A light hearted bit…
We all deal with these idiots, so what’s the biggest howler you’ve had?
Many years ago, in a land far, far away ---- in a time before mobile phones…
Doing a delivery when an office bod came out and said that the depot had asked if I could ring them when I arrived.
Kindly showed me the phone and duly rang TM (If memory serves, this particular TM was in somewhere like Manchester)
“Got an urgent collection for you. The Smelter in Fort Willam. 10 pallets. Said you’d be there about 2 pm. OK!”
Me… “Er, you do realise that it’s nearly 1 and I’m in Stonehaven?”
“Yes, but it’s not far… you’ll make it by 2!”
At this point I laughed out loud, put the phone down and had a good laugh with the all the listeners.
Don’t know what, if anything, ever happened to the pallets. Do remember going straight back to my base and, about 2 weeks later, the TM got ‘promoted out the door’.
Got a phone call from TM. You ok with an 0800 Trowbridge? Yes I said. Downtown the dock, box on. Round to yard for notes , tell the night man to leave a note for TM I’ll be 3 hours late.TM had seen TR postcode TR is Truro not Trowbridge
Beau Nydel:
Got a phone call from TM. You ok with an 0800 Trowbridge? Yes I said. Downtown the dock, box on. Round to yard for notes , tell the night man to leave a note for TM I’ll be 3 hours late.TM had seen TR postcode TR is Truro not Trowbridge
Isn’t Trowbridge a BA14(bath) postcode ?
I rarely post here but a few years ago at an old job our TM came out with me to make sure I was getting on with the job ok before they entrusted me with a shiny new wagon, he asked me why I was using my own sat nav and not the microlise handheld “sometimes it’s wrong” I said
“It’s never wrong it gets the post code of the site blah blah blah” anyway we do it his way and followed the directions contrary to what my satnav was saying and ended up on the end of Bradford… not the exact centre. But he did insist it was never wrong
Back in the day, late 50s, my father and big brother both worked for a large builders merchant in London, brother driving an Austin Loadstar, dad a series 3 Austin, both well used. A big company took over, put some money in, and they both got shiny new Morris FFKs. The yard was entered through a narrow arch made for horses with a stone bollard each side to protect the wall, very tight. A few weeks on, my brother clipped one with the front wing of his new lorry (you often saw FFKs with a dent there must have been a common thing). The TM went mad, took it off him and gave him the old man’s old lorry as a punishment motor. The FFK went off to get the dent fixed, when it was ready the TM went to pick it up. Turning into the yard guess what? 
Bernard
‘Go meet that cruise ship in Copenhagen 8am Monday’ I get there 8am Monday, no sign of a cruise ship…it was supposed to be 8am Sunday! In the end I had to chase it to a Norwegian fjord. Lovely run for me, one of most memorable trips I ever did, not so great for company, in the end by time we got a reload we’d done 2000km across Scandinavia unpaid. Funny thing was I got a call from boss half way through about to rip me to shreds, until I pointed out I had a text from the planner with Monday on it. This is why I ALWAYS prefer texts from the office, hard proof of your instructions
We got one of those young college types in as a TM, mid 20’s never been near a lorry before in his life.
I rang in after a tip in Hull for a return load and reminded him this flat bed trailer was needed at the main depot for M.O.T prep work and needed to go there loaded for night trunk that night.
I got to the place for the return load only to find out it was three 8 ton lifts!, I said hang on we aint got anything big enough to unload this at our depot, just the usual 1 ton forklifts.
I rang in to tell him the score & he said in no uncertain terms just get it back here.
As I turned into the depot our main TM was looking through the office window & I could read his lips WTF!!!.
He came barging out of the office & I told him I had told this young guy the score with the weight of the lifts but was over ruled.
Everybody could hear him tearing a strip off this guy across the whole depot, it cost a bob or two to hire a crane to lift them off & onto another flat bed trailer. he disappeared the week after lol.