Do you feel under constant pressure to get to your destination on time? Ever tempted to skip breaks or get creative with your tachograph to hit your JIT slot? Does tiredness affect your driving?
‘You and Yours’ on BBC Radio 4 is looking at time and tiredness in truck drivers on Monday 1st March - we want to hear your stories. Email the programme in confidence at:
Website: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/featur … erty.shtml
Sounds like another “lets tell everyone how unprofessional and dangerous road transport is” programme.
Seen enough of these down the years to know that we’ll come off in a bad light.
No thanks.
Ever tempted to skip breaks or get creative with your tachograph to hit your JIT slot?
FYI…
That is Illegal… and could lead to a driver losing his vocational licence, and therefore his job… no job… no mortgage payments… etc… 
You dont seriously think any driver on here will jeapourdise their livelyhoods by being so stupid, and even if they were that daft they would have to be certifiably insane to admit it on here or on a media programme
rikki have sent them an email ask them to try to do somthing contructive for a change ie wtd, parking drivers held abroad
Throughout March You & Yours examines what it’s like to live in a time poor society. We investigate how tired drivers with punishing schedules are a hidden danger on the roads.
Taken from the BBC Radio 4 website
OK … step up… who wants to be the first to be called a menace on the roads … 44 tonnes of death and all the other garbage the media usually use to describe us and our industry
What no takers … how surprising
Good Idea Alix… however I think with the Guardian reading BBC Journo’s we will always be the scourge of the roads… and only there to ensure their children breath deisel particulates and hold up their 4x4 when they are in a hurry to get to sainsburys… Therefore I doubt wether they will ever be interested in the real problems within our industry
And Yes I am having a bad day
oh gawd, here we go again. What is it about modern sniping journalists that makes them think that quality journalism involves casting aspersions country wide at any group of individuals they see fit without having any idea of the issues that face that group.
By posting that request on here they are making the assumption that the industry ignores the rules as and when it suits us.
wont even bother actually now i think of it
Hi Timepoverty, I would be glad to tell you about all the times I pull over and have a sleep when I am tired mainly because my boss insists I don’t drive when tired, I wish I could tell you about all the pressure put on me to “bend the rules” but for some reason I doubt my boss would even dream of asking me to. If he did I might be tempted to go find a new boss…As for skipping breaks, as if!!! if it is possible to overdose on tea, I am a prime candidate.
Sorry to disapoint…now if I could tempt you to get in touch with all those company reps, company bosses etc etc who drive for hours without any regulations, or breaks after long working days I would look forward to listening to that…Maybe you could get to interview some journalists as well, I am sure some of them spend long periods travelling round our highways interviewing members of the public and after very long working days drive for hours to get back to their homes without any rest and absolutely no regulation or control
timepoverty:
Do you feel under constant pressure to get to your destination on time? Ever tempted to skip breaks or get creative with your tachograph to hit your JIT slot? Does tiredness affect your driving?‘You and Yours’ on BBC Radio 4 is looking at time and tiredness in truck drivers on Monday 1st March - we want to hear your stories. Email the programme in confidence at:
Website: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/featur … erty.shtml
Well, it seems like run-of-the-mill stuff theyre after, cowboys running bent in leviathan motors for wages or something like it. But, how about doing a programme on the real hardships faced in the industry? Alix mentioned a few. Hardships that nobody wants to know about, like poor, even cutthroat rates, a government that takes near on 75% of every gallon of derv sold, like the way a bloke can be prosecuted and hounded for mistakes at work. like 16 hour split shifts that are bloody legal, and can be done all week every week! (I know theyre going eventually) Lets get blair or somebody strapped in a cab and see how his pecker holds up after 6 weeks, yes, LEGAL weeks. Like being able to take 9 hours off to eat, wash, sleep and relax in after doing 15 hours 3 times a week, again, legal! Towns like Rugby that banned all HGV from car parks, but need the goods we bring in and take out just to live! councils that close lorry parks and sell the land for cash. Congestion charges that penalise hauliers that are serving the capitals population. Like how without us cowboys and our juggernauts how all the cloud bloody cuckoo land population would soon starve. I hope people will feel free to add to this list, because I know damned well theres more!
Mal.
thats what i put im the email if enough of us email with similar points maybe they would take notice and run a different story
What’s the betting they talk about JUGGERNAUTS and not trucks!
Good point before about email. If we all send one it might get the programme cancelled or change direction.
I would send a mail myself but I have to get tipped.
just e-mailed this program, unless it’s constructive towards this industry then i don’t think any driver is interested in this program.should be stopped dead in it’s tracks b4 it runs this industry down. 
i could surgest radio4 went down to dover and maybe interviewed some of the european operaters that come in to this country that you see fly past you at 60+mph with there foot on the dashboard watching tv.
or the fact that british police forces have no controls over said individuals. .a european truck can be flashed by 30 speed cameras a day and get away with it no points and no fine.they break the law full well in the knowledge that they are untouchable.
but i waste my breath
jon
Only just found this thread, been very busy lately, retired you know 
and so missed the programme. Did anybody hear it and how did it treat us?
I notice they did say ‘tempted’. It would have been worth saying pressured because of JIT, the biggest contrick played on this industry ever. Big manufacturers preen themselves on their lack of holding stocks but where do they think those stocks are because they do exist. ON THE BACKS OF TRUCKS OF COURSE going round and round in circles till some bright spark decides he wants the stuff that’s furthest away - NOW!
JIT is an illusion and a con practised by big companies on small companies and it does produce pressure and tiredness on drivers because the law allows it. 10 hours driving over 16 hours in 24 is not good practice especially when you can get away with no ‘real’ rest breaks at all in that time.
Sorry I missed it,
Salut, David.
David; JIT is not a ‘con practiced by big companies on small companies’.
If you own a small company, you don’t have to take on JIT work. You can go and find other work. If you do take on JIT work then you know exactly what you are letting yourself in for. (Of course if the only work you can find is JIT work then, well, basically you’re screwed.) But it’s not a con. A con is a deliberate swindle.
Paying a small company a small amount of money isn’t a swindle, it’s only a smart guy doing the dirty on a not so smart guy, in other words basic survival of the fittest capitalism, which is what trucking is all about.
And I dont want an endless discussion about hours, but I personally don’t know how you can do a 10-hour driving day without taking real breaks. Or do you mean the freedom to conk out on the top bunk whenever you want?
The programme was absolute rubbish. Lord Hutton was right. The BBC broadcast anything they like without checking the facts.
Pete,
What I meant was that large companies preen themselves to the world at large as super efficient by not employing acres of warehousing space and thereby saving costs for themselves and thus the consumer with advantages all the way up and down the chain. This is not true. These goods exist, somewhere, whether in raw material form or finished they are somewhere, and if not in somebody’s warehouse they are on the back of a truck. It is the (generally) smaller companies who pay these so called ‘saved’ costs and if not able ro pass them on to the consumer via their large customers (which they usually can’t) then it is the poor bloody driver who is forced one way or the other to take the strain.
Part of that strain is manifested in unsociable hours each week after two days (usually weekend) getting re-aclimatised to daylight wakefulness and nighttime sleeping. But undoubtedly part of it is the ability to drive for 4.5 hours, wait to tip/load on break till someone clicks their fingers, tip/load then off again for 4 hours or so, wait/tip/load on break and then drive another 1.5 hours. All this spread over 15 hours. ( I know there is a 16 possible but I don’t have personal knowledge of this). This is legal.
If you think that waiting in the cab without recourse to bed, food, or loo for fear of losing your place is break, then I don’t.
You might say that the driver is the lowest link in the chain and cannot pass the burden further. Not voluntarily. But when he loses attention for one vital, tired second and is involved in a tragedy - make no mistake, he’s passed it on.
Salut, David.
BondiTram:
Only just found this thread, been very busy lately, retired you know.
Yes, I heard it.
Through careful editing, it managed to imply that illegal operation is the norm, rather than exceptional practice.
The journalist who prepared the story obviously had his own agenda, and was determined to shape the story to suit that.
The whole report was a complete fabrication, not dissimilar to the one posted by the BBC reporter in a thread last week which claimed that HGVs regularly drove at 100mph, despite the physical impossibility of this. (This was also a BBC report).
The jounalist who prepared the report is, quite simply, a liar. If he wants to take action against me for saying so, then that`s fine.
The sooner the BBC is finished off, the better. It is not the honest news reporting organisation that it was 20 years ago.
Vince
'The journalist who prepared the story obviously had his own agenda, and was determined to shape the story to suit that. ’
Vince,
Funny you should say that for although I thought the BBC was harshly treated by Hutton I am more and more coming to the conclusion that you are right.
A few days ago a reporter said that the Libyan PM had said something about not accepting responsibility for Lockerbie etc. Then the studio interviewed an ex ambassador to Libya who obviously knew his stuff and spoke Arabic. He was very angry at the ‘misreporting’ and said that the PM had really said that Tripoli had accepted responsibility but not guilt, as although the culprit was their man he was not following orders. Now you may or may not agree with Libya’s view but the point is their PM was probably being misreported.
Within minutes of this interview a news bulletin gave the original slant on the story and this continued throughout the day. It was mischievous and unbalanced and led to some angry reponses from relatives etc.
How often have we heard an interviewer receiving an answer he wasn’t expecting and then following with a, now, totally irrelevant further question? Or giving a summing up obviously written beforehand and completely at variance with what we learned in the conversation?
Salut, David.