Review a former employer

Can be current or former but ideally make it a firm that has been heard of or one that people ask for information about.

Mine is Tuffnells.

Probably the best job I’ve had.
I was a Class one day driver and a average day was 5-10 drops a day.
Pay was about 28k a year.
Kit was Scania and daf artics and a frame draw bars,

Why did I like it? Basically very little health and safety. Put it this way I spent two weeks with another driver before I was let loose on my own at the coop despite being experienced. At tuffnells though it was slightly different as it was my first class one job.
I told them I have never even driven a draw bar let alone an a frame so I wasn’t to sure what to do.
Their solution was to get the forklift guy to help me hook up as he sees the other guys do it all the time so I get hooked up and off I go Into London at rush hour, pull Into the customers yard and now I have to reverse.
Basically the reverse never happened Heck it took the best part of a hour just to position the truck in such a way so I could get out of the yard.

A frames a side the job was pretty good. If I needed a pallet loading I would just jump on the forklift myself and do it.
Often I would have my deliveries done by 2pm so would spend 2-3 hours doing nothing just waiting for collections. Other drivers would just go home; it wasn’t uncommon to finish deliveries before noon and have nothing to do until collection time which is usually 5pm.

Most annoying partof the job was probably lacking a tail lift but it wasn’t even that bad just annoying.

Hours were usually 8am-5pm so not too bad.

Worst part of the job was probably when I tried night trunking.
Tuffnells run demountable bodies along with a frames so when you get to the hub you drop your body and trailer at the gate and pick up another set. You don’t hang about like with artics. with other parcel firms/pallet firms it’s normal to do a 3 hour drive to the hub then wait a few hours to be loaded then drive 3 hours back. At tuffnells it’s the same without the waiting.

I hated the night trunking the demountable body legs often got stuck and required a hammer and they give zero wiggle room in the planning so you can’t really stop at a msa.
That being said night trunking isn’t for me and I don’t know how others do it without getting bored senseless.

So I’d give tuffnells a 7.3/10

United Transport on the general foods contract out of Hoddesdon.

A frame drawbar with demountable boxes delivering mainly round Kent, Glasgow weekend trunk for extra money when required.

The management left Larry Hicks TM (Ex Leggets) to get on with his job and he was good at it, deliveries were mainly to the early RDCs
which were just starting to grow, Nurdin & Peacock was by far the worst to deliver to due to delays and they seemed to have a uncanny
knack of employing the most ignorant staff, good thing was General Foods who supplied the coffee to them eventually put a thirty
minute time limit on the delivery, once time was up you just left and eventually it would end up being a full load being delivered in
one go & you were guaranteed to be on a bay in thirty minutes, I wonder if any suppliers have the clout to do that these days.

Money was fairly good, I somehow quite often would run out of time quite close to home for a night out, they were strict on daily
driving times but strangely never worried about weekly amounts. The days were long but if you cracked on you could meet up with
a few fellow drivers for a quick cuppa before returning to the depot, they were all mainly good lads to work with, if the pickers were
behind in the warehouse some of us drivers would help out to ensure the loads were all ready for the morning to avoid delays, the
bonus being we were all on time & a half.

Like all good things it come to end when they brought in a depot manager called Marshall Dodds who managed to shut the depot down
by promising the supplier far more deliveries than were possible & eventually losing the contract due to a failed deliveries clause.

Harveys -aka Concorde Specialist Logistics based at Lutterworth

I’d been with them for years but this only applies to the last 2, which were my Class 1 years.
This depot was supposed to marry up the soft furnishings side from Tamworth and the wood furniture side out of Milton Keynes.
The class 1 side of things, had you going to stores with clearance items, which you would have to unload, handball style into the store.
Each store that had clearance items had a specific area for it, (usually upstairs…), but not all stores get the clearance goods.
This was usually in an artic, but at least one store (Reading IIRR) the rear doors to the store is a single width door, so you end up parking the artic in the car park at the front of the store, and handballing it all in there, while trying to avoid stupid people wandering in your way. Unloading the artic is around 2 hours handball. If you’re lucky, that’ll be your only run of the day, and you usually always had a 2nd man for these drops (Sometimes another class 1 driver)
You’ll also use the artics for trunking to other depots, where you end up sitting and waiting while the warehouse unload containers too.
You also get to try wagon and drag with demount bodies. They used to have the 3 box versions, which take some getting used to, to load and unload.
Theses demounts are the next days deliveries. Once you drop them off, they’ll go on 7.5tonners (Merc), though they also have the 2 box versions for larger 7.5 vehicles. They have different vehicles and trailers for these (Daf).
You’ll then get some empty demounts and usually load up with returns (rejected furniture from customers, that goes back to the hub, get assessed, then repacked and delivered to either another unwitting customer, or a clearance store if it’s been rejected too many times).
A final word on the demount boxes, some of them were tatty as ■■■■, with legs that were so bent, sometimes they’d stand on 3 legs.
The trailers were twin axle but with a lift axle too on the 3 box versions, so were slow to respond to reversing inputs.
I knew of nobody that didn’t break a light cluster at least once a year (I averaged 2 a year) and there were a couple of 20 & 30 years drivers amongst us.
It used to be that Class 1s were on a rota, so you did a week of artics to stores and/or trunking to hubs, followed by a week or three of demounts. There was a time where the rota included a week of spare, covering any run where a driver was off sick/holiday etc, or you were the 2nd man for a store handball. The rota also included a week of shunting, mainly slumming it in a 7.5 on and off a bay about 100 times. No shunt vehicles for the artics, so you had to use a unit to put a trailer on and off a bay. There wasn’t many trailers though. There was a lot of demounts though, and Bensons share the yard (same company), and were starting to integrate the deliveries, so you’d get a sofa, kitchen table and some chairs, along with some bedroom furniture all going to the same area, all on one delivery vehicle.
Around Xmas time, the trunking would die off a bit, so class 1’s would get ■■■■■■ over out on home delivery. I used to do that prior to Class 1, but some drivers actually went home, rather than do home del (usually after spitting the dummy).
At any time, the Class 1 on yard shunting would be called upon to fix a dozen bulbs that had failed on 7.5s, explain to the agency how to use the demount trailer (agency didn’t usually do the demount trunking), how to use the air suspension, how to fill the paperwork out, how to use a tacho card and/or disc (some vehicles were 55 plate some were new ish Actros’), or if you were really unlucky, called upon to do an extremely urgent home delivery (in a Sprinter) that they’ve just found at the back of the warehouse (usual office ■■■■ up), to somewhere about 3 hours away.
All in all, it was a pretty ok job, except that
a)the shift start times kept changing while they tried to find what worked and what didn’t
b) virtually every office monkey was originally a drivers mate, but couldn’t hack that job, so decided to leave, before being asked if they wanted to work in the office. That was a complete shambles.
And c) it was a 95 mile round trip every day. IIRR, it was costing 2k ish per year on fuel alone, so ended up getting a job back in MK.

(Christ, what an essay.)

I haven’t got enough data

Wincanton B&Q contract 9/10
In comes XPO B&Q contract 1/10

eagerbeaver:
I haven’t got enough data

But you should have an authoritive view on wether the grass is greener…

PJH group when they were in brimsdown enfield , best job I ever had

the nodding donkey:

eagerbeaver:
I haven’t got enough data

But you should have an authoritive view on wether the grass is greener…

A fair point my old mate As most of us on here know only too well, the vast majority of ’ Logistics ’ employers are absolute turd. Specialist work or smaller firms are usually the best bet.

Worthing BC doing kerbside recycling 2002/2006 , some longs days, some short days , lots of tips at Christmas
But blooming hard work and I was the driver but I didn’t sit on my arras all day I had to get out and sort as well , long before the H/S mad days were the driver was tied to his driving seat
P/s For the snow flakes I only wore a seat belt if I was going to or from the round or the tip

[quote=“dave docwra”
A frame drawbar /quote

What’s one of they ■■

Quick review of Dx freight formerly nightfreight.
Complete joke of a firm they make tuffnells look like angels.
Not uncommon to given twenty doors for one drop that you had to deliver on your own on top of your 30+ other drops.
That was as a 7.5t driver.
Job might of been tolerable if I could of got a good round but I didn’t want to wait around for someone to Leave.
Either way they kept on expecting to do 2 man jobs on your own.
200kg roll of astroturf? Don’t worry someone will help when you get there.

Dunno if I should request reviews but a review of maritime and cm downtown would be awesome.

adam277:
Quick review of Dx freight formerly nightfreight.
Complete joke of a firm they make tuffnells look like angels.
Not uncommon to given twenty doors for one drop that you had to deliver on your own on top of your 30+ other drops.
That was as a 7.5t driver.
Job might of been tolerable if I could of got a good round but I didn’t want to wait around for someone to Leave.
Either way they kept on expecting to do 2 man jobs on your own.
200kg roll of astroturf? Don’t worry someone will help when you get there.

Dunno if I should request reviews but a review of maritime and cm downtown would be awesome.

Beaver can review downturds

Gregory distribution on the mondelez contract. 8/10. Very good job. Usually pick up a loaded trailer, deliver, return to the yard empty and then do the same again. Kit and pay were good and the guys in the office were good too.

Sent from my G8441 using Tapatalk

raymundo:
[quote=“dave docwra”
A frame drawbar /quote

What’s one of they ■■

Drag trailer with one axle at the rear (more axles optional) front axle steered by a frame attached to prime mover via a VBG style coupling, only took me six months to learn how to reverse the ■■■■■■■ in a straight line, then a further six months to reverse & get it to go left or right.

Dave.

My current job for just over 2 years is probably the best job I’ve had but as it’s own account and we’ve only got 4 trucks nobody will know of us.

The next best was back in 2003 when I started with Rygor group services contracted to Wavin Chippenham. Wavin had their own trucks and drivers but Rygors were contracted to have some trucks based in various places up north such as Wigan which was where my boss was based. I was all alone with a night man based in hudsons yard at Bawtry. He ran to chipp every night and brought my load up for the next day and I delivered multidrop fairly locally the next day. Job n knock with no interference from the boss.
It lasted 5 years until Wincanton took over all the transport for wavin including us rygor lads. Obviously the logistics company ■■■■■■ up my cushy little number [emoji57]

Kuehne & Nagel. Good pay, easy (but repetitive) work. Corporate rubbish off the scale, but if you could put up with it (I couldn’t) a very good employer.

Having been to many K&N sites across Europe, I think the wurst (yes) combination is a German firm with English “management”. German companies (in my experience) are great to work with. K&N one of the best, just not in this country.

Can we please start on Dutch or Irish firms?

Dutch company, DHL in Oss, wagon and drag, various loads, from empty cans to breweries all over Europe, to frozen orange juice in 45 gallon drums, brilliant planners, good tackle not bad money too, one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, apart from the one I’m in now, really good, DAF 105 SSC, 68 tonne hi-ab, moving containers all over UK, only downside, no decent place to park, like Europe, especially Germany, gotta love them truckstops.
Sapper

The ongoing job I’ve got now through the agency is really good. Own account work for an animal waste processor. It sounds a bit gross, but it’s clean work in the sense that it doesn’t smell. It probably wouldn’t suit a vegan to be fair, some of it doesn’t look very nice.

I start at 0600, and my finish times this week were 1530, 1515, 1445, 1115 and 1545.

Obviously the money is never going to be the best with those finish times but I earn enough to pay my expenses and save a bit.

Drempels:
Can we please start on Dutch or Irish firms?

Nope - I state quite firmly when I start with someone that I don’t talk about anyone I’ve worked for previously and that I won’t talk about them if / when I finish with them . Saves a lot of awkward questions and people know I can be trusted to keep my mouth shut .
Here ends my involvement with this thread .