Ferry transfer and driving on the left: On the road with England expert Stefan Sprenger

After two hours waiting, Stefan Sprenger finally steers his Actros onto the steel ramp and then inside the “Spirit of Britain”. The tailback had stretched back as far as the motorway, well beyond the port of Calais. Luckily, the document and cargo checks were completed quickly there. “It’s particularly busy in the mornings here, especially on Wednesdays, like today. A lot of people drive over then, so they can get back before the weekend.”

“Over” means across the English Channel to Britain. The ferry from Calais in France to Dover in England takes about an hour and a half. While his Actros is in the truck deck of the “Spirit of Britain”, Stefan uses his chip card to go through the glass doors into the “Commercial Drivers” lounge a few levels up. He buys a cup of coffee and takes a seat on a lounger. All around, other drivers are napping. “The crossing is all about relaxing in here.”

Clever planning called for.

This is an important skill for the driver from Upper Bavaria. His drives, which typically start with loading his cargo in southern Germany and then take him to destinations all over the island of Britain, are really something. Calais is the bottleneck – the waiting times are often long and require some clever planning on Stefan’s part. “I’ve had to wait 12 hours before, when the dockers were on strike. I usually try to time the trip so that I come over in the afternoon. But that leaves at least four hours of driving.”

If that works out, it means getting to the seaside town of Folkestone quickly in order to grab a place for the night at the truck stop. If it doesn’t, however, due to the 54-year-old getting stuck in traffic in Belgium, for example, he spends the night at a truck stop in Calais, and takes an early ferry in the morning. In the case of urgent cargoes, he heads for the Channel Tunnel and takes the train to England.

No fear of Brexit.

Stefan trained as a car mechanic, worked as a concrete drilling and sawing technician, and switched to trucks after suffering a slipped disc. He has been driving around Britain for years. The RoadStars reporter wants to know if Brexit will soon make things more complicated for him. “Oh, they’ll eventually find a reasonable solution, so we won’t notice any major difference,” says the driver with a shrug.

He is similarly calm towards driving on the left, and tells of how considerately drivers treat one another on the road in Britain. “I've heard that, when they’re learning to drive, the English are told about how important trucks are, as they’re responsible for the shelves being full in the supermarkets,” says Stefan.

He generally transports food on his regular trips from Italy to Germany. In Britain, he carries grouped goods, automotive parts, newsprint and packaging for a large online retailer. He often returns with aluminium tabs, as well as recycled materials ranging from waste paper to metal, obtained from shredding old engines, for example.

Today, he has shopping trolleys in his sliding floor trailer with aluminium panels. He will deliver these to the East Midlands and then continue a little further north on to Sheffield. Here, a digger will pour pressed aluminium into the trailer. “I will take this to near Peschiera in northern Italy.” Specifically, He will first drive to Mittenwald. “I live there, on and off,” he says. He will spend the weekend there with his wife and then head south on Monday.

Enjoys driving on his own.

His wife has already joined him on several trips, and has come to appreciate the chair that takes the place of the passenger seat in the driver’s cab with SoloStar Concept. “On a nine-hour drive to southern Italy, she slept for eight hours. She woke up in Bari and asked where the sea was,” Stefan says, smiling.

His wife is the only person he wants alongside him. Spending time alone is one of the things he likes about his job. “When things get tough, I put on some AC/DC or Rammstein and turn it up to the max.” Stefan is usually on the road from Monday to Friday. After completing his training, he decided that he would never again spend the whole year in one place. He says this just before the ferry lands in Dover, with surprisingly calm waters.

But does life on the road still hold the same appeal for him? And what about the tiring times that are part of the job? In the port of Calais, for example, which is sealed off like a high-security prison, as migrants keep trying to reach England hidden in trucks. “It’s not easy, but then where is it easy?” says Stefan. And he then adds the most important part, with customary Upper Bavarian warmth: “It’s just fantastic fun, every time!”

Photos: Ralf Kreuels