Trucking Heavy

In Lincolnshire, 36-year heavy haulage veteran Steve Moss's two-day mission is to deliver a 60-tonne reel of electrical cable for an ambitious green energy scheme. Carefully positioning his 60-tonne bespoke trailer, which is longer than a diplodocus dinosaur and about as agile, the hefty load has to confirm its conductivity by having 10,000 volts of electricity sent through it. Supported front and rear by his team and under police escort, Steve takes on all manner of man-made obstacles. A humpback bridge, a railway crossing and overhead phone cables could all bring this oversized convoy to a halt. After overcoming these challenges, trouble arrives in the form of a swan! Cue former chicken farmer and support driver Roger Morris. If anyone can wrangle a piece of posh poultry safely off the road it should be him. With no time for swanning around, Roger swiftly clears the bird from the road and the reel can finally reach its destination. Then after two false starts solved with grease and some gentle persuasion, Roger remotely controls the unspooling of the cable from the mechanised trailer in perfect unison with the construction site's winch. Meanwhile in Warwickshire, the ‘Golden Boys', a three-tonne statue of the fathers of the steam age, needs taking to its new home in the second city's Centenary Square. But James Watt and his colleagues can't go anywhere without being precisely loaded, because for these boys to remain golden, not a single fleck of gold leaf can be damaged in transit. Former Birmingham bus driver Dave Hemmings navigates low-hanging trees to arrive with the statue in one piece. And despite having a centre of gravity to challenge any crane op, precision slinging and careful lifting eventually has the Golden Boys sitting firmly on their plinth. Job done.