Fresh out of uni, I set up my own company, and needed a van.
Looking around on eBay, I wanted something special, and for 200 quid I found something with a fresh MOT on it. For the oldies, it was a Bedford CF2 with the 2.3litre petrol engine. Guaranteed to make my customers remember me.
I was in Portsmouth, and the van was in Blackpool, so I took 10 hours worth of trains to pick this van up, and by 10pm on a damp October evening I hit the motorway to commence my journey southward.

Seeing as the tight owner hadn't put much motion lotion in, I indicated off the empty motorway for the first service station I saw. The brakes were having none of it (genuine MOT my arse), the gears failed to slow the bouncy van down, and at a massive 30mph the van had just lost enough traction to spin 90 degrees horizontally, and then 90 degrees vertically. I fell out of the windscreen.

After the wreckage had been cleared away, and a shaky coffee offered gratis from the sympathetic motorway guys, I had to hitch-hike home. My first ride (and I shit you not) was in a brand new fire engine being delivered to Birmingham. There was still the protective plastic on the passenger's seat. The gruff 60+ year old Yorkshireman let me get 30 seconds into his story before offering the sage advice "should'na bort a blummin' old van then, shouldya, ye daf' pilluck. Get theeself a nice Merc Sprinter, that's what thee shouduv done."

To a shaken-up 22 year old at 5am, 300 miles from home whose still recovering from a traffic accident and the spunking of 200 quid, the recommendation that I should have forked out for a 25k brand new van was a bit hard to swallow.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 19 Oct 2006, 22:44, Reply)