I guess this might be tramping I start on Thursday night and won’t return back to yard till Monday morning/afternoon.
I’m out for 3 - 4 weeks at a time, I get my first collection and delivery details and away I go, I never know my reload details till after I’m tipped, could be local or like this week a 960km empty run for a collection with a delivery 2000km away. Unless I’m on an overnight boat or having a 45hr in an regs enforcing country ( which I stay in a hotel ) I live in the truck.
robroy:
toonsy:
Tramping (minimum) is out all week, that is you leave for work on day one and don’t get home until day five or six or whatever. Longer periods are available.The odd night out isn’t tramping. Trunking isn’t tramping.
Ok, so I’ve tramped all my life, weekends out the lot, but I’m on a 4 day week now so only do 3 nights a week…so what do you reckon I am now?
(To all my ‘‘special fans’’ on here…You can answer that as long as the word you use doesn’t start with a ‘C’
That would be one of the few things that would get me back into the seat, ‘weekends away’!
You could be away 3 weeks even in the UK, now they insist on having the truck back to be with it’s teddies, blankies and colour books 
newmercman:
Tramping is going wherever the load takes you, sleeping in the cab on regular out and back runs is not tramping,
Taking that correct definition to the extreme would be the Valenton Paris - Baghdad ‘trunking’ operations described long ago in the old time Saviem topic.
As opposed to just running randomly from whatever place to whatever place between different drops and deliveries.Possibly without ever even going further than a 120 miles radius from base or even spending more than two or three nights out in a week.
The name seeming to have come from the shipping industry to denote random loads running between numerous different ports as opposed to out and back clipper type runs.The clue being that a Tramp seldom if ever has anywhere he can call his ‘home’ ( port ).Unlike a trunk driver/clipper ship crew. 
muckles:
I believe the original definition of Tramping was related to itinerant labourers who would move from place to place in search of work, the process of travelling between jobs being known as “On the Tramp” (heard that on Time Team many years ago when they were uncovering a Navvies camp) these weren’t necessarily unemployable people looking for odd jobs, but those working on projects like building Canals and Railways where they have to move from place to place once the job has finished, it was later it got linked with vagrants.
I think the word always had the vagrancy connotation.
The arrival of Navvies in an area to perform earthworks often had locals running for the hills in fear, similar to when the soldiery passed through an area (or were called in against unrest, which was always a final resort for the powers-that-be given that the soldiery itself could be responsible for a large amount of crime and disorder in a local area).
Navvies seem to have acquired a slightly romantic and dignified connotation nowadays, similar probably to the miners latterly. The scale of many achievements is undoubtedly awesome.
But unlike the miners, there was no settled community, and they were rabbles almost entirely of men drawn from all over, working under fearsome conditions of risk, overwork, and exploitation, and attracting (or even creating) as it does a significant element of criminals, moral degenerates, and undesirables, and leaving behind when the work was over a myriad workforce with no settlement or means of support.
Some diamonds do of course form in the pressure, but the Navvies were never a welcome bunch in settled community overall, and even publicans, innkeepers, and prostitutes, who all stood to gain a windfall in business, would have recognised the mixed blessing of their presence.
If anything, it is likely the positive connotation of “tramp” as implying a useful itinerant heavy labourer which has been lost, rather than the negative connotation of vagrant being later acquired.
The first job I did near enough 30 years ago was for British ropes, nights out from day 1, leave Monday, back Friday/Saturday. European work was usually 3 weeks away, now I’m in the events industry my record stands at 14 weeks and 3 days 
But in all fairness, it’s all hotels now, I only occasionally sleep in the truck if it’s easier for me when I’m driving across Europe. I’d kill for a 4 on 4 off job now!
Carryfast:
newmercman:
Tramping is going wherever the load takes you, sleeping in the cab on regular out and back runs is not tramping,Taking that correct definition to the extreme would be the Valenton Paris - Baghdad ‘trunking’ operations described long ago in the old time Saviem topic.
As opposed to just running randomly from whatever place to whatever place between different drops and deliveries.Possibly without ever even going further than a 120 miles radius from base or even spending more than two or three nights out in a week.
The name seeming to have come from the shipping industry to denote random loads running between numerous different ports as opposed to out and back clipper type runs.The clue being that a Tramp seldom if ever has anywhere he can call his ‘home’ ( port ).Unlike a trunk driver/clipper ship crew.
That’s it, I went out at the beginning of April, I got home 12,000 plus miles later and the only road I traveled down both ways was the road from my house to my yard. Point A to B, to C, to D to E, to F and back to A, that’s tramping.
Going to e.g. Italy and back is not tramping, but going to Italy, to Spain, to Sweden and back to Britain is, but only if it’s not a regular thing, the tramping part is the not knowing which random place you’re going to next, distance is irrelevant.