Leyland600:
Yes rgc you are absolutely correct that HGV men drove much more smoothly than a small a proportion of PSV drivers especially if the HGV driver had worked on transporting live stock the showing same care to their human cargos. A lot of genuine enthusiastic PSV drivers were excellent men too but there was always a small minority in a bus depot who started their shift with the sole intention of wrecking a semi auto box before their shift was over with very little or no consideration for the passengers especially if their allocated bus was a bit of a dog and they could break it hoping to get a better vehicle to finish their shift. This minority also abused or could not handle manual syncromesh or crash boxes or clutches just bang it through if possible and to hell with the consequences and the same methods appied to braking just full pressure stops no gradual applications. Some fairly recent bus journeys have shown excellent examples of good driving and some the entire opposite.
Cheers, Leyland 600.
Spot on Gerald with regard to the vast difference between service bus drivers. We lived in Bare for 9 years which is a suburb on the edge of Morecambe and Anne and I often used the Stagecoach local Buses to go into either Morecambe or Lancaster and the wide variance of Driver quality was enormous. You can just imagine the comments I used to make to Anne. Sometimes along the lines of " This Driver couldn’t drive sheep with a good dog" etc. etc. but some were as smooth as silk and I never failed to pass these Drivers a compliment on our way off the bus much to Anne’s embarrassment at times ! But I must say one of the best drivers I came across during this time was a Female driver she was excellent !
I will probably get some stick off certain individuals on the TN site for owning up to using the bus but parking problems and not being able to have a “scoop” or two over lunch or dinner was the main reason we took advantage and used our Bus Passes ! Regards Dennis.