switchlogic:
How very helpful. Nothing in his post said he came into this because it was a breeze, he said its something he always wanted to do. He’s had a tough day and this is your response. Maybe you’ve been perfect from the moment you dropped out of the womb but any of us can remember our first few weeks and many of us found it hard. I did. Beats me why any young drivers bother with attitudes like this amongst older drivers. I imagine you stand there sniggering with the other old cronies too when someone has difficulty reversing…
I tend to be the one helping the newer drivers out actually. The reason for my post is that nobody seems to speak the truth to these people who “dream of being a trucker”. Everybody soft soaps them and tries to help rather than telling them they are obviously not cut out for the job and should stick to their original profession.
I always wanted to be an astronaut but you don’t see me walking round in a space suit pretending I’m defying gravity. There are too many crap drivers around nowadays who should never have been given a licence. They clearly can not think for themselves and rely fully on pratnav without which they would probably go home sick. The sooner we weed out the failures the better and the driver cpc could have done this had it been pass or fail.
Some drivers are beyond help or instruction and we should stop trying to dumb the job down to compensate for them and make everyone else suffer for their inadequacies.
The problem is people rely on the satnav.
Satnav and a good map is the best way, imo.
When I was driving lorries, I used to buy the county map as when I needed it.
As someone else said, the good thing about a map is you get a birds eye view, and the don’t go wrong.
Sadly, 99% of stories I hear about drivers getting lost/wrong way/weight limit etc etc involve satnav.
rambo19:
The problem is people rely on the satnav.
Satnav and a good map is the best way, imo.
When I was driving lorries, I used to buy the county map as when I needed it.
As someone else said, the good thing about a map is you get a birds eye view, and the don’t go wrong.
Sadly, 99% of stories I hear about drivers getting lost/wrong way/weight limit etc etc involve satnav.
Totally agree I used to pick up the Philips maps,the smaller ones for less visited locations,used with sat nav bridge height map,laptop.Nopw I am a TM I have two boxes of unused maps covering most of the country.Would not like to rely totally on a sat nav great tool though they are.
switchlogic:
How very helpful. Nothing in his post said he came into this because it was a breeze, he said its something he always wanted to do. He’s had a tough day and this is your response. Maybe you’ve been perfect from the moment you dropped out of the womb but any of us can remember our first few weeks and many of us found it hard. I did. Beats me why any young drivers bother with attitudes like this amongst older drivers. I imagine you stand there sniggering with the other old cronies too when someone has difficulty reversing…
I tend to be the one helping the newer drivers out actually. The reason for my post is that nobody seems to speak the truth to these people who “dream of being a trucker”. Everybody soft soaps them and tries to help rather than telling them they are obviously not cut out for the job and should stick to their original profession.
I always wanted to be an astronaut but you don’t see me walking round in a space suit pretending I’m defying gravity. There are too many crap drivers around nowadays who should never have been given a licence. They clearly can not think for themselves and rely fully on pratnav without which they would probably go home sick. The sooner we weed out the failures the better and the driver cpc could have done this had it been pass or fail.
Some drivers are beyond help or instruction and we should stop trying to dumb the job down to compensate for them and make everyone else suffer for their inadequacies.
Great, so from one post from a bloke that seems to have just had a bad day and nothing more you’ve deduced he isn’t cut out for driving a truck at all. With the right attitude anyone can drive a truck, hardly that hard is it. And I doubt anyone will give up because you told them to on the internet
What I have learnt in a little time of driving is common sense when using sat nav I was using a car sat nav if the road don’t feel or look right keep going it will re route for you till you feel comfortable.
rambo19:
The problem is people rely on the satnav.
Satnav and a good map is the best way, imo.
Like I said before Sat Nav, Good Map and common sense.
rambo19:
Sadly, 99% of stories I hear about drivers getting lost/wrong way/weight limit etc etc involve satnav.
I can’t have been the only person who used to get lost before we had sat nav?
Truckbling:
switchlogic:
How very helpful. Nothing in his post said he came into this because it was a breeze, he said its something he always wanted to do. He’s had a tough day and this is your response. Maybe you’ve been perfect from the moment you dropped out of the womb but any of us can remember our first few weeks and many of us found it hard. I did. Beats me why any young drivers bother with attitudes like this amongst older drivers. I imagine you stand there sniggering with the other old cronies too when someone has difficulty reversing…
I tend to be the one helping the newer drivers out actually. The reason for my post is that nobody seems to speak the truth to these people who “dream of being a trucker”. Everybody soft soaps them and tries to help rather than telling them they are obviously not cut out for the job and should stick to their original profession.
I always wanted to be an astronaut but you don’t see me walking round in a space suit pretending I’m defying gravity. There are too many crap drivers around nowadays who should never have been given a licence. They clearly can not think for themselves and rely fully on pratnav without which they would probably go home sick. The sooner we weed out the failures the better and the driver cpc could have done this had it been pass or fail.
Some drivers are beyond help or instruction and we should stop trying to dumb the job down to compensate for them and make everyone else suffer for their inadequacies.
I understand your point about some people not cut out for this job, I’ve known people I wouldn’t trust with a wheelbarrow let alone a truck, but to condemn a bloke because he struggled on his first day seems a bit rough.
I’ve seen a similar attitude in Motorsport, we get young lads through the door, green as grass and because they can’t do everything immediately people wright them off as useless. Of those that I’ve been told weren’t going to make anything of themselves 2 now work on F1 race teams, another is a number one mechanic with an F3 team, one who was written off by a very experienced but bully of a trucks driver, because he wasn’t confident reversing straight after his test and was a bit slow through peages, worked for us at the end of this year. And even though he’s only 23 I’d trust him with a truck far more than somebody much older with more years experience. And the team he’s with now must think the same as when he handed his notice in they gave him a massive pay rise to stop him leaving.
Truckbling:
I tend to be the one helping the newer drivers out actually. The reason for my post is that nobody seems to speak the truth to these people who “dream of being a trucker”. Everybody soft soaps them and tries to help rather than telling them they are obviously not cut out for the job and should stick to their original profession.
I always wanted to be an astronaut but you don’t see me walking round in a space suit pretending I’m defying gravity.
I don’t normally get sucked into these disagreements but I do see you point, however the OP’s ability to handle a HGV vehicle is not in question, his issues arose with relying on a sat nav or just a combination of nerves and well the wrong sat nav coupled with a lack of experience.
Doubt they teach you how to read a map in your HGV lessons, its an ability you have to pick up, in the old days it was easy because there was no sat navs, now sat navs can work against us or with us dependant on our own knowledge/experience and insight we have picked up from map reading.
New drivers are using the tools they have at their disposal and a sat nav is what they are familiar with so that will be the main device of choice. As mentioned I’m stuck in the habit of using a map first then keying in the postcode to the old sat nav and if we agree great if not I will recheck my map and go my own way.
Not sure if theres a dcpc course on map reading but it should be compulsory for new drivers.
In the end we all have bad days, I have been lost more times that I care to remember but thats all part of the job. Experienced drivers have a duty to help new recruits by passing on their experience and helping them out.
What they don’t need is some Buzz Lightyear wannabee knocking their confidence
it reminded me of my very first day out for an agency driving class2…i was sent to a place that delivered exhausts i started in Glasgow and my first drop was over near Kirkaldy and my last was in Greenock, with about 30 drops inbetween
i did not have a clue what i was doing and where i was going, when i did finally find a drop no one gave me a hand and they never knew where the next one was
i spent nearly 15 hours stressed out my nut with the cab phone ringing every 5 mins asking where i was and why i wasnt where i should be blah blah…
i brought back about 10 drops and i was that late the security guard had to let me in the yard and i practically fell out the cab i was that tired and i went home thinking that i hated truck driving and i didnt want to do it again as i thought that what i had just experienced was the norm
that day was nearly 20 years ago and i can safely say that i have never had a run as bad as that since ( they must of put 2 runs together and thought the agency monkey will do it )
im glad i didnt give up as ive had many great years driving ( ok ive had a few bad days but nothing like my first ) and ive got tonnes of stories that i can tell my kids about the adventures ive had being a truck driver !!..like the one time i kicked open a door inside Ibrox stadium and scared the poop out of a bunch of players watching a replay of the previous game …or the time i was delivering to Celtic park and i had to push my way through a crowd that were waiting to see the new signing and i went through the front doors to reception to tell them about my delivery and when i opened the doors again to exit, the whole crowd started cheering and then abruptly stopped when they noticed it was only me
A lot of pish in this thread, only advice you need too take & has been stated;
Slow down, relax and forget delivery time targets. Invest in the truckers atlas and before you set off to your destination, fix sat-nav and scan map for any road restrictions you may encounter.
Write some notes down if you need to as reminders in an easy to view place. Do not rush for anybody that’s when accidents happen. There are a lot of delivery targets I don’t meet but most of the time that is due to the office being clueless & thinking you’re driving a rocket.
10-20minutes planning in the yard before you set off will save you a lot of stress etc.
And mostly just try to enjoy it pal, I was the same as you at the start of 2013, after a couple of months you begin to rely on technology less and less. Until you get to a point where you realise you’ve been to nearly all these places over and over.
Keep at it, I have only recently started driving trucks and swear by my sat nav but I always read the sat nav route then look over the route in the truckers atlas for the unexpected and its paid off as I have not got lost much well nothing major just driving past the road I need then realising that was the road I needed and being very careful looking for a place to turn around safely.
I am that bad getting lost 10 years ago I drove buses for 17 years and only knew about six routes from our depot out of 13 routes, and this is in my home city
If you can get your drops the night before work (I usually do) then jot the postcodes down and look at them on your pc at home on google maps for a better view, after a week or so you will get more confident, I just turn up and look at the map and aim the truck as Mrs sat nav barks out orders
You cant go wrong using maps AND sat nav and your eyes to spot the obvious.
Good luck mate, some cracking advice on here for you from the guys.
Chin up mate there was no real disaster. I don’t post on here much none the less I find myself reading on here quite a lot now and then.
whats your disaster would have had some of the moaners on here raving about the bad planners, bad police, the lack of communication between the office and whoever, tellin someone to do one as they wouldn’t have had enough time for another load or are just too tired
remember you not getting a load gone is as bad to an office bod as a traffic jam is to you, but once the jams gone and the loads are moving again no one cares until the next one, adopt this approach when things get away from you, plus you maxed your shift and you’ll want to keep doing that, hell one day you might do it on purpose for the extra Wonga. (never to a good employer though). shift lengths are a pain in the ■■■ at first, get used to it.
as far as sat navs go you can zoom out on any decent satnav, get a better overall picture of your route, guess what it looks just like a map, see a bit you don’t like, zoom right in. you can cross check this on many route planners on a laptop, online or offline. or a map whatever floats your boat. a box of maps is a little dated to me but all to their own.
my advice make friends with someone whos been there awhile, better than any a to z.
i class the first 2 weeks i did driving artics as amongst the worst weeks of my life, no van, 7.5t or rigid exp, ■■■■ it, straight in at the deep end working at the opposite end of the country from where i live, so no local knowledge. first time out by myself i had to use diff lock - i was doing supermarket deliveries wrote a tail lift off
started on maps as sat nav wasn’t about. fully converted to sat navs, but always check the route it’s taking you on and change it if you don’t agree with it.
as much as i hated the first two weeks, i had far worse days, i would always think - imagine if this had been my first day!! i’d never go back what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger an all
Put the first day down to experience,nobodies done everything right on their first day.Be content with no injuries ,no damage.
I didn’t use sat-navs ,always had a map and a few A2Z’s,but in my later years I used Google a lot. Don,t be frightened of asking the traffic office clerk to run you a map off the office computer . Ask one or two of the other drivers for their phone no’s so you can ring for advice should the situation arise. Ask in the right manner and they will help.
cheers for all the advice and I had a much better day today,was moving trailers 15 or 20 miles over and back to the same places all day and I had no problems, everything went very well and I enjoyed it.
I was told the planner that was sending me out the first day is now gone and he purposely tried to make it difficult for me because it was his last day, the boss told me he didn’t realise what was going on and I shouldn’t have been sent on them runs.
im going to be doing the same run as today until the end of next week and then ill move onto doing the longer ones.
and just to make it clear truckbling I have no problem driving the lorry it was more the lack of experience that caught me out and judging by the comments most people go through the same when they start and im sure you were no different.
…or the time i was delivering to Celtic park and i had to push my way through a crowd that were waiting to see the new signing and i went through the front doors to reception to tell them about my delivery and when i opened the doors again to exit, the whole crowd started cheering and then abruptly stopped when they noticed it was only me 
well nothing major just driving past the road I need then realising that was the road I needed and being very careful looking for a place to turn around safely.
cheers