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MOVING STORIES No3:
Removals: Scania truck or covered wagon?
"...One hundred and fifty years ago homesteaders looking for a place to live in
the Californian sun faced exactly the same questions posed by a tough
2000-mile journey across America that confront today’s migrants to the
sunspots of Europe.
The settlers could go DIY with their own wagons or hire wagons with or
without the services of experienced wagon masters who knew the route and its
dangers. Dispensing with the wagon masters’ knowledge came at a high price;
the cost of your life, if your luck was not much better than average. And
trusting in it often had the same outcome, too.
The wagons moved out in the Spring when the American plains were quagmires
of rain and disease. You had to get to the key forts en route before the
Indians got to you. Then, with all this behind you, you faced the Rockies;
cold, starvation and, as the wagons collapsed, the rest of the journey on
foot.
And today? Hills in the Pyrenees and the Massif Central regions still eat
vans and trucks. The ‘wagon masters’ are often just as unscrupulous as their
American predecessors were. And very often the natives aren’t too friendly,
either.
Protection on the modern trail comes, as with all good lessons from history,
in the form of taking the middle way. A good removal firm will allow you to
retain the best of DIY in combination with their experienced removals team
and vehicle. Such flexibility usually comes from smaller
owner-operators. They don’t have sales offices or other forms of corporate anonymity to
hide behind if things go wrong. In fact, they rely heavily on
recommendations from satisfied customers in a highly competitive
marketplace, which, back in the nineteenth century, as we all know, is what really made
America great!..."
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Email:
simon@simonmarshall.co.uk Removals Web:
www.simonmarshall.co.uk/trucking.html
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