Travelling Sales Tales
As travelling salesman, we not only have the pleasure of finding the best petrol stations in the country (and I know my number 1 – I’ll put a picture up here next week when I pass it), but we also have the joy of driving a variety of sales mobiles. The Blue Machine is already in the salesman’s Hall of Fame, it makes my eyes moist to think of the unrequited love that car has given over the past 9 years.
Unrequited love wouldn’t be the way I’d describe the white vans we often rent in order to deliver large stock items or exhibit at Fairs. These white vans are the rejects of the fleet world, the rejects of the private van world, and find themselves 250,000 miles later as the cheapest vans in the country to rent. Don’t worry that all the lights show on the dashboard before you start or that none of the locks or doors work – it’s a cheap van and will happily get you from A to B. Just don’t look at the seats too closely.
On my last trip to Newcastle I needed a white van to take a whole exciting pallet of brand new designs from the Compost Heap. I made the mistake of relying on the petrol gauge in the van. Since the rental company drains the remaining fuel out of every van on return, the gauge must’ve been altered. With a quarter of a tank and fresh wind in my sails travelling north on the A1, the poor white van came to a juddering halt. I managed to pull off the road and roll into a lay-by. Sadly no sign of a petrol station…
I discovered from an elderly lady in her dressing gown that the nearest petrol station was 5 miles away. It was a long walk along an overgrown verge, but actually not too cold once I got going. I did try hitch-hiking, but nobody seems that keen – does anyone ever pick up hitch-hikers now? Luckily the extremely friendly petrol station knew of a local taxi, which popped me back at the poor white van. After 250,000 a few things are going to be falling off…
