Well, it’s only taken me 4 months, but I finally got my second artic run… 
I arrive at Tesco Magor, get all the paperwork, and they give me the keys to a nice 52-plate MAN TGA 18-360 
Within 5 minutes of me arriving at the transport office, another guy from the same agency arrives with the same surname and first initial as me, so suitable confusion followed 
The gearstick shows that it’s a 4-over-4 box, so I think “ah, that’s easy”, so, off I go to look for the trailer. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, “flick” and back to first, clutch comes up, engine revs up, and the display tells me I’m in 3rd. 
Anyway, I find the trailer, hook up without any major problems, and move off.
Back round the 1-way system around the building, and I have another go for 5th, but find 3rd again.
I stop and ask another driver, and he points out that I’ve been flicking the splitter switch, and not the range change 
,so instead of going from 4th to 5th, I’ve been going from low 4th to high 3rd . I worked out later that the gearbox has a protection gate to stop the gearstick from moving left to select 1st when you’re going too fast, which is why I was getting 3rd. 
Anyway, now I’m rolling, and the first drop is Pontypridd. Nice easy access, no difficult turnings, and quite a big yard to manouevre in, but the two Goods In staff are watching me.
Do you think I could get it straight on the bay? Could I [zb]. 15-20 shunts later, and I’m finally done.
Tipped most of the load, picked up a load of empties, and had a quick visit to the staff canteen
Onwards to the next drop - a big Tesco Extra in Cardiff docks. I find the turning OK, but I stupidly move into the RH turn lane, then I realise that there’s an island in the middle of the turning, and there’s no way that the trailer will get round . Fortunately, the road I’m turning off is quite quiet, so I wait until it’s completely clear, stick the hazards on, then reverse back 50m or so, and come at it again.
By this point, some cars have come up behind me, and even though I’m quite obviously turning right, they start to overtake 
Anyway, I finally get in to the yard, and this time it’s a bit tighter. The yard is split into two, with one side going down a slope to the main loading bays, and the other side staying level. This means that the yard is a big “U”-shape, where I come in forwards at the bottom left, and want to reverse up to the top right. I don’t think I judged the turning quite right, as I got a bit stuck with the cab in the bottom right, but the trailer was pointing towards the end of the wall, and I couldn’t see whether I was going to clear it or not. So, I had to get out to check a few times, but a few shunts later I was on the bay
5 cages tipped, and back to Magor for a reload.
I found two adjacent empty bays to make the reverse nice and easy , and dropped the trailer. Next load was for Trowbridge. The office said that they had just sent another driver out to Trowbridge, so there might be a wait. I still had 2 hours of driving left from a 4:30, so I decided to go straight to the store, and have my 45 there (since I could then go and buy my lunch in the store )
Just as I turned off the M4 onto the A350, I saw another Tesco wagon ahead, and thought “I bet that’s him”. I followed him all the way down the A350 and A361 into Trowbridge 
.
Unfortunately, Trowbridge’s yard is quite small, so I couldn’t park up in there, so I had to wait outside. There’s a “service vehicles only” road, which I could park in, at least for a while.
About 10 minutes later, another Tesco wagon turned up, so when the one I had followed came out only 20 minutes into my 45, I just went round the block and let the following driver go in first, and parked up again in the same place.
Another 15 later, it was my turn. By this point, yet another Tesco wagon had turned up.
I pulled into the yard, which is quite tight - you have to do a complete 180 screw turn and come back out of the yard a bit, then reverse onto the bay. Of course, since no-one was watching, I got it on first time 
, but it wasn’t quite straight, so I took a shunt to straighten up a bit.
Tipped the trailer, came out of the yard, and parked back in my original spot, to take another 15, since I’d had to move slightly during an earlier break to make room for the other arriving trucks. Guess what? While I’d been tipping, another truck had turned up It think they must have been selling Glastonbury tickets, the number of trucks waiting to get in to that store…
And finally, back to base. Going over the bridge, all the TAG lanes were closed, so I chose a suitable manned booth. However, as I approached the booth, I realised that some of the manned booths had tiny little TAG logos on them, and mine didn’t. So, I had to crawl across the cab to get the tag number.
Given that every booth has a TAG reader, why they couldn’t just use that, I don’t know.
Again, found two adjacent free bays to drop the trailer, and finished up.
Two things of note:
Tesco’s direction sheets are excellent. They have the store address, directions, and (most usefully) a diagram of the yard showing you the best way to get on the bay.
I did like the MAN’s clutchless gear change - a little button on the side of the gear knob which you can press whilst changing gear to operate the clutch for you - esp. the way that it doesn’t cancel the cruise control. So, if you’re going down a single carriageway, and you have to slow down for a roundabout/traffic lights/etc., then when you want to get back up to speed again you just re-enable the cruise control, and use the clutchless shift to change gear at the right rev level, and the cruise control will carry on accelerating until it hits 40.
So, if you were in Tesco Magor, and you saw someone who was quite obviously a newbie, or you saw a Tesco wagon on one of the above routes with the driver looking like this 
, then it was probably me .
