Page 94 - It's a Rum Life Book 3 "Ivy House Tales 1970 to 1984"

(Picture of another similar KM lorry. )

Our KM was painted green and had a longer
body than the one in the picture. Ours had a fully
flat body with tall full length vegetable cage to
contain hundreds of crates of cauliflowers!
The KM model has the distinctive double bumper
bar across the front of the cab.

The next couple of hours were spent off loading
the 15 tons or so of Olive nuts onto pallets,
jacking up the rear of the lorry and placing more
pallets under the right hand rear wheels so the
whole thing was back on an even keel and could be got into the garage for its service. The
smell of those olive nuts stayed with us for weeks.

To enlighten readers a little further, animal feed is often made up into nuts or cubes by
extruding the feed mix through a heated mould a little like a huge mincing machine. The
result is a cube or nuts about half an inch to an inch long and from a quarter inch to half
inch wide. The sizes vary depending on the size of animal they are made for. Small for
poultry, much larger for a cow!

THE OIL DRUM
They say things often come in threes, well we had two pretty quickly when the next
morning after Paul had managed to jam the loaded lorry in the doorway, I found the
workshop awash with very expensive engine oil.
Paul in his confusion had left the bulk oil drum tap partly open and during the night the
entire 50 gallon drum had emptied itself onto the floor. It was not just the mess but the
considerable expense of the good quality engine oil that I have always insisted on using.
Even in those days I suppose it was the same as at least two to three weeks wages for a
man.

THE FOURTH “PAUL” INCIDENT, PAUL AND “THE TYRE”
This final Paul incident must have happened sometime within the following twelve months
as the reason that Paul had some time to spare ‘helping’ us was that he was waiting to join
the Lincolnshire Constabulary as a Police Cadet!
Paul had gone down to Ely and Peterborough on a regular circuit of tyre retailers in that
area to collect complaint commercial tyres for examination and consequent adjudication at
the Tyre Manufacturers Conference.
To explain a little further, at this time, all the tyre manufacturers that sold tyres in the UK
clubbed together to provide an impartial service where any of their products that the end
user thought had not performed sufficiently well or had failed in service could be examined
and any compensation due to the user could be declared and granted.

Problems do occur in the manufacture of motor tyres, sometimes it is human error as
every tyre is still built by hand from its component parts. Sometimes it is the fault of the
manufacturer who make the wrong decisions, very often it is just the end user who is
disgruntled or unhappy in some way with the product he has bought and wants to try his
luck for some compensation.

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