Good morning everyone,
My names Jack and i’m a newbie, i’ve been lurking on the forum taking in all the fantastic advice people have on here and a lot of it has helped me with CPC tests and what not.
Here’s my dilemma and I would like peoples honest opinions on what they would do in this situation.
So i got my cat C in September last year and spent months looking for a job whilst working night shift at sainsbury’s, having previously worked for them and having a good working relationship with management and HR, my store manager did promise me he’d look into seeing if there would be any possibility of moving over to the Basingstoke distribution centre either full time or just to get some experience, after speaking to a driver he said they only take on C+E drivers which makes sense, so I shelved that idea.
Eventually after reading more advice on here I looked up companies around where I live on the VOSA website for O Licences and found one about 1 mile away, so one sunny Thursday morning decided to print off my CV and walked in and asked to speak to the Transport Manager, who as it turned out lived down my road as well, after being called back for a chat, he gave me a job! It’s a food delivery company like Brakes and 3663. Great I thought, my big break, anyway, 4 months down the line and i’m still only driving 5T vans with the odd trip out in a 7.5 tonner and very rarely an 18 tonner, which don’t get me wrong is great because i’m still getting experience using tacho’s and doing vehicle checks and what not but it’s not doing what I want, plus there are downsides like having to work every saturday which isn’t a massive problem but I have to deliver in central london to various cafes/restaurants/bars/hotels etc and it’s a nightmare, and to be quite honest i dread going in on a saturday, the rest of the week is fine but saturdays are the worst by far because I know i’m going to be thrown in at the deep end with 20 odd random drops in central london without a clue as to where any of them are.
Now the good points to this job are, It’s job and finish, so often finish before 2/3pm, and the money is decent enough at £18k basic and £3k attendance bonus, so I just have to turn up, great, because I always turn up so it’s easy money.
Now getting to my Dilemma, on Sunday I applied to a company in Reading that does Pallet work, fairly big company, don’t want to say just yet because i’ve used my full name and if they’re reading may get funny, perhaps I should have used a different username! So I had an interview yesterday and they’ve offered me the job!
Bad points first: It’s less money, £175 less basic per month, it’s also a 48 mile round trip too which will cost between £150-£200 pm in fuel, so i’m already about £350 down each month, money isn’t everything but it helps!
Good points: I will be driving a proper sized rigid truck rather than a van, so more experience, there seems to be more opportunity in this company with regards to moving to different parts like long distance and also if/when I get my C+E I could possibly move up to artics, it’s Mon-Fri with every other saturday optional for overtime which i’m quite happy to do so could recoup some of the money that way.
Overall i’m just happy that they are willing to take a newbie like me on and feel that maybe i’m just in a bit of a pickle because of the unknown of starting a new job.
If anyone has any advice/opinions/stories they want to share, good or bad, I will take it all on board.
Thanks for reading my poorly written essay, writing was and will never be my strong point.
Jack