Evening All
Some of you will remember my diary of a multidrop driver viewtopic.php?f=2&t=66898
Well, it’s been 10 years and i did promise i’d do another one 
So a bit of an update, obviously i’m still there, coming up to my 22nd year in October. Many things have changed, my beloved old truck has long gone. Replaced by a Spier P100 based on the Mercedes Vario, the longest package cars we have. We moved depots 5 years ago (Pics below) I’m still covering Bicester but the size of my route has almost halved yet the drops have increased. I’ve also met my now fiance at the garage i get fuel every night
So what has it been like delivering during a pandemic? In some ways easy but in others it’s been hell. Nothing really changed until the first lockdown, overnight companies and shops closed which had a huge impact on the industry, a vast majority of our business is B2B so volumes dropped to figures of 10+ years ago, we were also stuck with a problem of shipments having arrived from Europe before they went into lockdown only to find a few days later that the UK was now in lockdown so thousands of packages were stuck in limbo with the end received closed and the shipper also now closed. UPS had to lease warehouse space to store these packages for a few months. Over the coming weeks people started shopping online, new companies opened up that never used to sell online, it was the only way they could sell their goods. By the height of summer we were pushing normal Christmas peak figures, trailers were being held daily as there was physical nowhere to unload them to, vans were full, they just couldn’t unload them. We were lucky, one of the London depots at one point had 12 trailers full of packages rolling over daily. This is usually our quietest period, he had subbies with their own vans every day, they would queue up outside waiting for the drivers to leave so they could load up. This continued until November when we went bat ■■■■ crazy, normal driver helpers weren’t allowed due to to Covid so nearly all were family members who had mostly been furloughed or home from Uni early. We hit daily volumes that made a typical Christmas period look like a quiet summer, but with some 50 helpers and unlimited agency and subbie resources we cleared everything Christmas Eve
So we moved only 1/4 mile down the road from a pokey little warehouse that could fit around a dozen vehicles inside to an old software warehouse that houses nearly 60 vehicles, no more deicing vans in the morning 
Click the pics for full size version
Also all the old trucks we had when i did the original thread have met their maker although the original Varios that arrived in 2005/06 are now going for scrap.
Things got a little more comfortable when my new truck arrived, a stark contrast to the original. Nearly 9 years on shes showing her age but closing on 300k and not a single breakdown other than a starter motor going.
A lot more thought was taken into the ergonomics
So a typical day during lockdown started like any other, just with ■■■■ loads more packages, this was every day for about 8 months.
As i said the drops counts rocketed, this is on probably less than half the area i used to cover. No villages, just industrial estates and residential estates. With our bulk trucks being full everything was loaded on the package cars, if you couldn’t deliver it, it came back, there was no other option.
This shelf is filled with one postcode that usually would have 10-12 deliveries, today it is 74
Things got easier once helpers were allowed, i had my father in law to be with me. He wasn’t the fastest but he worked hard for someone nearing 60. We’d clear most deliveries by 2-3pm. Being so busy the deliveries were a lot closer together, some streets i might have 1 or 2 deliveries on would suddenly have 5 or 6 times that. Between us our best was 56 drops in 1 hr 15 mins one day.
Keeping yourself clean and safe was a priority so i added hand washing facilities
And companies that couldn’t do their normal work were bulk ordering sanitiser and wipes for resale, most of it came from China, usual bad Chinese packaging
People were very kind, these guys gave me dozens of bottles of sanitiser and wipes to distribute at work and even now give me as many bottles or packs of wipes as i need.
All throughout the first lockdown people were cautious about letting delivery people in their buildings, most let you leave stuff outside, some made you wait till they answered. Others just weren’t expecting us to be working
The good thing about lockdown was the roads being dead, i could drive up the A34 and see nothing but trucks, this junction is usually 3 or 4 lanes deep and queuing up the hill
Deliveries were easy, signatures were abolished back in February, everything was knock and drop, during lockdown it was easy as everyone was home so 120+ drops on my own was easy. I’d drop it at the door, knock and walk away, you didn’t need to wait for an answer. 99% of people were home and you made contact with a wave through the window or as you walked back to the truck.
Lockdown also meant a lot of bulk food stuffs were being ordered as people were increasingly cautious about going out
We also delivered a lot of fish! This was a problem as if a trailer was held and we had notification it had live fish onboard office staff had to go and find the packages, that wasn’t great at the height of summer when temperatures in the trailers were over 100 degrees. As far as i’m aware we didn’t kill any.
You also still got the quirky customers with a sense of humour which always made me chuckle.
And people had clearouts, a lot of clearouts. Which meant this kind of thing was commonplace. Needless to say it went nowhere.
These unfortunately did
Due to the proximity of Bicester Village the town is full of Chinese personal shoppers, they make a living buying designer products for customers in China, this gives us a lot of business. A lot of goods come from the Village while a lot is also bought online, it also means a lot of collections going to companies for onward shipment to the far East
I don’t think any driver had it easy, those on rural routes were hammered with everyone relying on online deliveries. But as i said the figures being delivered and picked up were ridiculous 
By lunchtime
Typical delivery and collection numbers by the end of the day
But i still found time to snap the good stuff around town
I’ve decided if i win the lottery i’m buying one of these
UPS now have their own dedicated training center called Integrad where they teach you the correct way to delivery packages, their package cars are… interesting, designed so the trainer can see how the trainee selects packages and preps the next few deliveries.
So there we have it, it’s been an interesting year. See you in another 10?
