The recent media interest in the late Eddie Stobart got me thinking about some other icons of the business, both fact and fiction. Eddie Stobart’s self publicity and subsequent rise to fame did a great deal to raise the profile of trucks among an often less than sympathetic public. But to the average driver, his story is as remote as those of the imaginary folk depicted in Convoy or Hell Drivers.
Thinking back over the years, I remember a man who did more to influence me and, if the feedback from my non-trucking friends at the time is anything to go by, a whole lot of other people as well. John Williams, the seemingly unwitting star of the 1970’s BBC television program Destination Doha, was a real lorry driver who was articulate, thoughtful, skilled and determined. The program shows him leading a small convoy of trucks across Europe and into the Middle East with intelligent, considered observations and demonstrations of tenacity and mechanical expertise.
I was a young lorry mechanic and budding driver at the time and it was John Williams who made me realise that nothing gets in the way of the final destination. That oil and grease are all part of the job and that the journey was the great idea, with plenty to see on the way. Sadly, like Eddie Stobart, he died too young, but, to me, his legacy is the ethos displayed by Destination Doha.
