Anyway, after about half an hour we came to an agreement to leave our phone numbers and they’d call when they were ready. Good job, really, considering it was a three hour wait.
Lafarge plasterboard at portbury take the biscuit. The packs don’t sit on the edge of the trailer but you must strap them, with internals and not ratchets. Sometimes the strap would be 3 inches away from the pack. Totally useless. They make you wheel a trolley with a blue light to the back of the trailer. I refused to turn on the light saying only the emergency services could display a blue flashing light. Didn’t go down too well. I hated that ■■■■ hole 
Took a load of glass bottles to Britvic and was told I MUST wear a hard hat, then told I MUST stay in the cab whilst vehicle is being unloaded…
Stay in cab with hard hat on? - That’s the rules driver… it must be worn at ALL times.
sigh
Crossrail is the same high viz hard hat and goggles in the cab
NathanB:
Scottish and Southern Energy give out “challenges” which you must accept if someone “challenges” you for something silly.
I could spend hours writing down all the stuff they forced me to do when I worked for them…
Got told to wear hard hat in the cab on a demolition job at an Oxford Uni site. I asked why and the security bloke said “incase the machine breaks and drops onto the cab”.
For those who know plant, it was a Komatsu PC450/6 that was loading. I pointed out it weighs around 50 ton and if it did drop onto a steel rollover approved cab, then a poxy piece of plastic wouldn’t do much good.
the difference in H+S attitudes makes me laugh doing generators the lads on day shift have to have the works, fireproof overalls, gloves, hard hat, boots and hi viz vest, and the harness for going onto the top of the set,
head
on nights its a case of get the set off fast as possible and the elf n safety goes right out the window , although I do wear the hi viz and hard hat as falling branches are a tad painful on the old head
So I was doing a night trunk in an 18t from Rugby up to Notts. Two runs of an evening. Rear of the truck has an alarm from this odd looking key and you can only apply it at the back or in the cab. When the ignition is on, the alarm doesn’t sound and if it does go off you have to disarm it again after it has been sounding for at least 5 seconds. It wouldn’t disarm before, however much you operated the key.
So I got on site and was told which bay and backed up to it. Let the engine running, backed up to it and opened the back door then backed fully onto the bay, and waited with the truck.
After about 10 minutes a guy comes out and tells me I have to hand the key in, so I switch the ignition off and follow him. We didn’t get to the end of the loading bay before the alarm goes off. Told the guy that was the alarm on the truck, he didn’t believe me so I went back and disarmed it on the thing behind the cab and and told him it had to be disarmed and lasted 30 seconds with the back door open before needing to be disarmed again.
This time we made it to the office, had to hand in keys and wait.
So I did. I could hear the strident alarm from inside the waiting room. It was pretty loud, and would have been painful for anyone in the lorry, that was the purpose. Didn’t take long before someone from the warehouse came over and I explained as I had been told that when they are unloading I need to be present at the back of the truck with the key in the disarm slot to turn every 30 seconds to keep the alarm from going off. The only other way was with the engine running.
The reason they don’t want you in the cab is that you could misread a red/green signal and pull off with people in the back or that when moving from the bunk to the driving seat you could knock the handbrake off. With me I had my hour or so sitting on the bay with the ignition on but engine off with a H&S guy standing in front of the lorry.
For my second drop I had it at the back of the truck with the key in the slot. When it backed onto a bay at the home depot there was a key on a wire that they plugged in whilst the truck was on the bay to stop the alarm going off, but wouldn’t let me have a copy.
I did this run most nights for a month and saw most of the night crew in this place and the ones I hadn’t seen before wanted me to do this H&S stuff until almost their ears bled.
Another place on night loading/unloading wanted me in the warehouse helping with the sorting from warehouse shelf to cage until one day on the way back I had to stop off at the services for a break and the boss expected me back sooner than I made it and when I said I couldn’t have a break on the loading bay I told him that the previous driver had told me I had to help in the warehouse whilst waiting. Yes, Ok, I was a newbie, I didn’t want to [zb] people off! Boss changed a few colours and suggested in future I stay out of the warehouse completely. I could use the facilities but that was it.
So needless to say when the load was even later with the excuse ‘your driver couldn’t be bothered to help us so we couldn’t be bothered to load him’ was met with the boss throwing a fit.
We missed the next day and the following day back in there we were told to stay out of the warehouse and were loaded as soon as we came in. The paperwork was always slow though, but I got my 45 in the cab.
Also, if you’re in a truck with an alarm like I was, I don’t park in the truck-park. I’ll find somewhere else, somewhere without other sleeping drivers. The other option is to spend my break time with the ignition on. I don’t know what it’ll do to the truck but I was told on a petrol car it could burn out the coil…
So the H&S to stay out of the cab is probably to stop you leaving or moving the wagon in error or by accident