Welcome to tonyunderwood.co.uk     This website is dedicated to my Dad, Dennis (known by many of his work-mates as Danny), who sadly left us on July 4th 2004.

Me and my Dad in our silly white hats (taken sometime in 1987):

As a lorry driver all of his working life, my Dad would have appreciated some of the photographs shown here, of places and sights that i've seen, and vehicles that i've driven.

These photographs are just a few of the many thousands i've taken over the years, (wherever I went, so did my camera), and are just a brief insight into the part of my driving career spanning from 1987-2003.

This is how I started in transport, using spanners and getting my hands dirty. After 6 years (including a 4-year apprenticeship), I took voluntary redundancy from Tricentrol Trucks (A5) Ltd in Leighton Buzzard, and decided i'd have a couple of weeks off before looking for something else.

My brother Joe was doing regular runs to Scotland in an F10 owned by C.J.Haynes & Son of Sherington, Newport Pagnell, and asked if I wanted to go with him for a few days. We had a great laugh, and watching him steer it with his knees while rolling a fag was hilarious. I went with him for the best part of a fortnight, after which Bernard Haynes asked me if I fancied a weeks work driving a 7.5 tonner, and then another week, and then asked if I wanted to do it full time.

That was May 1983, and the start of my driving career. I drove that 7.5 tonner for 6 months and then it blew up, so I went out with Pip Neale (a bloody good bloke, and sadly missed) for a few weeks in a 16 tonner before taking and passing my Class 3 in January '84. I stayed there for another 3 years before moving on to Knights European Foods (which then became Hazlewood Foods) in Wolverton, but that was such an awful job that in April '87 I went back to work with my spanners, as the night-fitter at Tuffnells in Leighton Buzzard. But after a few months I got that itch to get back out on the road, so in September '87 I took and passed my Class 1, had about 4 weeks work on an agency, and then got a job (through a mate of mine, Noel Howley) with John Beaumont (Beaumont Haulage) in Leighton Buzzard, and thats where these photos start.