old 67:
There are and always have been lots of " driving " jobs that are more manual graft than actual driving.
If you don’t want one of these types of job that’s fair enough.
For you to call the P & H driver you saw a slave, and to tell him he has no self respect, is in my opinion insulting and arrogant in the extreme.
Regards. John.
PS…maybe you should have told him your opinion of him while you were there ? I’m sure he would have thanked you ?
+2
Why deride a driver that’s just doing their job? Always got the impression the jobs involving a bit of handball are usually the better paying ones, as said fair enough if its not your cup of tea, and to be honest its not my idea of a good job either, but I think its unfair to belittle someone just earning a days pay by doing what’s probably expected of them.
RB84:
+2
Why deride a driver that’s just doing their job? Always got the impression the jobs involving a bit of handball are usually the better paying ones, as said fair enough if its not your cup of tea, and to be honest its not my idea of a good job either, but I think its unfair to belittle someone just earning a days pay by doing what’s probably expected of them.
To be fair, I’ve seen how pig ignorant these petrol station owners can be to (not just) P and H drivers and it seems to always be Asians. I’ve seen them let the door go in the face of a driver dragging their stuff in, and lost count of the times they put any old nonsense on my fuel receipt when I’ve clearly told them the reg number and mileage. Yet drivers seem happy to shelf stack for them. It may be a cultural thing, all Persian and Asian bakeries I delivered to were the same, totally unhelpful and think that because they’re a customer you will do whatever they want.
We used to enjoy Ramadan, sitting outside their shops on break, stuffing our faces
AndrewG:
Cages should just be left at the door, signed for job done. From what ive seen over here with the little trucks delivering to my local shop thats how it works anyway.
A lot of small shops don’t have space to store empty cages & if made to keep them would just leave them outside to be inevitably nicked. Either that, or they disappear into stockrooms & filled with crap never to be seen again. Cages aren’t cheap.
Different for Tescos/Sainsburys etc. because it’s their own equipment.
Always a chance that the driver in question has a shop or two on his rounds most days that accept him saying that it’s all there as he’s helpful enough to stack it all for them and the odd box or two that have ‘fallen out’ of the cages at the end of his shift, well, …
Nothing wrong with a bit of graft if that’s your thing. I used to enjoy a bit of manual stuff when the job warranted it, although I’ve never done P & H (or any of the food stuff) I did a day on office paper deliveries and sometimes had to carry heavy boxes upstairs and put them in cupboards etc.
It keeps you fit, and as long as the time allows for it then no problem. Sometimes lorry driving does involve this sort of thing…horses for courses!
eagerbeaver:
You HAVE to stack everything nice and neat in piles of 5 items Andy at EACH drop, and you normally have between 10 and 15 drops per day. The shops count every item before they sign your notes.
It’s bloody hard graft, but I figured that if I got straight on with it for 12 months, it would build my experience as fast as possible so that I could then do class 1 and become the absolute Legend that I am now…
I must be lucky to have avoided getting a job like that only spent 2 days on agency before being offered class 2 work then passed my class 1 last Tuesday and straight into class 1 work on the Thursday
Many years ago I was on pet food deliveries god I hated that job 50kg sacks of monkey nuts up 2 flights of stairs with very little help … all handbal collect the cash smile nice to the customers and about 15 drops a day going like a mad man … oh and the money was s…t as well
Depends on what the customer has been told to expect as well, when I worked at Creed Food Service we were told by management that the customers expect us to more or less put the stuff where they want it. I did tell one customer to do one when I put the bread next to the shelf in the freezer and they asked me to rearrange the shelf into date order
Pallex have a service called Retail Plus, where a customer pays extra for the delivery and the driver has to split the pallet down and handball the boxes into a stock room or whatever then take the empty pallet and shrink wrap away.
One regular one was the logs and coal for petrol stations. We had to empty the pallet into the bunker, all nice and tidy for them. Hated getting the BP garage on Alexander Parade in Glasgow with that drop. Couldn’t get in with a trailer so had to find somewhere to double park and drag the pallet down the road. [emoji35]
The drinks company that I used to work for seemed to specialise in promising customers whatever they wanted.
“200 cases of beer upstairs to your brand new rooftop bar? …No problem”
We didnt used to stack shelves or anything, simply because time wouldnt allow it.
I did have one awkward customer insist that I put the red wine on the shelf, but an unfortunate “accident” with a box of six soon put a stop to that.
we used to get the brewery turn up and they would just laugh and say “it stays on the pavement or goes back”,
Having said that, I did used to enjoy it, and you could have a laugh with the customers, now I’ve got my class 2 it’s tat to cash and carrys.
I’ve often thought about Brakes, or Reynolds, but then I come to my senses, A fat ol git lugging stuff upstairs to some Prima Donna chef is not going to end well
mrginge:
Depends on what the customer has been told to expect as well, when I worked at Creed Food Service we were told by management that the customers expect us to more or less put the stuff where they want it. I did tell one customer to do one when I put the bread next to the shelf in the freezer and they asked me to rearrange the shelf into date order
That reminds me of a bloke out with me one day, the daft cow in ghe bakery said “don’t just dump them, they must be rotated!”
My mate turned the bags around and we ■■■■■■ off.
we do a regular taillift delivery every morning . One morning the taillift went down but refused to come back up . The 45 dollies and cages were dragged to the back of the trailer and split down and handballed off the back were the store staff were rebuilding and clearing it all away . We worked out a way to get the cages out without having to break them down but the dollies were broken down into 3 trays at a time .
Took an extra hour to do and at the end the store manager (who had been out helping ) gave me a bag with a bottle in it for helping get the delivery off .
Don’t mind if it’s a one off but I’d draw the line at shelf stacking .
P and H must be offended by my comments (■■■■■■■■ anyway) because twice this week when going for diesel, the slave shelf stackers have parked at the hgv pumps. They must love their job, rather than parking by the delivery doors, they want to make their job that bit more unbearable by huffing the cages around parked cars.
Mind you, if I was driving an Iveco I’d be glad to stack shelves for most of the day.
rob22888:
I’d decant the cages myself rather than wait for some lazy shop staff who have all day, however it’d be going straight from cage to floor in one spot and that’s it. Wouldn’t tolerate being told to put it on shelves etc.
Leave the bloody cages. I dodge taking back pallets where possible I try to convince people it’s part of the packaging. Except plastic pallets, although the odd one does vanish and leave £50 in my wallet. Very strange phenomena.
I’ve been working for P&H (via an agency) since sure start of the year. Some drops want you to put frozen stuff by the freezer and chilled by the fridges, Tescos Express is mostly frozen stuff so it needs to come off the pallets and onto their narrow Z frame cages. I have never done the “shelf-stacking” and I would be pretty assertive in m refusal if a shop ever insisted on it. On the whole the job’s not bad - a fair bit of graft stops it getting dull
groovemachine:
The drinks company that I used to work for seemed to specialise in promising customers whatever they wanted.
“200 cases of beer upstairs to your brand new rooftop bar? …No problem”
We didnt used to stack shelves or anything, simply because time wouldnt allow it.
I did have one awkward customer insist that I put the red wine on the shelf, but an unfortunate “accident” with a box of six soon put a stop to that.
I did something the same on my first agency job
Half a wagon full up two flights of stairs to the store room as some smarmy git stood and watched
I stacked them nice and neat and he left me to it once he established it was being done to his satisfaction.
He really should have stayed and watched I got him to sign the notes and then went back for my gloves.
While I was collecting my notes quite a number of bottles in crates were very carefully broken and hidden away.
No problems at the other end when I returned the signed in full POD’s and I went on a different job at the end of the week.
Hope Mr Smarmy had the breakages taken out of his wages.
I did that job for Hayes when I lived in Croydon, me and 6 other blokes started together and we all jacked within the week, I am not giving myself a double rupture while the little brown boys stand and watch grinning, absolutely bloody awfully job.
Lennoxtown:
I done this job years ago before Palmer & Harvey had the contract… back then I was on for Hays Distribution delivering
to all the Shell Petrol Stations in an urban artic pulling a single wheeled trailer from the base in Crawley.
I hated the job… about 10 -12 tonnes and it was ALL handball into the stores NO cages ( We always suggested to management that cages would be better! ) just direct on pallets and we weren’t allowed to take pallet trucks with us! ( Palmer and Harvey used cages, so don’t know why Hays wouldn’t!)
Three compartment trailers, Ambient, Chilled & Frozen… Bloody hard work, especially in Summer when you had pallets of Coke, Mineral Water etc into each store together with everything else…Oh and having to scan and collect all their ‘Out of Date’ sandwiches for return to base.
Together with constant attempted robberies of cigarettes from the trailer whist you were out delivering… to sum up I hated EVERY minute of
the job. The only upside was the money was ok, back in the late 90’s Early 2000’s (I think!) it was £25k PA and it was a 4 on 4 off shift which
I liked, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me and I went back to an old employer on tramping again for the same money, and was much happier!
and about 15 drops a day going like a mad man … oh and the money was s…t as well 
