HOLMSEY: In the right place…

With life currently challenging all of us on seemingly every front, you never know; I may inspire you to ditch the 9-5 and try something different. Security isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it? At school, I was a particularly lazy and disruptive boy and deservedly left empty-handed.

The only careers that really appealed were lion-taming or lorry driving and, even in the ’70s, lion-taming opportunities in West London were limited.

You couldn’t drive a lorry until you were 21 so, instead, I had 30 or 40 mostly dull jobs doing other things. Just days after my 21st, I did pass the HGV test, but persuading lorry owners to let a wet-behind-the-ears driver loose with their precious juggernaut was a challenge.

Luckily, I found a few desperate operators willing to give me a start and pounding the motorways became my routine. I loved driving, but soon realised that I didn’t really want to do it for ever. By then I had a couple of kids and a mortgage, and I decided to give selling trucks a go, swapping my jeans for a suit and a company car.

I worked for Scania trucks, the best of the best and thankfully did OK. However, once again I felt it wasn’t really what I wanted; I’d rather do my own thing, so I quit my well-paid corporate job and, with a tiny overdraft and a credit card (total resource £4,000), bought a lorry. I had a head full of dreams and a heart full of hope and because I lived near Heathrow, started in air freight haulage. The early months were far tougher than I’d imagined; I had very little work, and what I could find paid badly, as little as £60 for some jobs. As for many new business-people, extracting payment from my customers was a challenge. I invoiced immediately, then chased the approval process before badgering my customers’ accounts departments to post a cheque – “urgently please”! It was desperate stuff and, at one stage, for three months, I couldn’t pay the mortgage. My dream almost ended before it began, and I couldn’t go back to my secure job – I was in too much debt. Bankruptcy seemed a possibility. The situation really was that hopeless, until one day, driving along the airport perimeter road, passing Hatton Cross station, my luck changed. I spotted a smartly dressed man standing on the pavement with his thumb out. He looked even more stressed than I felt, so I pulled over and asked him where he was going. “The cargo terminal”, was his curt reply. On the short journey there, he regained his composure enough to thank me for stopping. He explained that his car had broken down, making him late for work.

He was the terminal manager at FedEx, one of the world’s largest air cargo airlines. He asked if the lorry was mine and I told him yes, it was, adding that I had unsuccessfully approached his company for work. The following day, I had a call from FedEx, “Could I take an urgent load up to Prestwick airport in Scotland?” I didn’t need asking twice, and from that moment on, FedEx provided lots of work for me and my faithful old lorry. Slowly we turned the corner, adding another, then another lorry, until we had a small fleet of them. By the early ’90s, my finances were pretty sound, and life was great, so I decided to become a funeral director. I’ll tell you about that sometime!