Despite saying that I wasn’t going to give an account of today, here it is anyway lol 
It was instructed to me to be at Goole docks by 8am when they opened, to be at the front of the Q, so then onto Wigan in plenty of time for the 11am booking slot. So I decided to get to work for 6.30 to give me plenty of time . . . . . somehow the truck got damaged and I dont know how. I backed under an empty container (last I night I left the unit free standing) after making sure that the suspension was the right height. Anyhow, the coupling up (reversing onto the 5th wheel I mean) was succesful. However, when I went to attach the dogclip, the handle for the pin wasn’t far enough back so the hole for the clip to go through was’nt big enough. I jumped back into the cab and just backed about another inch or so to give a bit more space.
Still didn’t work 
Of course there was no-one around to help so I was a bit of a loss. I decided to try to couple up to a different trailer, and again this didn’t work. Of course, the office phone wasn’t diverted to the night man so I just sat in the yard like a prat. About 7.30 the fitter rolled up, and he couldn’t understand it either and he tried to do it too but got the same result. He asked me if I had knocked it on something and to my knowledge I haven’t as I was being really cautious. Time was ticking on, so he called the bossman on his mobile (whos number I soon got off of the fitter for future use…), and he said I should take one of the Renault Premiums. Luckily the one I was told to take was already under a trailer, just needed the legs winding up and the susies and lines putting on So I set off at 8am wondering how long it was going to take and wondering if it mattered that I was sure to be late to Wigan. I looked at the dash (literally as I pulled out) and saw the tacho had a little red light - oops so pulled up quick and bashed one in (I had done one for my truck when I got there) so diverting a major-balls up luckily.
Hot footed over to Goole, and as I now knew where I was going and the Q had gone by now. Apparantly there is only 1 toploader in that place for the containers and he recognised me from yesterday so we soon got organised.
Soon enough the M62 was rolling under the wheels - at a restricted speed of, wait for it, 53 mph argh. Well all I can say what a difference a few days makes. On Monday I was crunching one of the other premium’s gear boxes cus it was the first time I had used a range change box. Today I was thinking ‘this is nicer than my truck’s gearbox’, didn’t crunch once! This lorry pulled better than mine, so rather than goin like 20 … 25 … 30 it was more like 20 … 35 … 40 which was nice cus it showed me that it isn’t just me messing up gears all the time; then again my truck has got 501000 kms on the clock 
In the end I was only 30 mins late into Heinz (now I knew where I was going and so cut about an hour off of yesterday’s time lol), and was told to use Bay 7 - the same as yesterday. The difference was today that there was not our shunter there to help, and many more units and trailers parked up. So I did as yesterday, screwed the truck round so I could reverse in drivers side and not blind side. Took some deep breaths as I went round and took a good long look to see where everything was. On the positive side there was nothing on bays 6 or 8 so I had a bit more lateral space - on the down side I had very little forwards space. It took about 10 minutes to do the reverse cus I went on drivers side and so cut my space down but really didn’t fancy a blindsider for my first unaided reverse. There was a puzzling moment when I stopped, then realised that the angle meant that the bar at the back of the skelly was touching the ground cus of the slope at that angle, so had to shunt again to go literally straight back to get past this hurdle. (In normal terms, a skelly is a ‘skeleton’ trailer, ie no woodword flatbed and the box just boshes on - trouble is a 45foot box overhangs by about 5 foot so there is an extendable bar that comes out and locks out to stop cars from having their windscreen and roof caved in by the bottom of the container so really a crash bar).
The next puzzler was, should I break the seal and open the doors or would someone come out and break it? so went into the office with the roadnotes and the bloke said ‘just back up, handbrake on and wait and watch the lights by the door, they will be red when they open the roller door - don’t move, then when they go green, pull away then open the container doors then back up again. when the lights go red again bring your keys to me’. This makes sense cus obviously they cant risk a driver pulling away when people are going in and out of the container! Actually backing up to the doors goes against ur instincts cus u actually have to touch the wall with the truck, and it dont feel normal to back into a wall even if it does have rubber bumpers!!
As opposed to yesterday I didn’t have to swap trailers as I was literally just tipping then going back to base - it only took them 10 minutes to tip but I sat there for an hour because I was due a break, and some other drivers from my firm turned up so had to have a quick chat to them 
You know when they have finished tipping because the red light flicks back to green and then you can go back for the keys.
Going back over the M62 you can really tell the difference between loaded and unloaded - and it shows on the tachograph, so if you haven’t started driving for work yet when you do have a good look at your tacho at the end of the day if you do a run like this, ie straight there and straight back loaded then unloaded, you’ll be amazed. Of course the M62 does exaggerate this a bit as it includes Saddleworth Moor as well as Hartshead Moor and the highest summit for a motorway in England.
So its back to double manning on monday until my unit is fixed. I can’t believe how much I have learned this week, the learning curve really is steep when u get into work (ie real life) situations. Hopefully I wont get any grief about the truck, especially as I am sure I haven’t damaged it by being careless.
Simon
