Sties has around sixty truck on the road, mostly Volvo and Scania. Obviously every truck has its own driver. The trucks that drive on the “inland” are renewed every two to three years. At that point they have driven around 300.000 kilometres and, for the conditions they endured, this is more than enough. STIES wants its drivers to have appropriate materials at their disposal.

Helge Hansen is working for Sties Thermo-transport for five years. The last two, three years he’s been driving on the inland. Before that time, you could encounter him everywhere in Europe. How comparatively the inland is, becomes clear as soon as I got on his truck. Helge: “We will go to the north of Norway through Sweden and Finland, in order to reach Alta. It’s impossible to drive another route, as my truck is too tall for the crossovers in Norway. The crossovers are 3.80 meters tall, while the truck is between 3.90 and 4 meters tall.”

The distance seems not so bad if I listen to Helge say it’s 450 Norwegian miles, but it turns out that Norwegian miles are totally different from the English ones: a Norwegian mile is apparently 10 kilometre. Throughout the year, Helge makes this trip around 45 times.

The roads resembled ski slopes.

Even though I had just taken place in the Volvo F1225 Intercooler, I was already startled: the roads resembled ski slopes! They are incredibly small, around two and a half meters, and covered in a layer of ice. Helge is intensively changing gears and from time to time a wheelset is either raised or dropped to get more grip on the road. A Dutch truck would already be alongside the road.

“It lies in the spikes.” Tires with metal spikes make sure that the truck stays on the road. Or at least that was the intention, but even though the truck had tires with spikes, it sometimes happened that the wheels lost their grip. When that happened, Helge quickly undertook action.

With a speed of around twenty kilometres per hour we moved through the night. Helge: “We are accustomed to it. From September to May there is snow on the roads and then they look like this. Of course there are some differences between trips and some might be worse than others, because you simply can’t control the weather or the reindeers. But, because we always drive in these circumstances, we gained a lot of experience. Last year for example, there was a Spaniard that had a delivery in Bergen. For us, that is a trip that normally takes around ten hours of driving. It turned out he needed three days to get there. A lot more dangerous are the reindeers. Those animals suddenly jump out of the forest and if you weren’t paying attention, you will most certainly hit them.”

Suddenly there’s a moose is on the road..

From the forest a moose appears. Because of all the light on the trucks, we can easily follow the movements of the animal. The spotlights on the truck are in situations like these a lifesaver, because it makes it possible to see the animal on time and brake before anything happens. Over the radio a colleague is warned of the moose, as he’s driving just behind us.

Just now the radio catches my attention. De Norwegian drives don’t use it very often: only when they encounter a colleague and have to warn them for slippery conditions or other dangers.

Another phenomenon in the Norwegian truck is the car-phone. With this, the drivers have a direct connection with a radio station at which they can call in traffic jams, heavy weather, and so on. Besides this, the phone is used to call the firm, families and for instance the customs at the border.

The latter is indeed called this time,

because we won’t make it to the Swedish border before closing time. After calling the customs, they agreed to stay open a little longer just for us. At the border at Østby we enter Sweden. The road doesn’t get any wider at this point. The only thing recognizable is a sign with “Customs” on it and a crossing gate; no waiting times and no exaggerated formalities

Helge: “That’s one of the reasons why I chose to drive on the inland: no hassles at the borders. In Northern Europe it’s not that big of a problem, but when you get to France or Italy it’s just a mess. I was sick and tired of those circumstances and then I didn’t even get started on the South-German police, because those people are incredibly corrupt.”

Only the tracks in the snow show a sign of life..

We’re driving for about six hours now and the truck has become somewhat of a snow castle. The rear lights and the name of the firm are almost no longer visible. Furthermore all the snow that is falling from the air obstructs our view. It’s a lonely night. Only the tracks in the snow show that there are other living beings wandering around. At about half past two at night we stop in Sveg, where we will be taking a short nap.

Very short, because three hours later we are already back on the road again. Snowploughs are already busy with keeping the roads accessible and removing the snow that has fallen over night. Keeping the roads clean is a huge task and they use all kinds of material to achieve this: bulldozers, snowploughs and trucks. It’s weird to see all those trucks full of snow.

Helge and I had renamed the current road towards Sveg to motorway, as it was a full two and a half meters wide! When we passed the city, the road became even wider. We have around 4 meters of road at our disposal at this point, but it keeps being covered in a layer of ice and we still have to be on the lookout. Over a distance of 100 kilometres the temperature drops from -9 degrees to -24 degrees. Later on, in Finland, it would become even colder: there the temperature dropped from +2 degrees to -35 degrees. This cold is not something you would notice, as there is not much wind. The only thing you will notice is your nose internally freezing and when you get to a warm place again you find out you have a nosebleed.

The trip through Sweden would occupy the rest of the day. Even though it’s slippery on the road, they drive pretty fast; after all you don’t know what the situation is like hereafter.

At the first stop in Sweden, the first problems also arise. These problems were not for us, but for one of Helge’s colleagues. They’re having trouble with the air supply of the trailer. Some bolts are loosened, others are tightened and within half an hour the problem was resolved.

More to the North the landscape becomes rugged and barren

As we move further northward, the landscape changes: trees become smaller and overall it becomes barren. When driving here, an intense feeling of loneliness overwhelms you: hours go by without seeing any oncoming traffic, villages or cities. A weird feeling when you are accustomed to the overcrowding in the Netherlands. Also the length of day changes and indicates that we move further north. Around 9 or 10 o’clock the sun rises and by 4 o’clock twilight falls.

One barrier indicates where the border is..

On a small abandoned mountain road a border crossing suddenly emerges; we’re driving out of Sweden again. The last couple of hours we were busy driving up the mountains, which divides both of the countries, without us even noticing. After the border crossing, the descent begins and with it the pain in our ears (due to the differences in altitude). Even though it’s dark, the spotlights make it possible for me to look at the sides of the road. What I see is an abyss of a couple of hundred metres deep, just behind a paper-thin crash barrier.

Meanwhile, Helge is calmly calling his wife while steering through hairpin turns without any trouble. At the foot of the mountain, the abyss is exchanged for an icy river. We drive on trough the tunnels from fjord to fjord. Twice that night we cross a fjord as the only passengers on a ferry.

A pallet of pizza’s

It’s Thursday morning 8 o’clock, we’ve been driving from Tuesday afternoon around 4 o’clock and in total we’ve only had 5 hours of sleep and three times a day a break of half an hour. The first unloading point is Narvik, where a pallet of pizza’s had to be delivered. It is slippery; we can’t drive faster than 25 km/h – low gear, rear wheels up and that’s how we crawl up the mountain.

Tromsø

A collision! Suddenly, from a side street in downtown Tromsø, a car appeared. It was too late to brake. Because we had already unloaded a couple of times this morning at different places, the truck had became a lot lighter and therefore it slipped. Helge immediately grabs a camera from his bag to capture the damages. The Volvo appears not to have much damage, but the car is pretty busted. Later, when we call Stie’s to tell them about the accident, it shows that it was useful to capture the damages: the owner of the car had already called the firm. His estimate of the damages was around six-thousand Crowns (which is roughly two and half thousand guilders). According to Helge’s estimation that would be enough to buy two instances of that car.

Helge: “We capture the damages for the insurance cases. Encounters with difficult people, like this one, occur more often than you would expect. By taking those pictures, we have evidence in case they destroy their car even more themselves. I believe the damages this time were around 450 Crowns, which is something entirely different than the amount the person indicated.” At Stie’s they already thought the damages were a bit exaggerated and luckily they could laugh about it. “I will put on the snow chains now, as one collisions is enough.

The northern lights are amazing to see..

Tromsø is behind is and in front of us lays Alta, the place where we will pick up our new cargo for the ride back. This time we will ride through Finland to one of the most northern villages in Norway. This time there will be no overpasses, but the roads seem to be in such a bad condition that it’s better to take a detour. On the Finnish steppe the temperature drops to -35 degrees Celsius. It is so cold that, even though the heating is on, the windows freeze on the inside.

Slowly it starts to become dark, suddenly… the northern lights. A fantastic experience: a kind of green-yellowish glow in the sky. We get spooked as we suddenly see blinking lights: another one of Stie’s trucks. We stop for a while to talk, exchange experiences and ask how the road is up ahead. The contact we just had was the last for a long time being.

We’re driving again. The road is like a long ribbon swirling in front of us, again that feeling of loneliness. Then suddenly: two wolves at the side of the road. Because of the headlights we luckily see them on time. If we happen to get stranded here.. I don’t want to think about it. Not only the predators are dangerous around here: three Swedish oncoming trucks almost push us off the road. It takes a lot from Helge to keep the truck nicely on the road.

At the North Cape we load fish for Italy

In Alta, around two hundred kilometers from the North Cape, we load fish to be taken to Italy. In Oslo the fish shall be loaded into another truck.

The next day it’s Sunday and that means that the stores will be closed in Sweden. Therefore we decide to do our shopping today. At around 12 o’ clock we leave Alta and start our ride to Oslo.

You would expect it to be extremely cold up here in the North, but this is not the case: it rains!

Because of this the roads become somewhat impassable and slippery. West-Finmark, the area that we have to go through later, is the opposite of this: there a blizzard is storming.

In the first couple of hours of the ride, nothing much happens. Shortly after, however, the visibility gets worse and worse up to the point that we can’t see anything but white: fog. Luckily it doesn’t take too long for the fog to disappear; only an hour or two. We’re driving on the same type of small roads as we were at the beginning of our journey. Occasionally oncoming traffic spooks us and before you know it, a side mirror gets hit. This is a good indication of how small the roads really are: two trucks can barely pass each other on it. Helge responds indifferent to the incident; it appears it happens often.

Difficulties with the technology

Once we’ve left Finland, everything seems to improve: the roads are better than they were in Sweden and for the first time in days they are clean. At a burger joint we run into Finn. Finn works for Alta transport and is also transporting fish to Oslo.

He has some problems with the cooling engines. We decide to wait for the mechanic together so we can ride together afterwards. In the meantime we decided to get some sleep.

Once we’re back on the road, the problems start: the brakes of Finn’s trailer aren’t working. Helge and Finn try, together, to fix it and it works. Around a hundred kilometers further it is our turn: the lights on the trailer stopped working. This means that there is no light on both the left and the right of the truck.

Helge: “Everything short circuits. The fuses I put in immediately burst, one by one. We can’t solve the problem here. The roads might be clean of snow, but that is because they use tons of salt and because of the salt you get problems like this. The only thing we can do now is ride on with the current lights we have.”

Later we also find out that the heating at my side had been broken down. With my legs covered in jackets I’m able to survive the cold. We enter Norway again at the border crossing in Østby. The customs officer seems to remember me: they don’t meet many Dutch people there.

customs controls on tachochraaf here that is incorporated into the wheel hub

The end of the trip is now in sight and we’re even quicker home than anticipated. Two hours ahead of the planning we drive into Oslo and stop the truck for a last cup of coffee.

“My truck is my home” it says on Helge’s shirt. When I shut the door of the Volvo for the last time and tell him goodbye, I feel that it has also become a part of my home.

The book is written in Norwegian, because it is about a Norwegian company. The book contains the history of the company, with stories written by former drivers that tell how it was to drive for the company in that time. I’ve also tried to show as many different trucks as possible, that were driving during that time. You’ll see, when going through all the pages full of pictures, that there were a lot! As a collector of everything Sties, I have a vast amount of pictures at my disposal and many of them can be found in the book.

For years I’ve wanted to create this book, and now the time has finally arrived. Seeing all the responses I’ve got, I can say it was a success too! If you are interested, you can still order the book by simply sending me a mail at info@sties.nl

Kind regards, Gerrit de Heus

The owner of the Sties truck, Anton Timmerman, used it for his daily loads, including preloading trailer and inland freights. Several times people have asked Anton if he wanted to trade his 141 for another, younger, truck. Anton responded to these questions by saying: “Just offer me something good in exchange”, and this happened. Someone offered a newer truck for the 141, to be precise a Scania R 500 (an ex Nor-Cargo in blue/white).

The dealer, who originally traded the Scania 141 with Anton, has in the meantime already sold it to a customer in France. This customer wanted to have the 141 repainted and he wanted this to be done by the same company (LINK) that was responsible for painting the 141 in Sties colors. This company has dissembled the Sties 141 and repainted it in the color that were chosen by the customer. After this was done, the 141 went back to France, fully stripped of his Sties colors.

With this, an end has come to the Scania 141 with Sties colors.

The last day of our holiday in Norway, we went to visit Morten Gran. When we arrived there, I made some more pictures of Betzy with trailer.

The last modification to Betzy was the texts on the backdoors that were changed to blue. These texts used to be black, but later they found out that they originally were blue, so they changed it. The blue text also looks a lot better on the truck.

Betzy, to this day, is still used in all kinds of truckshows and meetings for old trucks. To keep this somewhat affordable, and also in order to maintain Betzy, Morten sells various things. At the end of this year for instance, there will be new calendars made with photos of Sties.

Below you’ll find the photos I took of the last modifications to the backdoors:

When I saw the container, I first thought it was a VKB container belonging to the old model. The container was completely repainted in white, but because this was done some time ago, the paint started to come off. When I came closer, I saw underneath a flaked piece a remnant of what appeared to be blue paint. Now things started to get interesting, as this type of blue paint seemed very familiar to me. I started looking for details on the container, and those were found too.

On the doors at the backside of the container, you could see the outline of some letters due to all the dirt that stuck to it. For most people some letters aren’t very interesting, but for me, in this specific case, it was. After some more exploration, and redrawing some of the found letters, it turned out to be a container from the early days of Sties, and specifically the days in which “Stie’s” was still written in the old style on the backside. There was also some more text on the left door: “Ses Grillets”. On the right door was some incomplete text (“Transportes” or something like that, see pictures below). Unfortunately, this text wasn’t completely readable anymore and, to me, it is a mystery what the text used to say. Maybe it could possibly have to do with the containers that, back in the days, were used on a Scania LB 76 that travelled by rail from Trondheim to Oslo. The container was from that period of time, so it could be that the text on the right door has to do something with the transport by rail?

If anyone knows more about this container, and specifically the text that could possibly have been on the right door, then I would be pleased to hear from you (you can leave a comment on this story below). It would be nice if we could help each other to unravel the mystery about the exact origin of this historical discovery, because if you take into consideration that this container is supposedly from the ‘60s, and therefore over 50 years old, we can definitely consider this to be a historical discovery.

Below you’ll find a couple of pictures from the container (in the last two pictures I filled the letters with red, so they are a bit easier to see):

After a long time of searching for a suitable trailer, Morten found one just 10km away from his house. This trailer was built by Maur from Norway.

The loading platform came from VBK and is made of fiberglass. When it was new, it was used in Northern Norway.

It was restored by Knud Hansen in Padborg, Denmark. This company also had the Thermo King cooling engine and placed it in front of the trailer. The loading platform was removed and everything was painted. Then they put the loading platform back and everything got technically reviewed. The trailer was painted and equipped with the right logo’s. Now they placed the right text on the rear doors.

Also the loading platform of Betsy was painted again and the put the same logos on. Except on the blue bottom, there is a different text.

The whole combination is as good as new.

After some time driving around with only the colors blue and white, the trailer is now equipped with various logo’s. If you have a little knowledge of Sties, you’ll see that there is a difference between the logo’s on the sides. On the right side is the old logo, including the old temperatur garanti logo. This logo was used often in the ‘70 and ‘80 on, for example, the following the trucks: Volvo F89, F1225, F12, Scania -141 -142.

On the left side is the new logo, now without the comma and with a more modern font. This logo was used on the trucks until the company changed to Nor-Cargo. This combination of both logo’s was the idea of Peter Wouters himself. When he asked me what I thought of this, I told him that this would be very useful to keep the history alive, what kind of concept Sties was on the road, every logo is linked to a period of time.

Although the idea for this car is a hobbytruck, they still just work with it, and because of that you can encounter it on the road. The R500 of PWT is actually also a tribute to Øystein Stie. It’s like so many trucks, one loves it and the other one hates it.

Personally, I think the truck is great. And not only me, but apparently others also. Lately , this truck was at a truck show at Bekkevoort in Belgium and won the R500 a cup and maybe there will be more to come.

He searched for a Scania R500 in Denmark and found, and bought, one there. Then he could start with restoring the truck. To do this, he asked SVB, Stefan van Bunder, to help him. This company is run by Stefan himself, as a self-employed person, who learned all this from his dad. He began with repairing motorcycles in the back of the garage. Later he started painting cars and even later he began with trucks and trailers. Stefan has already done some painting jobs for Peter earlier on, so he got the assignment of painting the Scania. Most of the work Stefan does alone, but sometimes he gets some extra help.

 When a used truck arrives, the first thing they do is clean it. This was almost two days of work. After that, the truck got stripped of various parts, fenders, crates, dish, etc. A lot got sanded and after this, the chassis and the wheels got painted.

Then the big moment came, they needed to paint the cabin. They took a good look at how everything should be, because an R series in Sties colors is different from a Scania 3- series or a Volvo FH12. Stefan did a good job, as you can see on the pictures.

The trailer that’s going to get behind the truck, is also painted by Stefan and soon will be mounted.

Built by and for Wim Varenkamp.

This scale model is a completely renovated Tekno. Actually this scale model doesn’t belong on a Sties website, but Sties became Nor-Cargo and because of that it became a Nor-Cargo scale model. But since this scale model is so perfectly built, or rebuilt, it is still a big value, especially as it concerns a model of my dear friend Arve Almerud.

This was certainly not the easiest truck to make a scale model of, but we will try to make a description of how it was built.

There was a corner cut out of the cabin to make room for the cooling engine. The interior had been adjusted with many details. The cooling engines are made by Wim himself, just like the loading platforms, which have been made according to the original measurements.

To the changed chassis, many self-made things were attached. Things like tanks, boxes, fire extinguishers and much more.

After the model had been painted in the right colours, the stickers were affixed. This are specially made stickers with the names of the drivers, the Norwegian flag and the logo of Larvik on them. Also the letters of Volvo, which are above the grill, are stickers.

Then this model was placed in a box of glass and  got a special place at the builder’s home, which it seems it could drive off any minute.

It is a Tekno model, created by and for Wim Varenkamp (scale 1:50).

As a base for the model, the chassis of a Volvo FH was used. The cabin and front fenders are the one’s of a F12.

To make the perfect model, Wim thought it would be important that the data was correct. That’s why he contacted the VBK factory to get the correct measurements for the containers. Unfortunately they had just cleaned up the archive at VBK, so there wasn’t any data left that he needed. Wim did get the name of a seller of VBK who involved in the sale of the truck. This Norwegian was extremely helpful and searched in his old archives. During this search it seemed that there were differences between the trucks of this type; the length of the containers differed about 20 cm. Using the license plate of Arve’s truck, it was possible to find the exact data.

 By using this data, the containers of the truck and trailer were made. There is a Tekno cooling engine used for the truck, but this engine is fully adapted. Now it is similar to the real cooling engine. The cooling engine for the trailer is made by Wim himself. Just like the tool boxes, tanks, battery, exhaust, etc. Also most parts of the trailer are made by himself.

I would be a very long story to describe all the parts that are attached to this model, or which have been changed. The interior has also been adjusted. This has changed so much, that only Wim knows exactly. I myself always see something new, every time I look at the picture… It would take very much time to count all the parts of the model, but there are many.

Looking at the model, it’s like Arve is just driving away with the car towards a far destination. He had been to many places with this car.