I’m Britain’s oldest truck driver, work 5 days a week and have done 3.5m miles. People are shocked when I reveal my age
BRIAN Wilson could be the poster boy for Rishi Sunak’s drive to get the over 50s back to work.
Britain’s oldest truck driver, he will be 91 in two months yet he is still working five days a week as a lorry driver.
Brian, who has been driving HGVs for 70 years, last month passed his annual medical to keep on trucking for another year.
And last week the Government announced that retirees should go back to work to help the country’s ailing finances.
Critics of the idea say it might work for pen-pushers or anyone who can work at a desk. But for workers doing physical jobs it would be impossible to keep going past retirement age.
So, The Sun sent two of our most senior staff to Yorkshire to spend a day on the road with Britain’s oldest trucker.
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The total age of the three old truckers in our picture is 237 - Brian is 90, our legendary royal photographer Arthur Edwards is 82 and I am 65.
But amazingly the 25-year-old MAN diesel truck we are stood next to will be the first to retire.
Brian is replacing his truck – which has done more than 300,000 miles – with a younger model because it can’t keep up with his busy work schedule.
When we arrived at the transport depot in Sheffield where Brian keeps his truck, he had already driven to Doncaster to deliver ten tons of steel coils that will eventually be used on .
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Sprightly Brian can still hop up onto the truck’s trailer without any assistance to tie down a tarpaulin with rope.
Brian says: “I love my job and I’ve never ever thought of retiring. When my medical came round in December I wasn’t worried, I knew I’d pass.
“The government wants older people to go back to work and why not? I know many folk who say they’re bored having nothing to do.
“That’s not a problem for me. Looking forward to the next trip gets me out of bed in the mornings.
“Retirement would bore me after a couple of months. “What would I do? A bit of gardening or shopping? Your weekends are for hobbies”.
Brian, a Sheffield United fan, only gave up playing cricket at 60 after coming out of retirement at 54 to wield the bat again for his local club.
He adds: “I’d say carry on working if you can. Getting up and down in the lorry keeps me fit.
“The way things are I’d struggle if I had to live on my pension. The cost of living is shocking.
“Prices are out of proportion. I’d have to cut down a lot to meet all these big bills that are coming in for electric and gas.
“I’m so glad I’m working because I couldn’t afford them. It’s going to cripple a lot of people.”
Most weeks he will clock up nearly 1,000 miles taking at least two trips to Lancashire and notching up a 12-hour day making three drops in Birmingham, plus local journeys.
He also often drives to North Wales and Newcastle – round trips of nearly 300 miles.
No new-fangled ratchet straps or side curtains to here. He protects his load the old-fashioned way.
He has sat-nav but doesn’t use it and two map books in the cab that he never refers to.
After 70 years at the wheel, driving more than 3.5million miles, he knows the roads of Britain by heart.
They are all stored in his brain, which Brian believes is part of the reason he stays young.
Brian is astonished by the price of diesel.
When he began driving lorries in 1953, a gallon cost less than two shillings – that is under 10p in today’s money.
Brian learned to drive trucks and armoured vehicles as an 18-year-old in the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards based near Hanover in Germany.
When his National Service ended he drove tankers for Esso for eight years delivering petrol and paraffin to farms within a 20-mile radius of Sheffield.
And in 1960 he joined his dad Edward’s haulage business – when the diesel bill for two trucks was just £45 a month.
Keeps Brian young
Today it can cost sometimes Brian nearly £2,000 a month just for diesel. Tyres cost £300 each and every eight weeks his lorry must be serviced at £400 a time.
Brian’s wife of 67 years, Mavis, 89, does his accounts. The couple have four sons aged between 64 and 56.
He says: “If anybody had told me when I started driving that diesel would cost eight quid a gallon, I’d never have believed them. There’s not a lot of profit left but I’m going to keep going as long as I can.”
When Brian started trucking he drove an eight-wheel Leyland Octopus on long-distance runs carrying steel to Liverpool docks and bringing back sugar from Tate & Lyle’s factory.
He says: “It was long before motorways and the maximum speed you could go in an eight-wheeler was 20miles an hour.
“In a four-wheeler you were allowed to do 30mph. Today’s lorry drivers don’t know they are born. They sit there nine hours a day and don’t even have to change gears.
“Sometimes I’d have a load of spades and forks from Spear & Jackson and would have to lift them off yourself.
“Then you had to throw on ten tons of sugar by hand – 700 bags weighing 28lbs and you’d have to chuck them off again at the other end. It was a nightmare but it kept me fit.
“If the lorry broke down you had to fix it yourself. I once went to Scotland and a tyre blew out in Carlisle.
“I had to put the spare wheel on myself and had to drive around Scotland praying I wouldn’t have another puncture.”
Brian has only had one spell off work and that was 50years ago when he was nearly killed.
He says: “I was delivering in Birmingham and they loaded me up with 15-foot-long steel bars, eight inches in diameter.
“They chains came off and the bars started rolling. I took a dive off the lorry, towards the front of the vehicle.
“I’d have been a gonner if I’d fallen off the side of the lorry and the steel bars had gone on top of me.
“Taking that dive saved my life. They took me to the hospital and bandaged up my right leg which was badly cut but they didn’t even look at my other leg.
“I got into the lorry and drove back to Sheffield. My left foot was broken but I didn’t know it. It hurt like hell every time I pressed the clutch. I was off work for seven weeks.”
Brian adds: “I thought the traffic was bad in the 1970s but it is much worse now.
“The roads are a lot safer now but there’s more silly drivers on them.”
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Brian delivers steel for just one customer - Central Wire Industries in Rotherham.
The firm’s logistics manager Andrew Jebb, says: “Brian’s enthusiasm for the job is amazing. That shows on his face and he’s so reliable. He’s showing no signs of slowing down.”