With advancing age, I’ve come to prefer the routine stuff. Having said that, I certainly couldn’t tolerate (as some of my colleagues do) the same trunking type run every day. I turn up in the morning, already knowing (subject to last-minute amendments/additions) where I’m going and pretty much what time I’ll be back. Fortunately there is no pre-directed route, so it’s entirely down to me which roads to take. I know the individual delivery points and procedures, and for the most part I know the people I will be dealing with which suits me fine.
Winseer:
I like having to use my head to get around traffic blockages, in particular “alternative routes to bypass entire motorways”…I’ve not had “Off-Route” as one of my nicknames since the 1990’s for nothing!
Recent examples - would be “getting around the night closures of the M20, M2, A2, M26 and M25” of course…
Not sure if you’re a night driver too, but I actually look forward to road closures. Gives the old grey matter a work out trying to figure a better way round than the official route. Usually I can. Usually. 
Thanks for all the replies. It’s interesting to see all your preferences.
I think I’m still traumatised from my very first week driving artics nearly three years ago. The Dutch have a tendancy to sometimes close a motorway and not put up any diversion signs, leaving you to find your own way forward. In my first week, I was diverted off at 1am and had to make a snap decision whether to turn left or right at the end of the slip road. I decided to go left which was a big mistake. I ended up in a small dark village totally unsuitable for an artic.
As it was my first week, I still had no real idea how to reverse properly and it took almost an hour for me to turn around at a small junction, trying not to hit the parked cars all around me, in a black truck in the middle of the night with no one to help see me back. I was a nervous wreck by the time I made it back to the sanctuary of the motorway, and then had to spend the rest of the night trying to find another route. Since that time, I am most happy going to familiar places, and knowing how to get there by alternative routes if necessary.
I guess I have seen a few unusual places in the past week or two. Took a 30 minute break surrounded by ocean going cargo ships while picking up an empty trailer in the Port of Amsterdam, Ijmuiden. And I did get some good views of a floodlit Amsterdam airport with jets taxiing by me as I looked for an elusive DC.
However, I’ll be glad when the planners manage to fix me up with a regular shift again and I can relax a bit. 
I get a mix of regular full load drops from base then what ever TM finds for back loads or just end up at Pallet ways hub Fradley
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For many years I always did the unexpected. Never knowing which Country I’d be heading to next.
Recently I’ve just been driving the same routes every day local to where I live and have to say I’m getting to like the idea of being home every night
I’m fortunate to get a bit of both.
We service about 50 sites throughout the UK and I can get sent to any of those sites during the week so that’s the unexpected bit covered. But having been to them all at least once I’ve got the reassurance of knowing where I’m going, who and what I’m dealing with when I get there and knowing where I can get parked if needs be.
There’s nothing like getting a stack of CMRs with deliveries you can’t pronounce in places you’ve never heard of and getting a faint glimmer of the old spark of adventure.
Getting a load to somewhere you’ve been a hundred times might be boring but at least you can go into autopilot for it.
Winseer:
Juddian:
Winseer:
One can only imagine the regular Debrief:
Fortunately we haven’t slid down the rabbit hole into the world of debriefing 
yet.
So long as the job gets done properly, the customer is happy and the vehicle comes back in one bit, the route you might have chosen to get the job done will not be questioned.
Good question. Every day can have a little variety with traffic conditions etc., even on the most monotonous routes, though I prefer a bit of variety, seeing some new places and what not, but not too much. I remember one multi drop trip around South Wales in the days before satnavs when I was on agency and not one of the many places had their name obviously displayed so that was a bit of a nightmare, so the odd new place with mostly regular works out fine for me - less stressful than trying to find too many obscure places.
Nite Owl:
Winseer:
I like having to use my head to get around traffic blockages, in particular “alternative routes to bypass entire motorways”…I’ve not had “Off-Route” as one of my nicknames since the 1990’s for nothing!
Recent examples - would be “getting around the night closures of the M20, M2, A2, M26 and M25” of course…
Not sure if you’re a night driver too, but I actually look forward to road closures. Gives the old grey matter a work out trying to figure a better way round than the official route. Usually I can. Usually.
I’ve been a night driver pretty much ever since I got my HGV licence.
The only time I’ve done “earlies” - is for inductions, assessments, and the VERY occasionally “Needs Must” come January on the agencies…
The last 06:00 start I did that was NOT an induction or assessments - was the two shifts I put in at Europa, Erith (back then) in January 2013.
I think that was collecting and delivering some machine parts in one of Europa’s curtainsiders, if memory serves - so “General Haulage” I would class that.
When I was younger, I enjoyed a job where I was going to different places all the time; it was often a challenge to find them and the customers were usually either building sites or retail shops.
In my later years, I had a great job with a Palletforce company where I spent the morning doing deliveries and the afternoon on collections. Most customers were regulars with just an occasional stranger for variety; even a longer drive up to Manchester or somewhere sometimes, then home for tea mot evenings.
Juddian:
Winseer:
Juddian:
Winseer:
One can only imagine the regular Debrief:
Fortunately we haven’t slid down the rabbit hole into the world of debriefing
So long as the job gets done properly, the customer is happy and the vehicle comes back in one bit, the route you might have chosen to get the job done will not be questioned.
I reckon “De Briefing” that I found now is the case at RM these days (since I left FT there) is just giving some work for those drivers who ain’t got a lot of work for them any longer, as “acting manager” or “driver trainer” basically micro-managing everything…
There are moans for leaving a depot more than 9 minutes later than the 318 says, moans for not executing a “closed door” policy on late-loads, but the threat of the sack if one DOES then leave with “work left behind”. Can’t win there! Either you ■■■■ one manager off, or listen to the other one, and ■■■■ them off instead. Either way, you’re name soon gets to be mud unless you get perfect traffic conditions, no road closures ever, and all the other “perfect line-up” that never seems to happen in the real world, not for this long-standing driver at least.
Careful scrutiny is made via the Isotrac system (or whatever it has moved onto since) so “spending too long in one place” gets viewed as an “unauthorized break”…
“Going down the wrong roads” is frowned upon, even if legal to do so.
I even got moaned at one occasion for “dropping a Milton Keynes Trailer off @ Parcel Force” returning one night fron Coventry hub (318 says “return with empty trailer to medway”)
Naturally, Coventry’s (Parcel Force) effort to be “more efficient” by giving me this ad-hoc instruction to a driver passing that way otherwise with an empty trailer - wasn’t lost on me, but did seem to be lost on RM Logistics which decide that I’m not apparently supposed to obey the managers at the other offices I run into… Hmm one big happy family eh? - NOT!
I’m wondering if RM has fallen to the Lefties these days, as it’s all this “micromanagement” rather than “substance” these days.
Folk I used to know there - tell me how crap it has become since I left in 2010…
Anyways, I don’t need to go back there now that I’ve got regular supermarket work, which pays almost as much, at least at Christmas time… (£19ph for tonights shift, compared to £19.48ph at RM over Christmas at the start of this year, before my little “accident” in March got me the bullet…) 
Plenty of variety there, with ad-hoc runs out ever shift, and no buggering about trying to keep the managers happy “doing their jobs for them”.
You get given a store to deliver a trailer full of stuff to, go there, collect the empties, return to depot, de-kit, rinse and repeat. Plenty of road closures to negotiate, NO moaning when you take longer than normal to complete the tasks allocated to you. Bliss!! 
the challenge for me, did long trips early days in uk, always early starts, and night driving, then a bit of regular daily trips Poole to Cardiff, boring, night trunk, hated it, same road only in the dark boring, started euro all over, day or night loved it.
I remember years ago late 60s a driver that was on local milk collections asked about a change of job to do distance but was worried about finding places .The chap he asked turned to him and said You have a bloody tongue in your mouth use it, The milk collection driver was too afraid of getting lost and stayed doing the same job until he retired in the 90s
I prefer the unexpected going new different places
Although I’d prefer to know where I’m going for my full shift so can plan my breaks and parking
As where I work it be like drop at brimigham ring office.
Them be told collect at Stafford ring office. Ok go to Liverpool ring offoce.
Ok head to Glasgow. Etc.
Id rather them.just tell me at start of shift instead of 1 job at a time.
In an ideal world.id love regular run up to Scotland. I reckon I could easily do 5 days a week driving up and around scotland
On tippers, unless we were on regular work, we didn’t know where we were going from load to load so we couldn’t really plan our days. You could start at 5am with something like a West Midlands run with tarmac, then maybe a local load of stone and then be lined up for a longish trip with tar to the A46 at Lincoln (only certain vehicles were allowed depending on the type of material and wether they had adequate insulation) which wouldn’t be required on site until mid afternoon. This meant sitting around waiting to get loaded, then sitting around at the other end waiting to get tipped, especially if more than one quarry was running to the same job. Plenty of late finishes as well! Occasionally we would get a run to Sevenoaks or Enfield with stone and pick granite up from Atherstone , or down to South West Wales with tarmac which was a 10 hour (plus 
) drive, we could plan our day then which was better in some ways.
Pete.