THE GOOD BUCK

It was my birthday! Huzzah!

I was working, and I don’t drink or do other drugs, but I celebrated by not dying. Again. Quite the party animal, me.

However, it got me to thinking; all I do is work, sleep whenever I can, and train whenever I can force myself to do so. Life is passing me by. No more. I have a plan!

It’s been tweaking of the norm at work. I was getting in for 1500hrs, sitting around for 30- 90 minutes for that jobsworth I’ve been sharing a unit (truck) with to get back then trotting off up to the Scottish border, doing a trailer swap and then back to Crewe. This takes until about 2330hrs. Then on Tuesday the guy at Crewe went on one. “You’re supposed to be here by 8 o’clock! Now we’ve missed the connection for the next driver” etc, etc. I let him rant a bit then told him that was a good run. I couldn’t get there much faster. If he wanted an earlier delivery I’d have to start earlier. “It’s not rocket science.”

That went down well.

I put my ‘phone on silent when I go to bed otherwise I get random tweets and emails waking me up. On Wednesday I got up at 1210, had a quick shower, turned the volume back on on my ‘phone and saw I had two missed calls and a text. From the agency. Start at 1300hrs from today.

You know that little incident I had last week with my TomTom (supposedly) Trucknav?

The one that nearly had me ringing the police and blubbing like a girl?

I got on to TomTom. There was no way to contact them on the ‘phone so I ended up in a protracted email exchange. I said that I’d looked it up and there were two versions of the model I have, one for cars and one for trucks. They said they only sold the lorry one, so I couldn’t have the car one. They told me to check my settings. I did. Then tried the test route again. (Irlam  to Lymm. The quickest route takes you down a B road and over a 3 ton bridge.)

It’s Sunday. It seems like a lifetime ago I was stressing about the induction.

That was Wednesday, I think. On Thursday I was in for my first shift. Surprisingly I slept OK, the problems on the road are are manageable because you are not being watched, so you can just work through them.

That is not quite the case, the trucks all have satellite trackers to monitor your every movement, stop, and speed. All trucks have tachographs which monitor your speed, when you stop, when you take your break, etc. Plus these one are fitted with a forward facing camera which activates every time you brake harshly, go over a bump, or hit anything. Apparently there has been a huge rise in false insurance claims. People pulling in front of trucks then slamming on the brakes. Claiming they had a car full of their mates, all of whom claim for whiplash.

Work has totally gone tits up with Ceva. 3 shifts, at random times and with no notice for two weeks on the trot, this week it has got to Wednesday with no work. They don’t work weekends, so best case two days work.

Then the agency called me on Tuesday and asked if I’d be OK to do the DHL/Iceland induction on Wednesday. It’s massively out of my comfort zone, but it always will be. You can’t move from trunking to store deliveries without adjustment. Now is a good time to do it as I’m getting no work at Ceva.

So I went for the induction. Again. My third time as a driver for that site. I failed the first one (I’d only just passed my test and had no experience.) I passed the second but bottled it and told the agency I didn’t want to work there.