…Or rather not mine, but that of a contract I am fulfilling for the next two weeks for a major supplier of magazines.
It’s as tedious as it comes, hour trips between 2 nearby towns, 3 times a day. For whatever reason, whilst loading/unloading you cannot be in your cab, now whenever this is laid down as policy it instantly boils my ■■■■, as out of all the places I would like to be whilst at work, the cab obviously comes number one. The cab is also, technically the safest place to be when forklifts are working nearby. I have made my peace with surrendering keys, take them! But don’t order me out of the cab for hours in the name of your health and safety policy. Especially if I just have to stand outside the cab and wander around aimlessly. Today I spent 4-5 hours on my feet reading just outside the cab with the door open, hours that could have been spent comfortably sat in a fine Daf XF chair.
I arrived on site to be greeted with “you know you can’t be out here” before they even say hello. So we are off to a good start. I explain I am just undoing the curtains and was planning on dropping the trailer and buggering off with the unit if that would suit them. This is what I did on Friday, as there is a 7 hour gap between being unloading and getting loaded again, on a Friday. It went down fine last week.
Every other day of the week is a 3 hour gap, which is still long enough in my book to drop the trailer and bugger off round the corner to catch some zzzz. He says that is ok, but he is concerned about the weight, as today will be heavier than Friday. I explain I would like to go and locate some dinner etc, but he says its walkable distance and the “regular” driver normally just sits in the canteen (read: like a good little boy).
My mind is saying things that my mouth cannot possibly follow up, and so I entertain his nonsense for a minute or two.
“We don’t want to tip the trailer up on end, what with all the weight at the front and no unit attached, we’ve had it happen before”
A quick check of the landing legs tells me they will withstand 80 tonnes static, which is a smidge beyond the max payload to say the least. In my opinion, and without figures to hand, I would say it would take a great deal of weight placed ahead of the landing legs in order to get the trailer to pivot about them and lift the wheels in the air. And certainly, a complete muppet of a forklift driver to load in such a way as to not balance out the weight on the lorry bed as he goes.
Being the cynical sort, I accepted his comments, and read them as “if you don’t play the game the way we want, we will tip your trailer over, and then blame you”. So for an easy life, I walked for food, and then sat in the canteen for 2.5 hours bored out of my mind and working on a cracking headache from the tinted windows and fluorescent lights combo.
I’m not sure how the rest of the transport world copes, loading heavy loads on trailers without a unit attached. I imagine it gets very expensive having a unit attached to every trailer so as to prevent the danger of tipping.
Good people of trucknet, your thoughts on the above comments?
I may consider telling him where to go forth tomorrow, as I get a little tired standing on my feet for that amount of time, and then still driving between times. Of course, the recreational times spent reading is recorded as rest, but it is hardly restful, being forced to stand around like an idiot, as if facing some health and safety firing squad at dawn.
