Comments on: Make mine a Gallon

By: Area Trace No Search

Area Trace No Search — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:09:15 +0000

I do between 70 and 120 miles a shift usually – It’ll be interesting to see which calls they want me to turn down to save the miles.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:34:26 +0000

Back in those 80’s days we were restricted to whatever the total was per shift. Using our initiative we would disconnect the speedometer (none of this digital nonsense in those days), we were using Mk 3 Escorts and Vauxhall Chevettes. The ruse was obviously discovered when the mpg returns for vehicles had dropped below 10. The witch hunt to find out who had committed these terrible deeds was unsuccessful. Mind you all they had to do was check those with lots of scratches on the back of their hands, something you suffered when fiddling under the dashboard to disconnect the cable

By: ted

ted — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:35:42 +0000

The early eighties. Memories.
We had mileage limits of 30 on the early shift (7 hours) , 40 on the backshift (9 hours) and 35 on the nightshift (8 hours).

One station had a phone call from the local priest about 6am. “I’m not sure if something is wrong but one of your panda cars has been reversing around our car park in circles for the last half an hour”.

Another time the backshift were told by the early shift “I ran out of miles”. “The panda is at Georges Cross (3 miles away), I parked it up and got the bus back to the station”.

Of course the crazy thing was that while the police had pretty much stopped vehicle patrols because the petrol budget was gone there was plenty overtime going for anything else because that was a different budget,

Happy days!

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:47:42 +0000

For the steering lock to engage he’d have to remove the keys too. The simplest way is to just switch off the engine. (I used this technique during my student years before I had an income)

By: Litew8

Litew8 — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:47:21 +0000

3-Litre Turbo? AWESOME!!!!