Shetland’s van and truck culture examined in prose, poetry and noisy records

As usual, you can read the text below (and extra piece of doggerel) or play the Mixcloud version with me reading it and 12 tracks of (this time noisy and quite obvious) music by clicking here. It also goes out on 60 North Radio at 7.00pm on Friday. Full playlist right at the end.

It used to be vans, in Shetland. Red Vans. To be precise, wee red Citröen C15 vans, which were simple affairs, based on the little AX car, which was itself a development of the legendary 2CV. They were slow, capacious, cheap and available, as there was a Citröen dealer in Brae, a village 20-odd miles north of Lerwick, and everyone liked the owner, John. They were red because they rusted, just like every car dealing with the salt atmosphere of Shetland, and red didn’t show up the corrosion quite so much. No white vans in Shetland then. And few now. They all turn speckled brown eventually.

I once had a lift from Lerwick to Hillswick in my friend Drew’s C15 van. Now, when I say van, unless you’re familiar with the genre, you’re maybe thinking something Transit sized, or bigger. A C15 was basically an AX with a box on the back. There was no bulkhead between the two front seats and that box, and generally a trip to town meant filling said space with stuff. In this case, coming back from Lerwick meant Drew and his wife Vivienne in the front, and in the back a couple of bales of hay, several sacks of animal feed, shopping from the Co-op (no other supermarkets then), Drew and Vivienne’s two daughters, Lizzie and Emmie, and me. Seatbelts? You must be joking. Come to think of it, there may have been a sheepdog. Or two.

C15s had high ground clearance and narrow tyres, they were light and manoeuvrable and could, at a pinch, manage an untarred track, some hill heather or even a beach. You used them up and threw them away, basically, as when they were done, they were really done. For years you could see remnants of the Shetland Citröen fleet on crofts, acting as henhouses or peat shelters. Until even the peat complained.

The C15 vanished and the Berlingo kind of took its place. Ich Bin Ein Berlingoer, I used to say. We had three in succession, and they were – are – great vans with seats and sliding side doors. And windows, if you want. But by the mid 90s the pickup truck had taken over as Shetland’s crofting transportation of choice. And especially the Toyota HiLux. 

Jim’s Garage in Lerwick had and still has the Toyota dealership, and everyone liked Jim, who owned it. Hi-luxes, in their original two-seater form, were better than C15s because they could carry much more stuff, and were sort of weatherproof with an Ifor Williams hard top on the back bed. They were four wheel drive, most of them so they could go anywhere, in almost any conditions, and they could tow trailers, boats and small houses about with ease. They were also, as illustrated in a memorable Top Gear edition, almost indestructible.

And there was money in Shetland, too, partly due to oil, partly because of fishing and aquaculture. The crew cab Hi-lux and its Mitsubishi, Nissan and Ford equivalents arrived, and the pickup could be a family car. They were customised with bull bars, spotlights, and the upmarket variants had leather seats, cataclysmic stereo systems, sometimes draught beer accessible via the tailgate.

The Citroen Garage in Brae sadly went out of business. Berlingos began to vanish from the roads. The last C15 henhouse rusted away. And still the HiLuxes and L200s roared and rattled along the A970, piled high, like their predecessors, with sheepdogs, hay, peat, children and drums of red diesel. For tractors, obviously.

I have a seven year old crew cab HiLux with rust problems (it was probably leased to a contractor on the gas plant site, who used it as a boat) a cracked windscreen which I must get fixed one year and a sophisticated stereo system I can’t work properly. It’s clumsy, huge and sounds like an oil drum full of rocks and spanners being rolled down a hill. It consumes diesel in vast quantities but during the recent snow it hauled us and various other people out of trouble on several occasions. 

We would like to go electric, or hybrid, but electric pickup trucks are a kind of holy grail fantasy in this country. It’s all very well in  the USA, where they can be vast enough to hold adequate batteries and nobody uses them as anything but cars. But here, where roads are thin, dragging a trailer full of sheep out of four feet of peat, in snow, will deplete a lithium cell in minutes. Besides, have you tried to order an electric vehicle? Delivery times are somewhere in 2025. Even dodgems.

So I’ll plough on with the truck. But every so often I’ll look on eBay for a C15, some of which were made into camper vans, one or two of which are still on the road. It’s crazed nostalgia, the kind that once made me fly to London, get the train to Tonbridge and collect an eBay-bought Citröen 2CV. In january. The heater hoses had been disconnected, there were holes in the roof and the gear stick came out of the dashboard on the M25.

Nostalgia. Not what it once was.

The Shetland Pick-Up

Once this addiction starts, I cannot stop

I need an Ifor Williams top

BF Goodrich tyres, a CB radio, so I can talk

To my brothers of the differential lock

I’ve been betrayed by domesticity

And the obsession with electricity.

But only diesel, a turbo 2.2

For hauling round bales through mud and snow will do

I remember: crew cab, shotgun and spotlight racks

Springsteen, Steve Earle and Daniel O’Donnel tracks

Tailgate parties on St Ninian’s Isle

Red tins and Southern Comfort, consumed in HiLux style

But then, domestic matters came to call

At the Big Bannock, behind the North Roe Hall

A wife, a mortgage, trips sooth to IKEA

Talk of baby seats, suchlike daft ideas

She was a trainee psychiatric nurse

She spoke of Subarus and Fords,  or worse

Even Vauxhall Zafiras

I did not hear her

By then  I was working out in Kazakhstan

And she was with a Citröen Berlingo man

Home at last, on the Aberdeen Gumtree

I found the vehicle for me

A Barbarian, with leather heated seats

Illuminated sills. My joy was complete

The rumble of its engine in my ears

Crankshaft and gasket failure fears

Assuaged: only the early L200 trucks

Had problems. Even then it was bad luck

Or if you were sold a glossy heap of shite

Abused by workers on the Gas Plant site

And so I drive from Fethaland  to Virkie

Two bags of coal, or else the handling’s quirky

But only in the least inclement weather

I’ll wash her with the finest chamois leather

And in the heated garage stroke her gently

She’s better than a Bentley

Or Ford Ranger, even a Toyota

Regret? Not one iota

Only true love do I  feel

This passion is real

Oh, Mitsubishi L200, my precious! Do not fear

I’ll never over-rev you in third gear

(Or reverse you down a slip, launching a boat

Until I feel you start to float

As once I watched a friend, who wouldn’t listen

Do with an NP300, a Nissan

“Corrosion?” He said, smiling “geez some peace.

It’s going back next week. It’s on a lease.”)

Playlist

Listen to the Mixcloud show here

Tom Robinson Band — 2-4-6-8 Motorway

Queen — I’m in Love With My Car

ZZ Top — Arrested For Driving Blind

Stone Roses — Driving South

Snow Patrol — Chasing Cars

Grateful Dead — Truckin’

Arcade Fire — No Cars Go

Jefferson Airplane — She Has Funny Cars

Fountains of Wayne — 92 Subaru

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band — Roll Me Away

Steve Earle — Copperhead Road

Gillian Welch — Pass You By

Drive-By Truckers — Carl Perkins’ Cadillac