driveress:
Hey Papaya
Hope you enjoyed your first two days training. Best of luck for Friday.Nice to meet you Roadkill_Badger. Hope you have some success with job hunting soon.
So here’s an update from me. I posted elsewhere on the forum about my struggles passing Cat C and my eventual success. I’m still on a high. The achievement and the career change mean so much to me, passing was more than just passing if you know what I mean.
I should have been van driving for ages but, wondering when I would ever pass my Cat C, and armed with a nice sparkly new CV (I’ve been self employed so never needed one), I CV bombed agencies asking for van work while I’m waiting to pass my Cat C on the Monday. Signed up with 2 on the Tuesday, one of them offered me van work the following week. I asked if they could arrange for me to spend a day with a driver just for unpaid work experience, which they did. That was the Thursday. I had an awesome day as a passenger, driving around Cornwall in a Class 2 delivering pallets. I learned so much and met my first trucking buddy. On the Friday I passed my test.
After the bank holiday weekend I worked Tue-Sat delivering plumbing supplies around South and East Devon in a 3.5t van. Then I did a day collecting books from charity shops in Plymouth, then I did a day collecting plant and tools for a plant hire company, again in a 3.5t van. I have learned loads and I don’t know whether I have been lucky but all other drivers and most of the people I have delivered to have been so nice and helpful and patient. One of the things I learned is that I don’t really have the physique for moving 800kg of wine, or 10 radiators, on a manual pallet truck. I’m not afraid of hard work but I am aware of my limitations, and I don’t want to be that person who lets go of a pallet of wine. I think I forgot to mention that on agency no one has the time to train you on anything for any meaningful length of time.
I’ve also been getting my kit bag together and I am especially loving my thermos tumbler so I can sip tea all day. I have also become a morning person as my shortest commute is 45 mins (only downside so far for me) and the starts have been anything from 0600 to 0800.
So then the agency started talking about getting me onto a Class 2 job, they mentioned skips, and then tippers. Then they came back with an offer of tipper work all next week. I asked if I could go out with a tipper driver for the day again, unpaid, which I did on Thursday. Again, had another awesome day out, another driving buddy met. We shifted 18.5t of topsoil from a building site to a football pitch extension 8 times, up and down the A30.
So, I have my first gig in an HGV since passing my test two weeks ago, on Monday! I’ll be driving a Scania P410. It’s 32t gross weight, 4 axles and the front two are both drive axles. It’s quite punchy. I learned in an auto and this has a 4 over 4 so I’ll be spending the weekend watching videos on how to operate 4 over 4 gearboxes and Stoneridge tachos. I haven’t had to use my digi card yet.
My impressions of tipping are that it’s great for small framed girls like me as there is minimal load interaction. It’s also great for newbies as you only have to find two places in one day and you can build your confidence and nail the same stretch of road by the end of the day. There’s a bit of common sense, responsibility and concentration required to operate the hydrolics, so that’s good. You will also reverse multiple times a day. It’s also mostly driving. I think I’m going to love it! I’m definitely going to be Devon’s slowest tipper driver though, so I’ll be easy to spot.
I’ve also booked my C+E driver training for September.
I’ll come back and let you know how next week goes.
I hope everyone else reading this thread is getting on well and whatever you are doing next week, have a good one.
Nice to meet you too 
I’m going to start my first class 1 job on friday this week. After few attempts with different comapnies and assesments I’ve been offered a contract with Stobart. It’s not where I wanted to work, but I decided to take it and get some experience in driving. Plus- they didn’t ask me to come to the assesment and didn’t fail me saying „your reversing is not up to out standards.” like few comapnies did even though they advertised the positions as „no experience neccessary”. My minimal experience is not a problem, and I will get some training too.
Hope you will have good start driving tippers and you won’t be pulling any 800kg pallets anymore.
Happy to hear that you booked your class 1 test! Fingers crossed.