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The rather boring and uninteresting adventures of Mavis the Trainee Trucker, Fischen im Allgäu (2026)

01/06/2026

Jobs a good un. Unloaded. Now back to base and finish. Short day. My first event work delivering in an iconic venue. Lovely company. Lovey people thank you Steeldeck Rentals.

01/06/2026

Ok. Checks done. 18T curtainsider. Am at a company called Steeldeck Rentals who provide stages for film: tv/ events etc. back in the day when I was a producer we rented from these guys a lot. So that’s a first to drive for a company who i have in the past engaged as a producer.

Gotta drive across london for a show which they are exhibiting at. Never drive into an arena style location before so I suppose this is my first taste of event work. The managing director is a really nice fella. All of them are.

So let’s plan my route through london and I’ll let you know where I am. I can’t tell you where I’m going incase you try and lorryjack me.

01/06/2026

I’ve taken on a local job today. Yard is 5 mins from house. Only class 2 (7.5T) but I’m curious as to what other firms are in the industrial estate. So just grabbing a classic potteries breakfast.

Stoke is famous for many things. Obviously the pottery industry such as royal doulton and Wedgwood etc. but also rock stars like Lemmy and Slash and even Robbie Williams. Novelists like Arnold Bennet. Footballers like Stanley Matthews and Gordon Banks. Even Eric Bristol the Crafty Cockney is connected to Stoke as he live in Upper Tean near my primary school in the 80s and had a pub in the area. Filmmaker Shane Meadows comes from Uttoxeter as does Olympic champion swimmer Adam Peaty. But what Stoke doesn’t get enough love for (except for locals and those who’ve encountered them) is the Staffordshire oatcake. An absolute staple of local cuisine and very versatile. They used to sell them through holes in the walls of the terraced houses near the pot banks. They serve them in schools. They are amazing. And my mum, despite being a German, makes the best oatcakes in the world. And we always grab a fresh batch when we go home. And people ask her for them. It’s her own unique recipe. And they’re amazing.

I got 2 bags of 6 yesterday. 1 bag I’ll eat in next few days (they go mouldy quickly so Gotta eat quick) and 1 bag is in the freezer as Val loves the too.

I’m having mine with a fried egg rolled up in side with Tommy K. I can leave my house at 09:45 and still be there early it’s that close.

I’ll update on today’s adventures once I know what’s going on.

Have a beautiful day everyone

31/05/2026

Post 5/5 (maybe 6)

This is the post I’ve been waiting to make all day and it’s because of someone who messaged me through Facebook after reading my post about driving through Stoke. I’ve mentioned y times I grew up in stoke on trent. Raised in the moorlands, went to school in Cheadle and college in Newcastle under Lyme where I did my a levels.

I’ve also talked about my dad (stepdad really but he raised me so I see him as my dad and I adored him. He passed away late December 2024 and his funeral was January last year). He was an awesome bloke. Super friendly with everyone. No one ever had a bad thing to say about him except maybe his twin brother. They didn’t get on sadly. But that’s not relevant here.

He was originally a talented tap dancer as a child and wanted to be a film star. He did end up in a few movies including “I can go on singing” which was Judy Garland’s last . But when he realised he was never gonna make it he became a cinema manager for odeon. That’s where my love of films came from. I literally grew up in the cinema. Mainly the middle one, the odeon Hanley, which is now the Regent Theatre.

He worked all over the country and his final posting was Stoke. His first cinema was the Odeon Trinity Street, the black and white one. Then Hanley, which is the one with the big triangle name board and big window, and then Festival Park which was odeons first multiplex and their flagship after Leicester Square in london. He opened that cinema and ended up managing most of festival park by the time he retired. He was consistently one of the most successful managers in the country for odeon.

When he first arrived in Stoke he lodged with a lady and her family in Eccleshall. Then he got a flat in Hanley before buying a house in the Meir down the road from where my mum lived with my father and where I lived with my mum after my father died of a massive brain haemorrhage when I was 4 months old. My mum and the man who became my dad met roughly 12 months later though an act of sheer comedy and luck.

This morning Duncan Woodward (can’t tag you sir you’ve disabled tagging) messaged me asking if my dad was Peter Kelly. I said it was and asked him how he guessed that. The family he lodged with in the late 60s was his grandmother Barbara and my dad had stayed in touch with her. He stayed in touch after marrying my mum and my mum remembers Barbara and his dad and well (and even him as a young child - he’s a few years older than me).

My dad Peter Kelly was well known in stoke as the odeon manager and he kept the job until he retired in 2000.

It really made my day because I do miss him, like most of us miss parents who have passed. And it made me remember how well liked and remembered he was and is. And that’s all any of us can hope for in this fleeting life we live.

The 2 photos of him are as a young man in the film I mentioned and sitting proudly in a screen in festival park just after it opened with sound of music on the screen.

Thank you duncan for reaching out. I really appreciated it.

There. A supremely boring and uninteresting pos with almost nothing to do with trucking, except it came about because of a is I made about trucking seen by a trucker who had a connection to me through his gran and dad and my dad. Lovely. 🥰

31/05/2026

Post 4/5 (there might be a 6th bonus post if you’re all well behaved 😜). Just taken a toilet break at toddington so making this now before heading off.

A long time follower has dropped a me line a while ago inviting me to pop in. This chap is a legend. Long term trucker mainly around South Africa and some surrounding countries and now based in Leicestershire. We’ve chatted to messenger a bit and he’s always been super supportive of Mavis at the early stages in her career.

This seemed like a good opportunity.

Steve Anderson it was an absolute pleasure to meet you and Piston and see all your memorabilia. Too much for me to post here. But that Oshkosh marque is pretty awesome dude. And I loved Piston, especially when he fell asleep on my foot while we talked. Next time we meet I’ll have a camera to film you talking about your adventures because they’re insane.

Steve has given permission to share his a few images of trucking memorabilia in his place but he lives in essentially a personally curated museum/ shrine to trucking.

Gonna back on m1 now and get home I’ve e had a fab break. Back on tomorrow but nothing arranged for rest of week so let’s see what universe throws me. Val is back Tuesday and can’t wait to see him.

Drive safe/ enjoy your weekend.

Thanks steve for your time. ❤️ I took the route out you suggested and drove on the a5 in a car for first time. Only ever driven that route out in a lorry before. So that was cool.

31/05/2026

So here is the extra post I suspected I’d make. I’m on way home and just passing checkley. This is Green Park estate (nice newish houses). Here stood Brasher’s Truck stop back in the 80s. Still well enough remembered that follower Pete Smith commented on it on yesterday’s post I made about lower tean.

And a classic waystone pointing the way home. We have one in upper tean on the high street as well.

31/05/2026

Post 2 of 4 (maybe 5 I don’t know).

Growing up on our close in lower tean we were good friend with the neighbours opposite. (Still are and the son who is a great mechanic who specialises in mercs comes with us on holiday to Germany with his family and another family). The Keelings. Still good friends of ours.

This is all about my first job which was in the transport industry. And which gave me a life long love of industrial areas which I still have and always will have. Amazing weird places full of genuinely interesting people and interesting work.

Anyway they had an interlink franchise which was in a yard literally 2 mins walk from house I grew up in. They had about 10-12 transits and a couple of Luton’s with tail lifts. My very first job for them was washing the vans on a Saturday with a Kärcher jet wash and sponge on a pole. I got £1 for each transit and £1.50 for the Lutons. I’d start at 09:00 and finish around 13:00 earning roughly £14-£15. Which was a lot of money in 1988.

The washing kit was where the green door is on the right. Opposite that was the workshop and the warehouse where they would sort the parcels for the routes to be loaded in the vans in delivery order. Very organised.

Then during holidays I would help with the sorting and loading and they built the green warehouse which is now a car place (who rent it from the family as they still own the yard).

The artic would reverse in early to unload all the packages which we would then sort. The artic would deliver Mondays packages on a Saturday so we would organise them in advance.

The Merc 7.5T transporter you see beings to the son (the mechanic) and the van on it brings to the bloke who comes skiing with us. (I don’t think it has a tacho inside as I can’t see it. Maybe it’s too old and rules were different then). He is also the bloke who own an old Manual ERF with a Cummins engine and has said I can have a go at some point when we can arrange it. What a great post that will make. Mavis in a manual.

I loved this job. One of the drivers was the dad of a lass I went to school with. I think this is also where my initial appreciation of the transport industry was formed although I loved films and cinema the most because of my dad who ran the Hanley odeon and later odeon festival park (he was the first manager of that cinema which was also odeons first ever multiplex).

So that’s that. I’ve been wanting to share this for a while as it is fundamental to me and Mavis.

I’m heading off now and hopefully will make a stop on the way near Leicester and pop into a long time follower who I’ve chatted with on messenger a lot and who has some awesome trucking stories.

I hope this was boring and uninteresting for everyone but ever so slightly entertaining and informative.

Oh and it turns out opposite on the estate on left hand side of the road lives another follower who revealed himself back in October when I took a detour heading back to london to pop in to see my mum parking lorry outside my house. That was amazing.

See you soon. At least 2 more maybe 3 boring posts to come.

31/05/2026

Morni mornin mornin.

Quick warnin. There will be a few specific posts today so brace yourself. Boring is coming and uninteresting following in its wake.

First is the story of Friday after I left the company that had closed. I drove 2 hrs south down M6 to Tipton in the Black Country to deliver. I could tell it was gonna be interesting as it was one of those places in an old industrial area that also had houses. There were loads of old style yards and trailers and units so I knew it was doable so I saw it as a learning experience. The kind of place I have to be able to navigate in an artic with full sized trailer. This is part of the job.

When I got there the building looked abandoned. As I was calling them (answer machine said they closed at 5 but it was 16:50) a bloke in wheelchair approached me. And that’s how I met Simon, who is a legend. He has no voice as he’s had a tracheotomy because of throat cancer from smoking. And despite this he still smokes. Here is a photo of us with him smoking through the hole in his neck. Genuinely. He told me he was also a trucker for 25 years (he’s 8 months older than me). Turns out this building on the front is for sale but they’re building a new warehouse behind and they went home at 14:00. POETS day again.

Now I had to reverse back into road to turn around and head to final collection in kiddie. And this is where simon became a legend. He drove his wheelchair into the middle of the road and stopped the traffic giving me the space to reverse out. I waved at him as I left and will never forget him. I hope he lives to 100 just to p**s non smokers off.

So the I checked address of next place. Down country roads. Looks like a farm. The way out was narrow roads through a combo of industrial/ residential roads which were a good challenge and I won’t lie. When I made it to the dual carriageway out I did feel a sense of relief.

Eurowag tried to take me down “unsuitable for HGV” road and at one point I had to reverse back up into a close to turn around (giving a tree a slight haircut) before eventually I came to the address i was given. I parked up in a side drive next to a pretty white cottage. I knocked on the door and an elderly lady said it was to the left but they had been give her post code so lorry’s keep turning up at her place. She also had a big box infront of her house which was for them and had been dumped there so I agreed to take it for her.

I backed up back across the road and turned left. I saw the location on the right. It was closed. Luckily a security guard took the box (after a confusing conversation as I tried to explain I collected from the old lady where it had been left by mistake) and he opened the gates and barrier so I could turn around in the yard as I had to go back the way I came. Security said they left at 15:00 on a Friday. It was 18:30 now.

Signage on the way out made it clear HGVs had to turn left. If he hadn’t have done that I would have had to reverse back down the road past the cross roads so I could turn left. Not too bad but spinning it round was easier.

After that I went to the truck stop.

It was a real learning experience just driving round with that big trailer on narrow roads. Because that is part of the job. So I can’t shirk that if I want to become a better driver.

This is why Mavis will always be a trainee. As she will always encounter new situations and scenarios. And she’s too old to become an experienced driver.

So that’s post one of several. I hope if you read it all you were suitably bored and uninterested (but still slightly entertained).

30/05/2026

Lower tean. So this is the road that ultimately gave me an interest in one day becoming a truck driver if everything else in my life turned to s**t. This is now the A522. It was the A50 unail the bypass was built.

To the left is Uttoxeter. To the right is Cheadle and then Stoke on Trent city.

Up on the brow of the hill is the Uttoxeter to Blythe bridge bypass which they built when I was around 14. (Me and a mate would play on it and find workers jazz mags and tools etc).

Before that the a50 was artic after artic in both directions. It can still happen at night when they close the bypass for repairs on either direction.

Me and a mate would sit on the wall watching lorrys go past making the international sign of “pull the horn”. And many did. This gave me a long lasting respect and admiration of truck drivers. So when the bootcamp came around end of Covid and I was a broken man there’s was never a question. Bootcamp was made for me.

Tomorrow I’ll share the yard where I had both my first job in transport and my first ever job. It’s still owned by the same family who are long time friends of ours including their kids. (Their son and his family come with us to Germany every year skiing and they’ve just bought a flat in the town near to where my mum was born).

Enjoy your Saturday everyone

30/05/2026

Prost. Salud. Cheers 🍻 weirdos.

The rather boring and uninteresting adventures of Mavis the Trainee Trucker

01/06/2026

01/06/2026

01/06/2026

31/05/2026

31/05/2026

31/05/2026

31/05/2026

31/05/2026

30/05/2026

30/05/2026

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