First Cat.C run

I told the agency last Thursday that I was available for work all this week, and they said they’d call back as soon as they had anything.

Well, “as soon as they had anything” was 7:20am on Monday morning , after I had assumed that they didn’t want me, so I had stayed up watching the snooker…

Anyway, the job was to deliver PVCu window parts to places around Swansea. Their usual driver hadn’t turned up, so I was called out at the last minute, and since I started late, I missed the last 2 drops (since it was after 5pm by the time I got to Camarthen).

The truck was a DAF curtainsider (I’m not sure of the model, but it had “CF” on the front of the cab, and “65.220” on the side - I’m guessing 6.5-litre, 220 horsepower?

So, things I learned this time…

1. Make sure they show you how to operate the tail lift (if fitted) before you leave - it appeared to be isolated, and I never found the switch (and when I phoned the office, they didn’t have a clue where it was either).

2. When asking for directions, make sure the person you ask knows what you’re driving. I asked in a post office, and whilst the directions were absolutely correct, it involved me going down a road that was just about as wide as the truck itself, and had a perfect 90-degree bend, with walls/fences on all sides. Whilst trying to abort that, I then got semi-stuck in a similar situation because someone had parked opposite a T-junction. I eventually got them to move, and escaped. The customer was on a “Trading Estate” whose name I won’t even attempt to spell (typical Welsh with lots of Ws, Ls and Ds), but the "Trading estate was one building housing what looked like one company. It was small enough not to feature on the Streetezee map of the town (there isn’t an A-Z of the place).

3. Beware of entering an off-road parking area with a significant ramp - I nearly grounded the truck, as the area in front of the customer’s building was nearly a foot below the road, and there was only a truck-wide concrete ramp down - I attacked it a bit too hastily, trying to get off the road rather than wait and assess it like I should have done. I went in at an angle (about 30 degrees to the road), and as the wheels came off the ramp, the running boards and tailgate hit the ground I ended up parked between the front of the building and the road, and I needed to be at the side. I then had to reverse, using a number of shunts, up the steep side of the ramp, back onto the road, and then reverse back beside the building like I should have done in the first place.

4. Don’t go to Wales, unless you’re Welsh. Asking for directions to “Cwllddllwwggn” Trading Estate is tricky

5. Just because someone gives you directions to somewhere, doesn’t mean they are correct. I asked for directions from one customer to the next (since it was another branch of the same company), and he gave me them. They all started from a specific roundabout. I confirmed which roundabout I was starting from twice, but once I got out on the road, after a few wrong turnings trying to follow the directions (turning around a large truck on small-ish roads in the Welsh countryside is rather tricky), I eventually realised (after 5:30pm) that the roundabout he was talking about was actually 4 roundabouts up the road from the one I had confirmed with him…

6. Yet again, finding the destination is the most difficult part of the job. Driving is actually easy (IMHO). It’s particularly difficult when doing agency work, so you never go the same place twice…

Boy, I love how large trucks slowly judder to a halt when you turn off the engine… Big boy’s toys

Does anyone have any problems getting into reverse gear? On repeated occasions I just couldn’t get it to engage, and the only way I could get it in was to do a “double-declutch”-style change - go back to neutral, engage the clutch, put the clutch back down, and then move into reverse just before the gearbox stopped running, but this caused a small bit of grinding of the gears. Any tips?

Hi Mr Flibble,

The trick with reverse gear, which doesn’t have synchro is…

Dip the clutch, select second gear, keep your foot on the clutch and select reverse.

It should just drop straight in then

As for your day, you will have more like that

cheers
STEVE.

Well done Mr Flibble.

The DAF you were is is a CF65 (one of the newer ones by the sound of it) with a 220 HP engine.
Nice trucks from what I’ve seen of them.

Well done for struggling round the Welsh countryside. It’s definitely not easy going.

Tail lifts:
Heh - the isolator is usually an un-marked switch on the dash, or hidden under the back. Some only work with a detachable remote control, and still others have 2 sets of controls, with a switch that swaps between them. No point pushing the buttons down the side if the only ones that work are inside the box…

Shunting, get used to it lad, as well as slipping big trucks through small gaps.

ATKIG11 wrote:

The trick with reverse gear, which doesn’t have synchro is…

Dip the clutch, select second gear, keep your foot on the clutch and select reverse.

Ah, OK. Thanks.

I guess part of the problem was I kept on instinctively putting it in 6th before realising it was wrong and going to reverse. Too much time driving a Renault Master minibus.

allikat wrote:
Well done Mr Flibble.

Thanks

The DAF you were is is a CF65 (one of the newer ones by the sound of it) with a 220 HP engine.
Nice trucks from what I’ve seen of them.

'Twas an ‘02’, with almost exactly 100 Mm on the clock. The cab was OK (it was the sleeper variant, not that it mattered), but I missed having a bouncy chair. Not quite enough “umpfh” to sustain 56 up the long motorway hills, though.

Tail lifts:
Heh - the isolator is usually an un-marked switch on the dash, or hidden under the back. Some only work with a detachable remote control, and still others have 2 sets of controls, with a switch that swaps between them. No point pushing the buttons down the side if the only ones that work are inside the box…

Yes, I tried wiggling every switch I could find in the cab (or at least, every one that I didn’t know exactly what it did). I couldn’t find any other switches near the tail-lift or on the outside of the truck, and there wasn’t a second control inside the back, like there is sometimes. I also looked for a socket for a control lead, but again didn’t find one.

It’s a mystery.

Shunting, get used to it lad, as well as slipping big trucks through small gaps.

Yes, I know, but at least one of the situations I shouldn’t have got myself into in the first place.

As recommended by people here, I GOALed lots, (at least 10 times on the tight T-junction with the car parked opposite), and successfully failed to hit anything (AFAIK). I think I gave them the truck back in the same condition as I picked it up (although they might have lost a bit of paint from the underside of the fuel tank when I nearly grounded).

Incidentally, my second run was last night - the agency called again at 6pm, wanting me to start at 7pm for a run from Avonmouth to Liverpool. The job was night trunking between RDCs, and was an absolute breeze (apart from the occasional downpour), and passed without incident - one of the usual guys gave me very good directions (it helped that the RDC was just off the motorway), and I just drove straight there and back. They did all the unloading/loading (woohoo!). I finished at 6:30am, and I’m now debating whether to go to bed or not… I’ve now been up for 27 hours…

This one was an MAN - not sure of the model, but a 52-reg, and 200 Mm on the clock. Similar in physical size to the DAF, but with a day cab. I learned and took my test in an MAN (albeit older), so I felt quite at home. I didn’t have any problems getting reverse, either. This one also had enough guts to maintain 56mph in 6th up all the hills as well. Plus I worked out how to use the cruise control quicker.

Goto bed

tartanraider wrote:
Goto bed

No.

If I go to bed in the middle of the day, I end up waking up in the evening/middle of the night, and then can’t sleep - it’s like jet lag.

IME, unless I have something else to do the next night (like another night run), the best thing to do is to stick it out and go to bed at the (approximately) normal time, have good long sleep, and I’m back to normal again.

Since the agency haven’t told me that there’s another night run coming, I’m going to stay up, and resynchronise back to normal day and night.

If you want regular class 2 work, ring NIS agencie at chipping sodbury, they would put you into the co-op at portbury tomorow doing store deliveries, thats where i started out on class 2 and the money is very very good there.

Gurner wrote:
If you want regular class 2 work, ring NIS agencie at chipping sodbury

I don’t really want regular class 2 work; this isn’t my normal job. I just do occasional truck work for ‘fun’ during holidays. As a result, I can’t really expect the agency to give me the exact work I want for the occasional days that I am available.

Once I’ve got my class 1, I should be able to get better work…

If you change your mind about the Co-op at Portbury, I can tell you where the tail lift switch is on the rental MAN rigids. We took three down on Wedensday.