Carryfast:
Although I only probably did less general than you did I do know enough about it to know that there were,probably still are,certain places that wouldn’t touch local or groupage type zb work.
Few and far between and usually the worst payers
It was all distance work and all full loads which anyone who knows anything would know was one of the first type of questions which you’d ask when you went for the job.The problem is that a lot of those operators,who were lumbered with having to take what they could get,knew the score on that question when they got asked it and just said yes it’s all distance and it’s all full load stuff even though they knew that wasn’t the type of work which they specialised in at all. 
Most sane operators would choose the best paying load and they were/are not one hitters. Freight doesn’t exist in multiples of 26 pallets, never has done. Many drivers would favour multiple drops to smaller premises rather than one shots to soul less warehouses spitting distance from a main roads.
In which case,just as you say,it could be a mixture of anything but in my experience it was all local/medium distance and/or part load multi drop/collection zb.Which was one of the reasons why myself and the guvnor weren’t on the best of terms to start with even before I got involved with telling him that I wasn’t prepared to have insult added to injury by adding all the extra time spent zb’ing about waiting to get loaded etc etc, which that type of work inevitably involved,to the day.
WTF 
The same applied in regards to euro work and at that time it was the owner drivers who mostly cherry picked the type of work which gave them a full load out and then a full load back on runs to Italy etc.However what the zb would I know when there’s drivers out there who obviously know,or think they know,better.
How do you know this ■■ Let me tell you once again (from actual experience), you don’t and once again you are wrong. Not just drivers that know better but owners too.
You cannot simply derise and dismiss the opinions of people who actually have done the job and know the truth becasue they don’t fit in with your eutopian crackpot ideas. 
Trust me it was that question which took place before asking for the rate for the job or the wage which the guvnor was offering.It’s just that the owner drivers were lucky enough not to have the issues,of guvnors trying to pass off zb work as decent work,that employed drivers did at the point of taking on the job.
Tha fact that you don’t seem to have got to understand all those issues yet seems a bit unusual considering that I’d learn’t most of that,except for that last issue of guvnors passing off zb work as decent work,even before I’d left the council.
Council worker and night trunker eh ■■ Wow you’ve been around a bit in the REAL world eh
You were peppering your earlier post with the word logic.
Logic -The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.
When everyone else, with the benefit of infinitely greater knowledge and experience is telling you that you are very very wrong, LOGIC would tell you you are.
you obviously would have had some ‘experience’ in not knowing when to call it a day and park up before causing a driver fatigue risk and liability on the road.
It’s only an internet forum not real life 