Cement Truck - 19f

Cement mixers like lifts and breakfast are a cultural separator between the UK and the US. It is only because we speak a version of the same language that we feel a false sense of home and comfort when we are there. America is actually very foreign, far more so than France, Holland or Germany - where they are much more like us but speak a different language amongst themselves. Americans speak a bit like us but they are very different at core. For instance their cement mixers are sometimes the other way round. The narrow bit comes over the cab and empties at the front of the vehicle. How odd is that?

Lifts and breakfast? Not only do they call lifts 'Elevators' (which we know refers to a farm machine for lifting harvested crops into high barns) they call ground floor No.1, first floor No.2 etc. I think this is a way of bragging about tall buildings, obviously their 100th floor is truly only floor number 99. Breakfast? unfortunately American breakfast practice is spreading into European hotels. Tea consists of a pot of lukewarm water and your choice from a range of equally tasteless tea-bags (some containing fruit extracts) and they eat every sort of cakes, sweet puddings, cold meats and other odd things when a civilised man just wants a fry-up and/or toast with real tea or real coffee (don't get me on to American coffee). However I did see a really clever invention in one US hotel where they had no restaurant, just a room where you can make your own breakfast (a practice which works well both there and in France). It is a plastic box with a plastic blade for splitting muffins. An excellent invention. So the country is not entirely uncivilised.

Rant over, This model is always red with variations in the colour of the mixer drum and some have green windows while others are purple. The mixer drum can be yellow with red or black stripes, grey with red stripes or lemon coloured red or black stripes or no stripes. None are particularly rare but the one with a grey drum and purple windows is slightly more sought after.