Trade Plate Deliveries

manalishi:

Lennoxtown:

manalishi:

Lennoxtown:
Not for everyone… I done trade plating years ago when I fancied a change from regular HGV work, so I contacted a company called Uniloads, who were based in Warrington and got offered an interview to be a commercial trade plater

Here’s my experience:

I arranged a one way hire car ( I lived near Gatwick at the time! ) and drove up to Warrington for the interview
which lasted a few hours if I remember correctly.

Basically, they just wanted to know I was aware of drivers hours, tachograph, and some health and safety. Next a few of
us were given a PDA each and various other bits together with some shiny new trade plates and bundled into a minibus
and dropped off at a client ( can’t remember where! ) to collect some used tractor units to deliver down near Swindon
and then into MAN @ Swindon to collect more trucks to go somewhere else!

You may need a backpack, as we were tramping and out all week, and expected to get around between between jobs
and we usually hitchhiked as they paid minimal expenses for public transport. Also arrange your own B&B’s each evening.

I didn’t mind the hitch-hiking aspect as I’d hitched all over Europe in my youth, so it wasn’t a big deal… of my memorable
experiences though were the following:

Drive a new transit from Ford factory at Southampton to London… then public transport to a London bus garage ( near teddington! ) to collect a double decker, drive that up to Bradford, ( spent the night sleeping on the back seat! ) as I ran
out of hours ( I think! )… then collect another truck from somewhere nearby drive it to Aberdeen, then collect a skip
lorry to deliver to Swindon, then back into the MAN dealer for another tractor unit! and so it went on!

Spent the night sleeping in a RO-RO skip lorry one night in a landfill depot when I couldn’t find any digs! Too late arriving!

I drove all manner of weird and wonderful vehicles… for example, I collected an aircraft de-icing vehicle from Gatwick to deliver to Edinburgh airport, then another one from Stansted to Edinburgh airport again! vans, tankers, buses, cement trailers, LHD fire engines from Birmingham down to Tilbury docks… you name it, I probably drove it!

So, really if you just want experience of driving different new ( and knackered old! ) vehicles you’ll be amazed at the variety, but as a long term career I doubt you’ll enjoy it as it was a bit rough!

I got about £500 pw and minimal assistance for all this nonsense… I eventually defected to Inchcape delivering new cars on trade plates, which then led to me being offered training to driving car transporters when they found out I had a class one with 20+ years experience!

So after initally trying to get away from HGV driving, for something different I ended up back driving a transporter and tramping up and down the country again!.. funny old life, Eh? Hope this helps you decide one way or another!

PS. The thing that caused people to leave most was the Hitch-hiking ( One guy left our B&B during the night, after his first job! ) aspect, but because of my past hitching experience that never bothered me at all strangely enough!

PPS. This was back in the days of mainly analog tachos and I probably rarely ran legal… not sure you’d get away with it now!

A very piquant pastiche you outline there my good man.I always copped for more than my share of bin wagons,often dossing within the fragrant cabs,freezing mi cods off and wondering where i’m heading when dawn breaks after the drop.I took one bizarre hybrid sweeper- machine once from Charlton,London up to Elgin…13 hours (a slow un) then thumbed to Peterhead for a Petrol tanker down to Tyneside.Then thumbed down to Forton msa,if that’s the one before Liverpool?..I’m waiting over an hour there before around a half- dozen, volvo funeral- hearses stop and give me an extremely high-speed lift to the Port of Liverpool,they were fellow platers.All told,an interesting few days.

Strangely enough, I enjoyed it at the time… but I jumped at the chance of getting on the car transporters as I’d always
fancied those when I first got my HGV ( I couldn’t I had no experience yet! ) then I kinda stumbled into the job 20 odd years
later as a result of being a trade plater! Funny old World! Lol

Good you found your niche,but the memories you gain from plating sure stay with you,it’s so darn adventurous and challenging.Nothing iv’e done since,aside from a few years on euro-reefers comes close to that stimulation level.Touch of the ‘rose tinteds’ i suspect on deeper reflection.

Yes, definitely! Lol