Hi everyone.
Sorry for not having replied sooner but we have been absolutely flat out for the last few weeks, not only in jobs but in life too.
So far the job is going great, no pics or anything yet but I’m enjoying it. My 12 hour day took a little getting used to, not so much because of its length but the 7am start. I was so used to being up at 2am in the UK for work that my body just didn’t want to function with a few hours extra sleep so it has taken a little while adjusting to it.
I have a relatively easy day, some local deliveries in Hamilton then up to rural Auckland for various collections to one of our transport hubs, then a full load back down to Hamilton at the end of the day. Some of my colleagues and especially my mentor when I started were all saying its going to get really busy leading up to Christmas, you’ll be doing at least 5 collections (my max so far is 7 and well within time) and be late back to Hamilton. I’m still waiting for it to get busy…
The other comment they’ve made is that some of the roads are really tight for a semi, and they don’t like doing days because of all the traffic…I have to remind them that I’m a Pom, I am loving driving down the express way at rush hour and it being like driving on a road that has been closed in the UK. The heaviest traffic I’ve seen so far has been the queue behind me when I had a full load of spuds on, and nowhere safe to pull over to let them all past.
The Scania I have been issued is an old girl with plenty of K’s under her but she’s going good for now, bit tatty and abused but nothing a good clean won’t help with. It due to be replaced next year but I will still get an older one as they put the new ones on line-haul. However in my first week I was tasked with test driving and evaluating the 25th Anniversary edition Volvo FH with the new I-drive seamless box, a lovely unit indeed but just a little too tall for what we do plus it was a Euro set up which was fine for me but the night shift didn’t like it. If the company decide to get them they will have a quad set up. I did find it a bit laggy when we had a full trailer on though.
Took a little bit of getting used to the quad set up, both the unit and the trailer but so far so good. Was very strange seeing the trailer so far back from the cab when I’m used to it just being a few inches away in the the UK.
I did have the misfortune to drive UD Quon whilst the Scania was in for service, I know it has an I-drive box but it was rubbish, and I didn’t hold out much hope for life expectancy if I was in an incident. I’d rather have driven a Merc and that’s saying something as I really don’t like driving them.
Home life as been a bit frantic. We managed to find and secure a nice rental (our UK house for a similar rent could fit in the double garage), and have just taken delivery of our new sofa, still waiting for the dining table (I will be so glad to get it as lap dinners are not my thing). Our container is due in tomorrow morning (Sunday) though we won’t get our stuff until it clears customs etc… The car will take a little longer has that has to go through all the WOF and entry certs etc… We had it scour cleaned (as required by MPI) before we left it with the shippers but they left it sitting in their yard for a month so I dread to think what state it is in.
Franglais - We sold the majority of our furniture in the UK as most of it was Ikea which doesn’t ship well. We ended bringing a sofa and chair but they come apart for travelling so they didn’t take up much space.
We wanted to start afresh as realistically as possible, we have rarely ever had anything brand new, so it was nice to be able to afford new beds and such. The quality I would argue is much better here though you do have to inspect and research what you are buying just to be on the safe side.
The cost of shipping is astronomical, a shared 40ft container (ie we are sharing it with other persons) was near on £3k plus another £2k for the car (even though it is coming in the same container). If we had gone with a sole use container you could add at least another 3-4k onto that. On top of that you have insurance though it does pay to shop around for that. Don’t use the shipping companies insurance as that is vastly inflated. You also have to take into account, airfares, hotels, hire cars, and any other costs associated with moving your entire life to another part of the world. It is something you have to really commit to and do it for the right reasons.