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The Annotated Lyrics
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- Ersatz G.B.
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- The Remainderer
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- 2014
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- Smith and Mark
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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- The Container Drivers
The Container Drivers
Lyrics
Net cap. of five eight thousand pounds (1)
They sweat on their way down
Report with customs bastards (2)
Hang around like clowns, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Bad indigestion
Bad bowel retention
Speed for their wages
Sometimes torn short sleeves
Sometimes torn shirt sleeves, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Look at a car park for two days
Look at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
Train line, stone and grey, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
[Peel: elasties on their co-op jeans]
This is not their town
Big cigars come out of the ground (3)
Sweat on their way down
Sweat on their way down, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
F. Jack's a distant relation (4)
Communists are just part time workers (5)
And there's no thanks
From the loading bay ranks, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Look at a car park for two days
Look at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
RO/RO roll on/roll off (6)
Uh-containers and their drivers
Speed for their wages
Uh-container drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
SaveSave
Notes
1. It is a typical vocal quirk of MES to sound out abbreviations and numbers, and this apparently means "net capacity of 58,000 pounds." A "container" is a standardized shipping unit that can be stacked on ships and hauled via truck. The song positions itself in a rather extensive tradition of trucker songs, while at the same time lampooning the genre (cf. the huge snare build-up to the 3 second guitar solo), which comprises mostly country and rockabilly paeans to, or laments about, the trucking life. "Pinball Machine," which the Fall covered in 1989, is another such song, as is "White Line Fever," which the band recorded in 2005 (It is telling that the Fall seem not to have based their version of the latter song on Merle Haggard's sublime original, but on a version by Bud Brewer that MES got off a compilation of trucker songs).
You'll all be glad to know that the song will have no trouble at the weigh station, whose operator, Zack, tells us:
"Wikipedia tells us that the net load weight of a 40' container is 57,759 lbs, and for a 40' high-cube container is 58,598 lbs. The first line of the song checks out."
2. MES worked as a shipping clerk when he was nineteen.
3. The "big cigars" are probably factory chimneys, as seen from a speeding truck.
4. This refers to "Fiery Jack," the protagonist of another Fall song. Like Fiery Jack, the titular drivers are probably best imagined as middle aged men devoted to hard living and prolific alcohol consumption. Also, although in interviews and writings MES always describes Jack as an alcoholic, the lyrics suggest he is a speed freak, and (particularly in the early 80s, an era before drug testing) truck drivers have long been notorious for their speed use. Even today, when legal limits have been placed on the amount of driving that can be done in a 24 hour period, it is well known that in order to make money truckers must drive much more than they sleep, making speed a particularly useful tool of the trade. However, drug testing now makes it difficult for drivers to ingest the substances that enable them to function beyond the normal threshold of human endurance; modern truckers sometimes substitute crack, which leaves the system much quicker and thus is less liable to be discovered in a drug test, for speed.
5. I take this to be a suggestion that communists typically get jobs in order to organize the workers, and hence they spend as little time as possible actually working, and move on frequently.
6. RO/RO or Roll ON/Roll Off ferries are ferries designed so that cargo vehicles can drive right onto them (as opposed to LOLO or Lift On/Lift Off ferries which load and unload cargo with a crane).
More Information
The Container Drivers: Fall Tracks A-Z
Here is a list of trucker songs, but it is by no means exhaustive of the genre. Jimmy Martin's "Widow Maker," Little Feat's "Willin'," and Merle Haggard's "Movin' On" (as well as "White Line Fever" and "Pinball Machine") are a few notable omissions, and I'm sure there are others.
Comments (34)
Good work on the site, I have followed your questions on the forum and use this site a lot.
help/thanks!
Actually I'm sure I hear "elasties," sensical or not I'm going with it. "Frayed" would very much fit though but I don't hear it. I wonder though if it's that on any live versions and that's where you got the word?
QED.
I have always heard the line "Sometime torn shirtsleeves."
This makes much more sense to me. Shirtsleeves that were torn on some unspecified and unremembered shift on the loading bay ramps and never mended or replaced because who has time or a wife for that - rather than an unlikely suntan somehow acquired while driving through clouds on the M62.
I have had 40 years of this.
I have just listened to about eight different live and studio versions of the song and I am, of course, completely wrong.
Overthinking it, as usual,
In Renegade and elsewhere he says he was a shipping clerk, which though administrative is not the same thing. I don't believe there's any documented indication he was specifically a customs clerk.
They sweat on their way down
Reports with Customs Masters
Hang around like clowns, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their driverssssssshh(1)
Bad indigestion
Bad bowel retention
Speak for their wages(2)
Some ten tonne shirt sleeves(3)
Some ten tonne shirt sleeves, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their driverssssssshh
Live in a car park for two days
Live in a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
Train line, stone and grey, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their driverssssssh
Ecclesiastes in their co-op jeans(4)
This is not their town
Big cigars come out of the ground(5)
Sweat on their way down
Sweat on their way down, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers
Uh-containers and their driversssssshh
F. Jack's a distant relation
Communists are just part time workers
And there's no thanks
From the loading bay ranks, they're
Uh-containers and their drivers
Live in a car park for two days
Live at a grey port for two days
Train line, stone and grey
RO/RO roll on/roll off
Uh-containers and their drivers
Speak for their wages
Uh-container drivers
Uh-containers and their drivers.
(1) I think its fair to say that what ever 'Custom' Master Mark was discussing in this song, it was only for the initiated.
(2) Only people in a position of power 'speak for their wages' notably Doctors, Actors, Social workers Priests etc. See note (3)
(4) Ecclesiastes: a book of wisdom literature in canonical Jewish and Christian Scripture. Its important to remember the speed at which Mark sometimes tried to convey lyrics, in tempo with the song, also notably the sometimes jumbled 'Cavalry or Calvary' on live versions of Blindness.
(5)I think Princess Margaret might be a fan of 'Big Cigars..'
That aside, theirs no doubts in my mind that Mark struggled at the end to deal with many a hairy handed mickey puller, and I wish him as much love and warmth today as I did when he was alive, God speed OLD MAN x
I'm hearing it as "sun tan, torn shirt sleeves"
https://twitter.com/hanleyPa/status/1317908305671454720
about which, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulus_the_woodgnome
Look at a grey port for two days
This could well be related to Mark's experience of Liverpool docks when he worked as a shipping clerk. This is from his book with Mick Middles:
I had to get on a motorbike and get over to Liverpool...there were boats from Nigeria there, full of cotton or whatever. They would have sailed halfway around the world and then have to wait two fucking days for the Liverpool dockers to get their fucking shit together. I have never, ever forgotten that...I was just a 16 year old kid really, or whatever, and I had to take the dockers on.
Of course, waiting for those ships to unload would have been the container drivers.