I’ve had a couple of days agency work trunking up to Hatfield from Loughborough. No handballing, no can you just 
. The best part of a 9 hour day comprised of waiting for a trailer to get here. I could cope with that seeing as I was on £8.50 per hour with time and a half after eight and have a full weeks work with them next week. If they can keep me in work then I’ll stick with 'em. There’s not many offer that sort of dosh round here.
I did agency work for 5 n half years and enjoyed the variety. The only jobs I’ve never done is skips, containers and cement mixers (at least thats all I can think of at this time of night. The only makes I’ve not driven are Foden and Hino. That type of experience cant be beaten. The only job I’de have wanted to do full time was for a Forfar company. We had a curtainsider 17tonner loaded with up to 500 wheelchairs and an A-frame drawbar trailer loaded with about 20 tail lifts, made by the same company. A big bundle of delivery notes and a mobile (this was back in the days when a mobile battery lasted 20hrs, if you were lucky) but no charger. Your instruction were:- there you go driver, see you when you get back. All the numbers are on the phone, if you have a prob, speak to one of the other drivers first. Pure magic. Oh and it was a brand new 2 series MAN sleeper with all the bells n whistles of the time and 360bhp. 
Some of the good and bad things about agency (I was with BRS Taskforce, full time contract with guaranteed 40hrs wages/week, holiday pay, sick pay, full uniform and wet gear, boots, properly fitted saftey gear and travelling expenses). Plenty of variety, but never sure where you might be working next. If you didn’t like a job, say so and they would pull you off it asap, someone somewhere would like it. Good wages, we were usually on a much higher rate than the regular drivers, but not sure if you would be working next week. Coming back to a job you knew after a couple of weeks when every drop had been a new one and the reverse. Being home every night for a couple of months after a couple of months being away all week and the reverse. Mainly the variaty.
Trunking type jobs bore the [zb] off me . I like something which has a bit of a challenge in it, maybe thats why I quite like A frame drawbars, every reverse is a challenge if you want to do it neatly.
Talking of challenges Simon, I can now tell you where Scania have hidden their oil on the 123 series . Seriousley though it’ll be good for me I think driving different vehicles rather than just the one. I think this is where I’ll really learn my stuff 
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I quite like the variety of agency work too, but after a while you miss having your own wagon every day. I hated having to carry a bag of maps with me to every job.
talking of agency work, I havent done any for 3-4 years, but all of a sudden theres a lot of letters coming through the post (4 last week) from old agencys begging me to work for em, Im guessing the driver shortage must be starting to bite
TheBigOne:
Talking of challenges Simon, I can now tell you where Scania have hidden their oil on the 123 series
Pop bonnet. Passenger side corner body trim pulls out to the side. Filler and dipstick is under there.
I found it eventually Connor, after much swearing I came to my sense and asked another driver where it was. 
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You should have learnt by now, Bigun. We’ve been trying to drum it into you for long enough .
If you need to know the answer, ask the question?
I do Simon, eventually .
I drove for Driver Hire for most of last year, and I enjoyed most of it, but as time went by they started sending me all over the place. I ended driving to places like Doncaster and Thorne, which are an hours drive form my house, and they only paid me for my fuel , but not for the time I spent travelling. I suppose it was partly my fault cos I kept saying yes to them.
Regards
Paul