Month: October 2011

Rant.

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 […]

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Bad day at the office.

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 […]

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