Am I available for work? Yes. Am I available for work that the three people half my age before me couldn’t do either? No. Can I un/strap up a curtain sider four times a night? No. Can I travel 100 miles and then do six drops legally? No. Those are now the standard job requirements and why you see everyone tearing around every night and why those companies are always advertising for drivers because no one else can do it either. The deadlines aren’t from some special software, they’re googling postcodes designed for cars which don’t include night motorway closures, winter weather, legal hours or speed limits.
It’s not all negative though. Whilst tramping I was given a run from a big distribution center near Wellingborough to deliver high value to a large supermarket RDC in Doncaster and another time to a High Tec place in Basingstoke. Bay to bay, but it was irregular, only once a week. Now that I can do, but those sort of jobs aren’t available on a regular basis. The companies do the planning and the driver is expected to fit in with their time lines and workload. That’s how it is everywhere now. All companies are stream lining, cutting costs to a minimum and the workload is now becoming impossible.