then go back for it after dark. My work keys were still on the seat, so I got away quite lightly. I just had to have new locks put in the van. That cost £300, but it was obviously loads better than buying a new van and having all the security at Moody’s changed. Another narrow escape.
The van that was nicked and missing for all of half an hour, thanks to the Grimsby police, was a work Transit, but I had the white poverty spec van, and then a grey Transit L2 H2 turned up from Ford as part of a deal I’d done with their TrustFord division, opening the new Transit plant at Dagenham, in January.
On that day I met 15 of TrustFord’s apprentices, and we had a bit of banter. TrustFord is the company’s UK dealer network, and I was interviewed by their apprentice of the year, Ben Dodds. It sounds like Ford has got a good set-up for their apprentices. The courses they run teach them the ins and outs of the trade. When I did my apprenticeship, working on Volvo trucks for John Hebb, I did day release at a good college with good teachers, but we’d work on old knackers that didn’t have much relevance to what we were actually dealing with at Hebb. The TrustFord lads are learning about modern technology on the latest vans and cars.
Dagenham is massive, with hundreds of brand new Transits parked on-site. I knew the vans were made in Turkey, but I didn’t know the engines were all built in Dagenham, then shipped out to Turkey, fitted into Transits they’ve assembled and then shipped back to England. It doesn’t sound very efficient, but that’s what happens.
When the grey Transit L2 H2 (that’s the medium wheelbase, medium height option) turned up, I ended up giving the white van to my big sister Sal.
About the same time, Warren Scott, the owner of Rye House speedway track, down in Hertfordshire, contacted me and Matt Layt about riding KTM 450s as part of a dirt-track team for him. Matt is a mate from my days riding British Superbikes and he’s got into dirt track. At the back end of January, I was over in West Yorkshire picking the KTM up in my two-week-old grey Transit when someone ploughed into the side of it at a junction. I wasn’t best pleased. I was upset for months when someone put a ding in the door of FT13 AFK after opening a door on it in a car park, but this was something else. Three Transits: one written off, one stolen and recovered, and another stoved-in, in less than five months. It’s a good job I’m insured.