As a long term lurker on here I thought I’d finally put up a post about my experiences of my first tramping job that I started recently.
Having decided (for various reasons) to leave behind my easy, comfortable fridge job with a local, rural firm where I got home most nights and generally had the job sussed to take a gamble on something more challenging I organised, through agency, a Mon-Fri tramping job based about 80 miles from where I live running Chipliners.
I found the work pretty tough going to begin with. There’s a very set A,B,C method of tipping a bulk load off a Chipliner and the machine operators at the various drops expect you to know it and be able to do it at optimal speed. There’s often a queue of trucks behind you also waiting to tip, many of them the easier Walking Floors, and some of them from firms where men are paid by the load. Despite no one, at any point, actaully moaning about taking too long, I did feel a pressure to try to work quicker than I really could and got a bit panicky in the first few days. Added to the experience of driving into large, busy Biomass plants with no idea of where to go or the various rules at each place it was quite overwhelming initially but I did soon get used to it.
I have to say though that with the exception of one or two guys behind desks everyone I encountered early on (and particularly other wagon drivers) couldn’t have been more forthcoming with their help and knowledge when I explained I was new to the gig. I think partly this may have been to do with a willingness to keep things moving along but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and would say what I encountered in the Biomass side of the job was a fraternity amongst drivers that (in my experience) just didn’t exist doing fridge/RDC day work. A couple of guys even offered me their phone numbers and said to ask them any time I wasnt sure about anything.
The big difference between day work and tramping, I think, is the solitude - or at least the sense of solitude - and feeling that you’re on your own but I’ve had a lot of fears and prejudices (some formed by reading this website) about certain firms and certain parts of the country challenged and given lie to in the last couple of weeks and have been very humbled by the kindness of other drivers when I’ve needed it most.
The major downside, as everyone warned me about, has been missing my family: something I haven’t coped with as well as I’d anticipated. I also think after a block of 15/15/15/13/13 hour days that two days off (effectively one and a half after the commute) isn’t really enough. Although no one has directly told me I’m obliged to max the hours when I get my next job through and find out the delivery time it tends to seem that I’ve been planned for the minimum daily rest available to me. Other men have told me there’s no requirement to run myself ragged and planners will adapt to me doing less but, as it’s early days, I’m keen to show a bit of willing and tbh I enjoy driving into the evenings. I know there are guys that do a sixth day but personally I think 5 on 3 off would seem more tolerable although it doesn’t really conform to an orthodox seven day week! It’s just an annoying sense that as soon as you get home for the weekend the mind’s already on going back to work.
All in all I’d say it’s been a good experience so far. It’s another string to my bow as a driver and has shown me a different, if quite intense, side to the job.
Apologies if the post seems excessively personal or rambling but I hope it might be of interest to some of you.
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) it’s your home for 4/5 nights so don’t deprive yourself
