Category: Life

OK, I’m more or less a truck driver now. I still struggle with the more difficult reverses, but have the standard one cracked. A few things have come to my attention though. To whit; car drivers.

Not all, obviously. The two main categories are coffin-dodgers and women. Again, not all, but when I’m screaming at some moron I’m about to plough forty tonnes of truck through, it always seems to be one or the other. All the competent women and oldsters want to form vigilante gangs and eradicate those who besmirch your record. For instance, my mother is a woman and an excellent driver, my dad is due for retirement later this year (which, by an arbitrary judgement could have him nudging the ‘oldster’ bracket)  but is a professional driver. So it’s not a sexist or ageist remark. As we know, sweeping generalisations are always wrong, but it just so happens that the conspicuous dickheads are almost without exception from those two categories. With half the country being female, and a growing percentage being elderly it is perhaps not to be remarked upon. But I have. Then, in justification have laboured the point to death. Ho hum.

 

Anyway, that was but a throw-away remark as pre-amble to my main point; ie, Things That Piss Me Off,(Driving Subsection) Volume III, Chapter 134.

1, People entering a motorway off the slip road. You are in a car. The merest dab of the pedal on the right will send you hurtling to the dizzying speed of 57 mph. This is faster than any truck is supposed to be able to go. Therefore, do not tootle down the lane at 45mph and expect to join the motorway. There is a damn good chance there is a car beside, or speeding towards the truck you are suicidaly trying to bully, preventing it from moving out a lane. This leave the trucker with the option of trying to pull up with the momentum of said forty tonnes pushing him (/her) on, or crushing your tiny little car like a beer can and laughing about it all the way home. (OK, that might just be me.)

 

2, If you felt the need to stop on the hard shoulder, illegally, then having resolved the emergency for which you had no choice but to pull over (say, having found little Johnny’s next DVD) and your car then miraculously works fine again, DO NOT sit there, static, with your indicator on. You don’t try and join a motorway at zero mph. Use that lovely hard shoulder that everyone else has left clear for real emergencies, to get up to speed, then merge. You moronic twat!

 

3, People who drive at less than 55mph. Anywhere, really, but particularly on a motorway. Give me your keys and go and stand against that wall. Yes, the one with big posts before it and the pock-marked brickwork.  As for those who drive at 53mph until you are almost on top of them, then as soon as you find a gap and pull out to overtake, speed up… there is a special hell reserved for you, and you will soon be in it if I have my way.

 

4, I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, anyone who says “But you should only be doing 70mph”. No excuses, first against the wall. That has no bearing to my my truck driving as my trucks are limited to 55mph, but on general principle it has to be done. 

 

…And…breathe…in with calm, out with homicidal road rage.

 

So, the driving’s going well.

 

I need to get full time though. It’s shite never knowing what shift or even day you are working. And when you are doing big shifts there is no time to do anything but work, eat and sleep. Still, it’s an ‘in’. I am actually doing the job for which I will be applying when a vacancy arises, can’t get much better than that for on the application form.

I was  mad-busy  last week. 75 hour week. That should be  £600, take home. Which sounds great, but all you do, literally, is work, sleep and eat. I got an early finish the other night, finished for 1, in bed for 1.30 ish, caught up on my sleep so didn’t get up till 10.30,  Wendy cooked me some food as I got a shower and made my butties and such, ate my dinner/ breakfast, had 45 minutes ‘me’ time then off to work again. That was a good day, I got finished early enough to get a decent kip, when I’m doing a full 15 hour shift I can be starting at 1700, finished at 0900, in bed by 0945, awake (can’t sleep) at 1400, back in work, knackered, at 1700.

I remember when I thought I was getting driving with my last works, one of the drivers (who I’d know 20 years previously at Rigby’s Dairy) shook my hand and said “Congratulations, mate. You’re going to fucking hate it!”

Means to an end.

Already I’ve been thinking ‘what can I train to do, now we’ve got all this money coming in?’ Sadly, the answer is ‘nothing.’

 

In passing, let me share with you where we all went wrong.

I was at Gail’s wedding (Wendy’s sister) last week. She had a high-flying nursing job until the Tories came along, now she’s back to standard nursing. So her work guests were from the NHS. I overheard one posh arse say “There are plenty of jobs out there. They are crying out for GP’s. The youngsters just don’t want to train.”

I was gobsmacked!

What kind of rich, privileged background does he come from? What working class kid thinks, ‘tell you what, I’ll become a doctor’? You have to have a wealthy background, with high parental expectation/ drive (to the point of pushy-ness) and a belief culture. For my generation your life was decided at 11 years old. If you failed your eleven plus you were destined to be a working class drone. Working class parents, laissez-faire attitude, you are either clever or you are not. If you’re not there’s nowt wrong with honest labour. Middle class have a whole different attitude. I’ve seen it. Kid struggling with maths? Bring in a private tutor until they passed. Failure not an option.

Then, even if you were pushed and expected to do well all your life, you still have to have the native intelligence and financial backing. What family could support an adult learner for 10 years?

Anyway, if any of you are poor, out of work, or in a dead-end brain-dead job it’s your own fault for not training to be a GP.

No sympathy.

Buck.

Oh dear. What a day.

 

I’ve been working for Stobarts off and on for the last few weeks. I had one bad night with them. I dropped my digital tachograph card (digi-card, the chipped card that records all your driving data) somewhere between the truck and the office. A distance of a hundred yards or less. I spent ages looking for it, back and forth. It was dark and I couldn’t see it. I gave up, saying to the the guy who had been helping me “It must have fallen under one of the trucks. No worries, the lads will hand it in when it gets light.” I had to tell them in the office that  I couldn’t work that night, as you can’t drive without a digi-card.One driver had already gone home that night after losing his. As I was walking out, the chap who’d been helping me said “let’s just have a look in this bin”.

I humoured him, as he tipped it out. There was a digi-card in it, but it was the other lad’s. We went to a bin on the yard and there was mine! Some bastard (s) had seen a card on the floor, knew the consequences for the driver who’d lost it, and deliberately binned it. I was gob-smacked. I would never have looked in a bin because it would never of occurred to me that someone would be such a wanker! And to have possibly two such wankers is beyond my comprehension. On that same night though, the guy who had been helping me look really went out of his way to help me out. There are some outstandingly good people there, but…. well, I’m speechless.

The job itself is as easy as you are going to get for lorry driving. Pick up your keys and a job sheet (with one or two destinations on it).Do your checks on your unit, pick up a trailer then off you trot. Quick nip to, say, Surrey, off the motorway for a few miles, into a big yard. Either get unloaded or swap trailers, then it’s to your next destination and repeat or home. That’s it.

 

They had no work for Stobarts today so they rang me at 10.45 and asked if I could start a job in the next hour. I said I could so they sent me a text saying ‘DHL, Risley, start at 1130’.

Shit! I grabbed my stuff and set off.

 

My first obstacle was there was no DHL at the address they gave me. I went up and down the street twice before asking a lorry driver. He said it had been renamed Yodel. Ah. Thanks for that.

Then there was the unit. It was an old heap. It had a paper tachograph, which I couldn’t understand (so god knows how many hours I drove. I’m only allowed to drive four and a half before taking a forty five minute break, by law.) The automatic gear box was snatchy so I was jerky setting off and trying to reverse. It was horrible. And there was no cigarette lighter socket or USB port into which to plug my truck-nav. Not a good start. Then there was the job itself. Four or five deliveries, around the back streets of Bolton (the first two were). Horrible, horrible. I had to weave in and out of cars parked on either side of back road on a housing estate. In an artic truck.

I did the first drop, eventually. Then set off for the second. The truck-nav had me within two hundred and eighty five feet of the place, but there was no way I could get in. It would have meant turning into a back street with cars parked on both sides. At the turn. It physically wasn’t possible. If I could have started straight on to it I could have got between them but it wasn’t possible to turn ninety degrees into that gap. Because I was down back streets I was having a bit of flap about hitting a dead end. It would not have been possible to turn so I would have had to try and back out. I was having hot sweats even thinking about that. I drove right around my target location but couldn’t find a way in. In the end, with something like joy, I just gave up. I rang the agency and told them I couldn’t get in and was just going to crash if  I tried. I was going back to base.

When I got there, all happy to be going home and putting the ordeal behind me, they said ‘no, you just missed the entrance, it’s here’ and sent me back out again! *sob*

This time I went off their map, not the sat-nav. Guess what?

I got totally lost.

The agency rang me this time and told me to return to base.

I said “I don’t ever want to work for these again.”

They said “They won’t have you back, mate.”

I replied, with feeling; “Good! I hate it!”

 

And that was my day. Awful. Truly confidence shatteringly bad.

Tomorrow I’ll put it behind me and concentrate on Stobarts. I’ll give it until the end of the month on the agency, then apply for a full time job with them.

The only downside with Stobarts, as with any lorry driving job is the length of shifts. The other day I ran out of driving hours (9, extended to 10 twice a week) at Sandbach services, twenty two miles from base. They sent a chap out in a van to drive the truck back. I was waiting for an hour and a half. It meant I did a sixteen and a half hour shift! Now that is a long shift.  (Re-reading it I realize that probably needs some explanation for the maths buffs out there. Ten hours plus one and a half hours do not make sixteen and a half hours you’ll probably have noticed. The thing is; it’s ten ‘driving hours’ you can spend as long as you like waiting around to be unloaded, those hours don’t count.)

Nine hours later I was back at work. That is the way the lorry driving cookie crumbles, though.

Tomorrow is another day.

Later,

Buck.

Not loving the occasional work of Driver Hire I had started looking on the Jobcentre plus website again. Oddly, all of a sudden, there seemed to be jobs to which I could apply. I did so. The difference it makes to your confidence, having actually done the job is amazing. I applied, saying I’d been driving. Two agencies arranged for me to register. Judging by the agency I was with, I thought I’d get on both of their books, that way between them all, I might be able to get enough work.

I went to the first agency to register. The appointment was for one o’clock. I spent an hour filling in forms. As I was finishing them off (two o’clock) they asked if I could work that night. I said I could. They told me to be at Stobarts for four o’clock!

Good start.

Then to carry on doing evening/ night shifts until next week, have my statutory two days off, then go on to morning/ day shift.

And that was that. I am now working every day at Stobarts.

 

So, it was two weeks in the wilderness, now I’m having to fight for days off.

Today was my first day off since Wednesday. I’ve been working nights (start at eight o’clock work through until at least eight in the morning). Already I’ve twice worked the legal maximum of a fifteen hour shift. In my first week I worked eighty two hours. Eighty two hours! Count them! 

I’ve been swilling coffee, popping caffeine pills and guzzling generic Red Bull. The trouble is, of course, that it takes a few weeks to adjust to sleeping in the day. I’ve been getting about five hours disturbed sleep. I’ve been knackered starting the shift. Even with all the stimulants listed above, by five in the morning, when you are on a long, boring motorway there is no way you can stop from nodding.

I’ve been driving with the heater on cold air, the windows open, freezing for hours and still drifting off. I’ve had to resort to literally slapping myself every few minutes.

Hopefully that is a thing of the past now. I had a glorious three hour kip today, I’m getting to sleep in my own bed tonight (YAY!) so I should be refreshed for tomorrow. After that it should be morning starts. Even if I’m up at ungodly o’clock at least I should be able to sleep at night.

 

Working for the same firm each time has it’s advantages. I’m getting to know the truck and how to work it, rather than getting in a different vehicle each time and not knowing how to switch things on or work the onboard computer. Also, so far, the work has been easy. Last night was a quick nip to Trafford Park, pick up a trailer and run it down to Essex, get unloaded, drive back. Job done.

That Truck-Nav, let me say in passing, is the best £355 I have ever spent. Pop in the post code and you are away. It tells you when the motorway is about to split, which lane to be in, when there are speed cameras about, what speed you should be doing through average speed cameras, etc, etc. If it was any better I would be out of a job.

 

Everything I wanted then. A steady driving job, loads of money (I reckon I should be bringing home at least £633 for last week) and out of DHL / Iceland.

The down side is I have no idea how I’m supposed to do anything other than work and sleep. I wanted to do the Ironman Bolton next year but I just don’t know how I can fit in the training. I’ll give it a few weeks, see how it works out. It might seem different on days.

Already I’m getting fatter!  🙁

 

That’s where I am. Getting there. The Master-plan has been initiated. Finally. Truck driving, then on to petrol tankers, then world domination. And maybe some sleep, now and then. Plan!

 

Later,

Buck.

This has been a dynamic couple of weeks. I handed in my notice at work then had the statutory two days rest I should have been having every week whilst driving. The agency rang me three times on my last week, so I was worried I was going to have to fight for my days off. Then nothing. They rang me with a job driving a Transit van to Essex for two days. Not what I wanted, but I said OK, then they said it was minimum wage. I was less than chuffed, but they said ‘could you do it as a favour to us?’ I’m not here to do favours, I’m here to earn a living. Grrrr. Anyway, I was going to do it as they’d caught me off guard, then be prepared to refuse if they tried to get me to do it again. They rang back and cancelled the gig. Which was fine by me. I’d earned brownie points by taking the crap job, then not had to do it. Super.

Then nothing. No calls, no work. They tried to get me a week’s work driving a low-loader with tipper trucks on it.They asked if I’d ever driven a tipper truck. I haven’t. I said I’d be willing to give it a go, though. They were happy enough with that, but apparently the client wanted someone who could actually do the job. Fussy buggers.

I finally got a job on the bin wagons for Friday. I didn’t like my first go on them a few weeks ago. Very tight situations and you have to reverse in to them. Very difficult. And it’s class 2 work, so not what I’m after and less pay.

I want class 1 work. Where it’s virtually all driving forward and just the occasional reverse to worry about. You can take your time and make sure it’s all spot on then. When half of your time is spent reversing into situations that are too tight to be able to drive straight into, and you’re a newbie, mistakes are going to happen.

 

In other news, I’ve just ran the Warrington Half Marathon again. It was my first ever half, last year. This year, being the nearly superhuman triathlete that I am I treated it with contempt. I’ve just bought someone’s place in the Liverpool Marathon for next month, as they can’t make it. Because of a nagging minor leg injury (and laziness) I’ve only done three, ten mile runs since the Outlaw, six weeks ago. When I heard of the place on the Liverpool Marathon I thought I’d better get back to training. I was torn as the week or so before a race you are supposed to taper your training. Just enough to keep you from setting really. On the other hand I wanted to up my miles quickly and prove to myself I was still capable of a marathon. With the above mentioned contempt in mind (‘it’s only a half!’) I did a 13 mile ride to warm my leg up, then a 20 mile run, carrying  a water backpack, on Wednesday. Damn the contempt, but I thought I’d be fine by today.

Not so. I was trying to improve on my time of last year (1.43) and expecting to bring it in around 1.30. I ran the first mile at 7.30 minute/ mile pace whilst I warmed up. Then instead of speeding up I just kept dropping off the pace. My legs were like lead. I had the breath and the energy, but I just couldn’t make my legs work. It turned into an act of endurance just to grind the miles out. I finally finished (without the picking up of pace over the last mile and the sprint for the line of last year) in 1.47! And that was bloody hard going. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

Ho hum, give it a few days then start training for some distance running. Try and redeem myself.

 

Whilst I’ve had free time on my hands I’ve started painting the place. That’s a shitty job only to attempted when you are desperately bored! I’ve done the kitchen, loo, and adjoining little space. Now it’s the stairs and the bedrooms. When I get stir crazy again. Nothing too different, just to make the place look clean again.

 

I also spent an afternoon down my allotment harvesting spuds, and digging over and weeding half of it. The other half is threatening.

 

Still, I’m not working at DHL anymore. Yay!

Later,

Buck.

After the wag-n-drag fiasco I was quite relieved to get a nice easy job for my second outing. Trunking an artic down to Chelmsford, trailer swap and drive back. How hard can that be?

They wanted me at the Wigan depot for 7.30am. Then they rang back and said make it 9, as they wouldn’t have the trailer loaded. I got there at 9, then sat there for an hour and a half while they loaded the trailer. Slowly.

In which time I tried to familiarise myself with the truck, a MAN, which I’ve never been in before. I did what checks I could then sat around for a bit. I got bored and sat around for a bit longer. I set to trying to adjust things; the seat height, firmness, and fit. Then I thought about moving the steering wheel to a better position. There were no obvious levers or buttons so I started prodding stuff. I saw a lever so I gave that a pull. The steering wheel didn’t move but the lever was dangling down, obviously not right. I had a look to see what it was. It had a pictogram of the front of the truck with a movement arrow arcing downwards.

Oh shit! I thought I’d pulled the cab release lever. I’ve seen pictures of the cab tilted right forwards (so the mechanics can work on the engine beneath) I thought that must be how they do it. Shitty shit. I was jumping up and down in the cab, trying to get it to re-secure, walking around the truck to see if I could see any way of doing it, nothing.

I went on Twitter to see if any truckers were on, they were not.

I was panicking a bit. Thinking that as soon as I hit the brakes the cab was going to flop forward and I’d crash and die and probably get sacked.

After half an hour’s hyperventilating the shunter drove around so I grabbed him. Turns out it was the lever to release the front grill of the truck, much like a bonnet release on a car! The steering wheel adjuster was a button on the floor.

So, a less than great start to my day.

 

When my trailer was ready the shunter helped me out, realizing I was a clueless newbie. Which didn’t do me any favours as you have an acronym to follow (BLACK, Brake, Legs, Airlines, Clip, Kingpin) with him doing some of it I wasn’t sure where I was up to.

I set off, relieved to be out on the road. A nice easy run, about 6 miles of good A roads until the motorway, then motorway all the way until 16 miles from my destination.

As soon as I hit the M6 it was stop/ start traffic all the way to Birmingham. Bloody Wigan were playing at Wembley, it was a Bank Holiday weekend and it was lashing it down. None of which is conducive to free flowing motorways.

From Brum it was good going until I hit the South East, all of which is apparently under construction. Mile after bastard mile of narrow lanes and average speed cameras. The latter is not a problem, you just set the cruise control to the desired speed. The truck was an automatic so it was just a matter of steering really. The former is more challenging. Narrow lanes in a truck the size of the whole lane is …focusing.

I made it. It took me ages due to traffic, but at 5.50pm I was literally three streets away from my destination (the satnav,  not recognizing the address, had taken me close then dumped me!) when the office rang me and said the store was shutting at 6pm, they wouldn’t keep it open, could I drive to Tilsley (30 miles from London) and park up in one of their yards, then make the delivery in the morning!

Joy! I hadn’t brought any overnight kit and had wanted to be home for 7.10pm to watch the new series of Doctor Who!

Ho hum.

 

I had a poor night’s kip, then set off at 7.30 back to the store. I made it without incident. I looked around for the trailer I was supposed to be picking up when I’d dropped the one I was carrying. There was none. I had to help them unload my trailer. Two bastard hours it took! Trunking my arse!

All went swimmingly after that, all the way back to Wigan. I was actually in Wigan, less than a mile from base when it went wrong again. The satnav said turn left, I did, but a road too soon. Had to extricate myself from a poxy little side street with cars parked along it in a feck-off big truck. Not good.

Here is a snap of my wheels (taken on my cheapo Asda ‘phone camera, so poor quality)

When I got back into the yard the transport manager was there with the shunter. When I’d finished putting it on a bay he said to uncouple the truck. I got out to do BLACK, but the manager was stood there and he said ‘drop it down. Oh you have already’ He was stood next to the trailer legs and they were touching the floor! I thought I’d driven all the way to Chelmsford and back with my legs down! I was horrified.

It wasn’t until this morning at work, when I showed the lads my wheels on my ‘phone that one of them said ‘your legs are up, there.’

He was right! Massive relief! The manager had dropped my legs, he was on about dropping the back end of the truck (so you can get under, and out from under the trailer). Bit of a mistake on my part, but nothing like the HUGE mistake driving with my legs down would have been.

All in all, it’s a learning curve. As long as I can avoid doing anything massively stupid while I’m ironing out the niggles, I should be alright.

I’m thinking about handing in my notice at work this Friday. Just get what driving I can with the agency, then re-apply to Stobbarts in a month. In fact, I’m pretty much sure I’m going to hand my notice in. Yay!

Later,

Buck.