Rikki-UK:
Is the job harder now ? I disagree, I started in the 80’s and the major difference between then and now is we weren’t treated like children, to be watched and over seen - you were given a slip of paper which was your load details and told to ring in when empty… everything in between was down to you as the driver to do/organise. You were trusted to get on with the job
No-one told you the route to take, where to stop for the night, or how to secure the load it was expected that you know that stuff or had the sense to ask another driver.
The most the traffic office would do is say " take some goal posts with you, or back scotches and chocks " for your expected reload.The jobs not harder now its been dumbed down to the lowest common demoninator
So yes compared to todays tracked/camera’d/Phone “logistics” - the 80’s were old school perhaps at the very end of the era when drivers were in charge of their own working day
■■■■ right, I agree with that 100%. Here speaks a GOM who started in 1960. 
“But Fred, it’s an 8 wheeler, I’ve never driven anything like that” 
…“well now’s your chance to learn, bugga off and give me a ring when you’re tipped”
And that started my life on the road. It was an 8 wheel Atky tipper,coal from Acton Hall (Pontefract) to Hedleys in Trafford Park via Standedge