TruckDriverBen has posted a still from a widely circulated video of A-hole cyclists in London, I’m totally onboard with the driver’s point of view, poor guy’s BP must have been through the roof that day, the cyclist should have been charged. Someone told me the driver got (wrongly) done for that incident but I haven’t found anything to back that up: does anyone know for sure what happened?
Zac_A:
TruckDriverBen has posted a still from a widely circulated video of A-hole cyclists in London, I’m totally onboard with the driver’s point of view, poor guy’s BP must have been through the roof that day, the cyclist should have been charged. Someone told me the driver got (wrongly) done for that incident but I haven’t found anything to back that up: does anyone know for sure what happened?
Plus I don’t remember that view up the snake 
Janos:
I think you can love the moment, but to say you love driving (a truck) per se would make you sound a bit simple. It is just a job . I have yet to visit an office or shop where somebody has confederate flags, extra lighting and his name on the desk in neon, whilst telling everybody he is living the dream, and then kips down in the office when everybody goes home. Yet its fine if you drive a truck?
When I first started driving, my regular run was up to Scotland, and loved the scenery, the crack in the cafes, and waxing about how tough the job was doing general haulage in the 80’s. Ironically, years later, and now a day man, having got into rock climbing, leading a full traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on Skye from Gars Bheinn to Sgurr nan Gillean is easily the hardest thing I have ever done, but to compare looking at it from a lay-by to actually doing it, there is just no comparison. Lived experience is infinitely better.
I somehow found myself watching a trucking vid recently(20 mins of my life, I won’t get back. Thanks Luke), where the driver, in Italy is in awe of his surroundings, and how he must come back one day. When? When you are spending your working life loving driving and living in a truck stop or a lay-by? I regularly fly into Milan, hire a car, and drive up to Livigno to ski. To ski down the Mottolino in brilliant sunshine is just too fantastic to put into words, but to suggest its living the dream watching from your truck window as you drive past is just nonsense.
I think the issue hints at a wider problem for the industry though. It was recently reported that we now have the lowest level on record of young licence holders. So there are not a lot of people out there loving driving. This must pose a problem for future recruitment of HGV drivers.
We need to get past the ridicule of drivers not being proper ‘truckers’ if they want to get home, or humiliating them if they blanch at being told , sorry, its another 15 for you driver.
Dickensian chimney sweeps had an easier life than some modern day drivers.
The job should not be a vocation for the feeble minded, but a recognised and respected, aspirational professional trade.
Oh look, the high and mighty is here to look down on everyone.
Janos:
I somehow found myself watching a trucking vid recently(20 mins of my life, I won’t get back. Thanks Luke), where the driver, in Italy is in awe of his surroundings, and how he must come back one day. When? When you are spending your working life loving driving and living in a truck stop or a lay-by? I regularly fly into Milan, hire a car, and drive up to Livigno to ski. To ski down the Mottolino in brilliant sunshine is just too fantastic to put into words, but to suggest its living the dream watching from your truck window as you drive past is just nonsense.
Wow, get you, you go on…holiday? What a radical concept. Why do you think I never have exactly? I’ve been skiing in the Alps about 7 or 8 times (driving, coaches, paid to take people on holiday and enjoy them yourself. I know that will be a mind blowing concept for you up there on your high horse), Canada skiing twice, Norway summer skiing once (Stryn). And that’s just skiing, I also drove my Type 2 VW camper to Nordkapp in Norway, there’s a video, and back via Finland, Sweden and Denmark, I did a California and Nevada road trip on my own (LA - Las Vegas - San Franscisco in a new convertible Mustang. I also flew there and back Virgin Upper Class as you can do that sort of nonsense when you live at work and are alone), I did a coast to coast US road trip with one of my best buddies. San Francisco to New York via to many places to mention, and visited him 3 times while a few years later he lived in Connecticut (building submarines. He managed to arrange a visit for me to a US base and ON BOARD! a serving Nuclear Submarine which was one of most amazing things I’ve ever done. Not many civilian nobodies like me can say they’ve been on a US nuclear sub!). I visited him 3 times in CT and we did a road trip up that side of the US. So when I say how ‘I must come back one day’ I mean it. Loving my job as much as I have done isn’t a sign that’s all I love, more a sign I find what makes me happy and get out there and do it, believe it or not. But yeah, you win, you went skiing once and drove a hire car, you lunatic.
(And that’s not even half my holidays if you want to carry on this ridiculous top trumps game. Helps with my memory at least)
Punchy Dan:
Plus I don’t remember that view up the snake
It looks too…
Narrow to be Snake.
That’s because it’s not. There is no section of road like that on its route.
switchlogic:
Janos:
I think you can love the moment, but to say you love driving (a truck) per se would make you sound a bit simple. It is just a job . I have yet to visit an office or shop where somebody has confederate flags, extra lighting and his name on the desk in neon, whilst telling everybody he is living the dream, and then kips down in the office when everybody goes home. Yet its fine if you drive a truck?
When I first started driving, my regular run was up to Scotland, and loved the scenery, the crack in the cafes, and waxing about how tough the job was doing general haulage in the 80’s. Ironically, years later, and now a day man, having got into rock climbing, leading a full traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on Skye from Gars Bheinn to Sgurr nan Gillean is easily the hardest thing I have ever done, but to compare looking at it from a lay-by to actually doing it, there is just no comparison. Lived experience is infinitely better.
I somehow found myself watching a trucking vid recently(20 mins of my life, I won’t get back. Thanks Luke), where the driver, in Italy is in awe of his surroundings, and how he must come back one day. When? When you are spending your working life loving driving and living in a truck stop or a lay-by? I regularly fly into Milan, hire a car, and drive up to Livigno to ski. To ski down the Mottolino in brilliant sunshine is just too fantastic to put into words, but to suggest its living the dream watching from your truck window as you drive past is just nonsense.
I think the issue hints at a wider problem for the industry though. It was recently reported that we now have the lowest level on record of young licence holders. So there are not a lot of people out there loving driving. This must pose a problem for future recruitment of HGV drivers.
We need to get past the ridicule of drivers not being proper ‘truckers’ if they want to get home, or humiliating them if they blanch at being told , sorry, its another 15 for you driver.
Dickensian chimney sweeps had an easier life than some modern day drivers.
The job should not be a vocation for the feeble minded, but a recognised and respected, aspirational professional trade.Oh look, the high and mighty is here to look down on everyone.
Janos:
I somehow found myself watching a trucking vid recently(20 mins of my life, I won’t get back. Thanks Luke), where the driver, in Italy is in awe of his surroundings, and how he must come back one day. When? When you are spending your working life loving driving and living in a truck stop or a lay-by? I regularly fly into Milan, hire a car, and drive up to Livigno to ski. To ski down the Mottolino in brilliant sunshine is just too fantastic to put into words, but to suggest its living the dream watching from your truck window as you drive past is just nonsense.Wow, get you, you go on…holiday? What a radical concept. Why do you think I never have exactly? I’ve been skiing in the Alps about 7 or 8 times (driving, coaches, paid to take people on holiday and enjoy them yourself. I know that will be a mind blowing concept for you up there on your high horse), Canada skiing twice, Norway summer skiing once (Stryn). And that’s just skiing, I also drove my Type 2 VW camper to Nordkapp in Norway, there’s a video, and back via Finland, Sweden and Denmark, I did a California and Nevada road trip on my own (LA - Las Vegas - San Franscisco in a new convertible Mustang. I also flew there and back Virgin Upper Class as you can do that sort of nonsense when you live at work and are alone), I did a coast to coast US road trip with one of my best buddies. San Francisco to New York via to many places to mention, and visited him 3 times while a few years later he lived in Connecticut (building submarines. He managed to arrange a visit for me to a US base and ON BOARD! a serving Nuclear Submarine which was one of most amazing things I’ve ever done. Not many civilian nobodies like me can say they’ve been on a US nuclear sub!). I visited him 3 times in CT and we did a road trip up that side of the US. So when I say how ‘I must come back one day’ I mean it. Loving my job as much as I have done isn’t a sign that’s all I love, more a sign I find what makes me happy and get out there and do it, believe it or not. But yeah, you win, you went skiing once and drove a hire car, you lunatic.
(And that’s not even half my holidays if you want to carry on this ridiculous top trumps game. Helps with my memory at least)
Lunatic? moi? from somebody who spends his days talking to a camping gaz bottle on his dash? you miss the point completely. It was not a yah boo post to say I am better than anybody else, but one critical of the long hours culture that is endemic in this industry, and that more free time to do things rather than dream about them in a truck cab is much more preferable. Life is far too short to think shipping out of Holyhead in the latest tanged up Scania, and living in it all week is something to be loved. It is just a job…and you work to live, not live to work.
For someone with a very high opinion of his own intelligence the concept that different people get enjoyment and happiness from different things really does escape you doesn’t it. Not to mention sarcasm, that clearly escapes you too. Frankly you’ve not painted yourself as very bright here chap. Have a lovely afternoon.
I prefer pottering around the garden tbh.
Janos:
Lunatic? moi? from somebody who spends his days talking to a camping gaz bottle on his dash? you miss the point completely. It was not a yah boo post to say I am better than anybody else, but one critical of the long hours culture that is endemic in this industry, and that more free time to do things rather than dream about them in a truck cab is much more preferable. Life is far too short to think shipping out of Holyhead in the latest tanged up Scania, and living in it all week is something to be loved. It is just a job…and you work to live, not live to work.
There is nothing wrong with loving the job that you do, it makes your working life much more easier.
There are a whole range of good and bad types of work in this industry, it ain’t all the same as you know.
Given the choice of running down to Spain in a top specced Scania has infinitely more appeal than trunking down the M6 everyday in a poverty spec heap of ■■■■, to get to Tesco for a timed delivery of baked beans,… it’s a bit like comparing a date with Vanessa Feltz at Maccy Ds, to a liaison with Holly Wills at a Ritz suite… (just give me a minute to concentrate on that thought… 
)
Whether I’d want to do that (The Scania not the Ritz) every week for the rest of my life is doubtful,.I take on board what you say about being more to life than spending it in a truck, mainly as I have done just that for most of MY life.
You are right about the too long hours, but most drivers seem to bizarrely willingly just accept that,.so then they fall into the live to work scene rather than the opposite.
But as I said, nothing wrong with liking or loving the job you do.
robroy:
There is nothing wrong with loving the job that you do, it makes your working life much more easier.
There are a whole range of good and bad types of work in this industry, it ain’t all the same as you know.
Given the choice of running down to Spain in a top specced Scania has infinitely more appeal than trunking down the M6 everyday in a poverty spec heap of [zb], to get to Tesco for a timed delivery of baked beans,… it’s a bit like comparing a date with Vanessa Feltz at Maccy Ds, to a liaison with Holly Wills at a Ritz suite… (just give me a minute to concentrate on that thought…Whether I’d want to do that (The Scania not the Ritz) every week for the rest of my life is doubtful,.I take on board what you say about being more to life than spending it in a truck, mainly as I have done just that for most of MY life.
You are right about the too long hours, but most drivers seem to bizarrely willingly just accept that,.so then they fall into the live to work scene rather than the opposite.
But as I said, nothing wrong with liking or loving the job you do.
I must be going soft. Not much there to argue with.
Running the same route can be boring, even the same route to Spain etc…but…after a while you can make mates on those routes too.
You may not be able to go to the pub around the corner from your house of an evening, but you can have another “local” down the road. Friends and mates don`t have to be from the same company, or same town. Plenty to be done (out of lockdown) everywhere if you put yourself out just a little.
robroy:
Janos:
Lunatic? moi? from somebody who spends his days talking to a camping gaz bottle on his dash? you miss the point completely. It was not a yah boo post to say I am better than anybody else, but one critical of the long hours culture that is endemic in this industry, and that more free time to do things rather than dream about them in a truck cab is much more preferable. Life is far too short to think shipping out of Holyhead in the latest tanged up Scania, and living in it all week is something to be loved. It is just a job…and you work to live, not live to work.There is nothing wrong with loving the job that you do, it makes your working life much more easier.
There are a whole range of good and bad types of work in this industry, it ain’t all the same as you know.
Given the choice of running down to Spain in a top specced Scania has infinitely more appeal than trunking down the M6 everyday in a poverty spec heap of [zb], to get to Tesco for a timed delivery of baked beans,… it’s a bit like comparing a date with Vanessa Feltz at Maccy Ds, to a liaison with Holly Wills at a Ritz suite… (just give me a minute to concentrate on that thought…Whether I’d want to do that (The Scania not the Ritz) every week for the rest of my life is doubtful,.I take on board what you say about being more to life than spending it in a truck, mainly as I have done just that for most of MY life.
You are right about the too long hours, but most drivers seem to bizarrely willingly just accept that,.so then they fall into the live to work scene rather than the opposite.
But as I said, nothing wrong with liking or loving the job you do.
He’s far from the first to seemingly have a problem with how I live. They go on about the whole work to live b/s like it’s some sort of revelation, like the idea that work is something you suffer is preferable to being something you enjoy is confusing nonsense. I was still in my teens when I decided that was a daft way to live, that making work something you enjoy or love is vastly preferable to hating or disliking over half of your life, which just seems nuts to me. And I guarantee I’ve loved more of my life than he has, even with his odd amazing skiing trip . As I say endlessly and have in recent videos the job IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT! I literally explained to young drivers in a video the other day how you need to find what you like and do it. 8 hours a day for a supermarket is no more or less worthy or valuable than tramping round Europe in a top of the range Truck. Thinking any job is better or worse than another is just childish. I started driving local buses, then coaches round London, then round Europe, then trucks round Ireland and UK, then a variety of agency work in London, then Europe For Dutch and Irish then British companies, then a brand new 750 doing Tesco stores, then 4 on 4 off, and I’ve loved it all. From 8 hours a day and 2 Tesco stores to local bus carrying grannies to double & triple shifting on agency for the money to taking people all over Europe on holiday to 36 hour shifts for the Dutch and Irish to running legal round Europe to then 4 on 4 off locally. I’m nothing special, I’m far from a great driver, I’ve always just been very determined to never have regrets as I age, so all this proves is that if you are doing a job, hours, money, company you hate it’s your own fault. It’s that simple. There’s something for everyone in this industry and laziness or fear is main reason some pretend different.
And my fun career that I’ve loved has been main reason being off sick confined to hospital bed, then parents house then my own for the past year hasn’t been a problem, plenty of happy memories to enjoy and plenty of hopeful thoughts about an exciting future. Life. Is. What. You. Make. It!
The consensus seems to be that some days are endured, some are enjoyed and occasionally some are loved.
Selling driving as a career choice that you will ‘love’ these days would be a hard sell though. The wage compensation for forfeiting a lot of your precious free time needs to be much more.
Never have put ‘love driving’ on my CV, driving lorries is what we do for a living, what i always wanted to do for a living from a small boy.
I enjoy my work not just the driving aspect because lets be honest there’s not much involved in driving a modern lorry is there, select D and steer, its the rest of the job that makes it worth doing, or not. Have chosen the more unusual jobs whenever i could find them, if i had to deliver into RDC’s every day i’d pack the job in yesterday.
Oh and yes cos close to retiring would be very happy to get half salary for the rest of me natural.
Janos:
The consensus seems to be that some days are endured, some are enjoyed and occasionally some are loved.
Selling driving as a career choice that you will ‘love’ these days would be a hard sell though. The wage compensation for forfeiting a lot of your precious free time needs to be much more.
Also interesting to note you didn’t read the thread before you commented originally or you probably wouldn’t have mentioned me. Inadvisedly and foolishly as it turned out if you’d read it. Good luck with that mostly s*** life* you seem to be enduring (apart from that one time you radically** flew to Milan and went up a mountain)
this is sarcasm. I’m taking the ■■■■ by calling you ‘radical’. You sound anything but
not sarcasm, it really does sound a bit s
#PeaceBeWithYou
I think…
Sarcasm is represented by the following symbol these days on the net; /s
Here to help.
My answer must be yes the further the destination the better ,I even do a different tour of Europe in my camper van most yrs to revisit areas I’ve delivered to .
yourhavingalarf:
I think…Sarcasm is represented by the following symbol these days on the net; /s
Here to help.
Christ, when did it all get so humourless! 
Just to point out to maybe new readers it might sound boastful but going on about all I’ve done like I had only happens when 1. Someone tries to dismiss it 2. Tries to dismiss my opinion! My WHOLE point in mentioning is like that is I’m really nothing special at all, if I can live the life I have, anyone can, it’s all in your power. You just need to get out there and grab it all and approach everything with the right attitude. Thinking work is something to dislike that you must endure is such a destructive way to live. It is quite literally one of the biggest things in your life, work out how to enjoy it and everything else just slots into place.
I am also really quite amazing. As many will attest.
‘He’s an amazing t**t frankly’ wise words from my ‘Camping Gaz Stove’ Bertie
switchlogic:
if I can live the life I have, anyone can, it’s all in your power. You just need to get out there and grab it all and approach everything with the right attitude. Thinking work is something to dislike that you must endure is such a destructive way to live. It is quite literally one of the biggest things in your life, work out how to enjoy it and everything else just slots into place.
Which in an ideal world would be great.
But the reality of having to pay the household bills and everyone with any sense is looking for that same utopian dream of a working life made up of continuous long road trips, meaning such jobs are massively over subscribed, says no.
No one worked down a coal mine or shut in a factory for the fun of the job or because they didn’t prefer the job of travelling around Europe on a continuous merry go round of freight or passenger journeys.Or drove a scaffold truck around the local building sites or worked as a warehouse labourer when the guvnor said lets drive less and spend more time parked up working transhipping loads handball at the hub .
See directly above…
That’s when it got humourless.