mac12:
Another experienced driver leaving because of the conditions, I left 3 years ago for the same reasons and hope to never have to go back. How many others are there out there?
A lot of experienced men are jacking for the points I made in my last post.
It makes me ask if that type of firm actually want experienced men.
robroy:
mac12:
Another experienced driver leaving because of the conditions, I left 3 years ago for the same reasons and hope to never have to go back. How many others are there out there?A lot of experienced men are jacking for the points I made in my last post.
It makes me ask if that type of firm actually want experienced men.
That is the 64000 dollar question. Maybe the big multis actually want newer drivers who can be trained up “their way”? Easier to train someone new than retrain we older ones?
When we started we had to think for ourselves much more, no mobile phones, 1 or 2 running traffic for a fleet of 40 plus trucks on multi drop/p-up work, they didnt want us calling in with queries all the time. Now its “cover your ■■■” and ring in at so many places. The insurance companies want experienced drivers, but a lot of traffic managers dont. It is a different job today than when I started, but then, Im not the person I was then either. I used to be a cocky young know it all. Im now a grizzly old know it all. I dont regret choosing to be a driver, but would hesitate to recommend it to anyone starting out nowadays.
Franglais:
robroy:
mac12:
Another experienced driver leaving because of the conditions, I left 3 years ago for the same reasons and hope to never have to go back. How many others are there out there?A lot of experienced men are jacking for the points I made in my last post.
It makes me ask if that type of firm actually want experienced men.That is the 64000 dollar question. Maybe the big multis actually want newer drivers who can be trained up “their way”? Easier to train someone new than retrain we older ones?
When we started we had to think for ourselves much more, no mobile phones, 1 or 2 running traffic for a fleet of 40 plus trucks on multi drop/p-up work, they didnt want us calling in with queries all the time. Now its “cover your ■■■” and ring in at so many places. The insurance companies want experienced drivers, but a lot of traffic managers dont. It is a different job today than when I started, but then, Im not the person I was then either. I used to be a cocky young know it all. Im now a grizzly old know it all. I dont regret choosing to be a driver, but would hesitate to recommend it to anyone starting out nowadays.
I believe in many places now they actually want the old school can do attitude and time served skills out, and replace them with any idiot young enough who can manage to negotiate the pedestrian entrance on two legs, they’ll then just do the basics of select D and press the loud pedal and nothing else, this race to the bottom dumbing down is all going to go ■■■■ up of course and i’d invest money in popcorn if i had any to spare, i’ve seen hoodies who can barely speak the language turn up and been allowed out, no assessment and allowed out with £150k’s worth of seriously expensive to repair equipment.
Reliability competence loyalty increasingly count for less, and the incompetent perma sick notes are the toast of the day.
dozy:
these 30- 40 hrs hr jobs in alternative industry’s arnt always the bed of roses there made out to be , I worked in various engineering factories and you won’t be able too stop for a coffee / paper when you like , if you stop for a chat with a mate the foreman will be out of his office like a shot asking what’s the hold up , and you’ll be clocking on / off , if you’re 5 mins late you’ll be docked 15 mins , if your stood at the clock 5 mins early theyl want too know why , if you don’t produce the required quantities they want too know why etc etc .
A bit like when you run into yer mates, and they are clock watching in case the office ‘stasi’ call them wanting to know why you stopped for…then the same folks get the run analized by ■■■■■■■■■ for stops and time taking
mac12:
Another experienced driver leaving because of the conditions, I left 3 years ago for the same reasons and hope to never have to go back. How many others are there out there?
Me if the opportunity arises ,I like a lot of us in the beginning ,used to love the job,NOW…at 54 im only grateful I have a licence ,due to there aint that much in north east england
Could be me as well. Two and a half years ago I decided to convert my hobby into a business and cut my lorry driving down to two days a week with a local Own Account SME. Every penny was ploughed back into the business and doing so well that this time last year I was ready to call it a day. My wife earns a good crack as a freelancer and financially we were sound.
Then this time last year whilst ordering at a small company I use regularly he said he was selling up and moving abroad to live permanently. So I bought it! It dovetails superbly with mine and both have grown to the point where I have to decide what to do next.
And the more I look at it the more obvious the answer.
Carryfast:
While if you’re out of driving for more than two years does that affect the issue of the often two years checkable previous experience requirement in adverts.
Didn’t with me. I’d had 5 years out from 2008-13 mostly due to health. I mentioned to someone I was thinking of coming back to driving just before I went on a family holiday to the Lake District. Every time I got phone signal there was an answerphone or text message waiting for me from various agencies. Seems the whole “must have driven a truck in the last 18 months” doesn’t seem to apply if you were even half competent when you hung your keys up.
robroy:
Jeeez, I would absolutely hate being a newbie today…no [zb] way Pedro.
To be fair it’s all relative.I went from the world which Dozy described to suddenly being told by the other works drivers that not carving the job up meant all day for a run from Feltham to Southampton and back with a 7.5 tonner or two hours for lunch at the cafe when road testing at Chobham hopefully leaving enough time for an hour overtime. 
For which I was getting paid more than working 9 hours per day in the factory. 
Then ended up on the council which looking back was a 5 year skive on log books to compensate for the zb money.Then job and finish night trunks in which minimising breaks just meant an even earlier finish.
While even the worse case shock of then later having to sometimes get involved in hub system type working still wouldn’t have dragged me back into that first factory type job for even double the money and half the hours. 
Newbies are been cloned in to how firms want them,“accept this” and “sign that” etc,“we have driver facing cameras sign here to say you agree” and they are doing it.
Even old hands are accepting been pushed to the limits and been fed lies etc.
When I passed my test 17 years ago I looked up to the older lads and asked them advice etc,I was never spoken to by the office like I was dirt either.
I cringe these days when I see a 19 year old lad speak to a driver in his later years like crap.
Conor:
Worst that happens is it turns to crap and come April I end up back limping. .
Nah you’ll be alright. Good luck with the venture.
Frame this, only post where I’m not prodding you with a stick. If you go back limping though, probably go back to the old routine of hare and fox again .
Well, I say not prodding. Just try not to limp through the door on your first day and leave your Lidl bag lying around expensive engineering equipment where it could get jammed up in all the cogs. We all want you to create a good impression.
Sorry. Old habits . Good luck chief.
Just waiting to see the looks on the faces of the people I’ll be working alongside when they ask what job I did and I say “truck driver”.
Good luck and best wishes.
robroy:
20+ answers from experienced drivers (including me) to a post where another experienced driver is jacking in, hopefully for something better, and not one of those posts asking why, and/or telling him he is making a bad move or a mistake.That speaks for it’s self, and illustrates a sad indictment to the modern truck driving job as it is today,
I jacked it in august to start something totally new. I mean right from scratch as in college now followed by university next year for 7 or 8 years. I still work weekends and holidays but I am so much happier now
Good luck Conor
Good luck and I don’t blame you at all. The job’s changed so much over the 27years I’ve had my class 1 licence, although I’m quite settled where I’ve been working for the past 3 years but only because I’m working a 40 hour/ 4 day week.
scoobyears:
Good luck in your new (hopefully permanent) career move…Other drivers should stop kidding themselves and realise there is another career waiting for them if they removed the
blinkers and rose tinted glasses… you did and moved on.A driving job is not the job it used to be, and you have found out that even in the alleged higher echelons known as HJ it is not a great job,
it just pays a little better than some, but you get still get messed about, shifts swapped, Adams army, etc etc.
The times I heard the words “jobs not what it used to be” in the 45 years of driving,nothing changed its still the same words being said 50 years later,5 years after I retired.
lolipop:
scoobyears:
Good luck in your new (hopefully permanent) career move…Other drivers should stop kidding themselves and realise there is another career waiting for them if they removed the
blinkers and rose tinted glasses… you did and moved on.A driving job is not the job it used to be, and you have found out that even in the alleged higher echelons known as HJ it is not a great job,
it just pays a little better than some, but you get still get messed about, shifts swapped, Adams army, etc etc.The times I heard the words “jobs not what it used to be” in the 45 years of driving,nothing changed its still the same words being said 50 years later,5 years after I retired.
Are you really saying and believe that it hasn’t?
When I started I don’t remember any of these…
Cab phones, trackers, and all the hassle and pushing that they can bring.
Complete ■■■■ helmets who are known as ‘planners’.
Chronic shortage of overnight parking places.
Many drivers parking in lay bys.
Other drivers hardly acknowledging you let alone help you.
Incompetent inept hgv drivers, with no concept of consideration or courtesy on the road.
In cab cameras.
Pedantic over complicated drivers hours regs.
Drivers bending over to unfair co.rules, policies and regs at the drop of a hat (or in this case a pair of kecks)
Drivers grassing other drivers up.
Drivers treating the job like an endurance test.(ok many did, but more in an illegal context 
)
Drivers who could not read a map.
And so on and so forth.
I aint saying that a lot of things have not improved either, but it is irrefutable that the job is completely different to what it was, and possiblly the main reason that a lot of good experienced men have ‘hung up their keys’
We’re all in slightly different boats and have slightly differing needs and wants from the job.
The biggies that are ruining the job for me are.
The speed with which the job is being dumbed down to lowest common denominator, where they actively don’t want skilled competent staff (why for Christ’s sake?) they want barely competent robots, this is happening everywhere except small family owned operations where the owner is still hands on, once it gets big even at the best places this rot is setting in and fast, and no one upstairs gives a toss…
This isn’t just my personal bee in my bonnet about modern lorries designed that any bloody fule can use them (which means any bloody fule does use them), its the dumbing down of the whole job, where skills and competence are fast becoming unwanted.
The second, and this is the one for me, is that these companies are beating out of us (me) the pride that some of us possibly foolishly take in our work and work ethics, this goes hand in the hand with the previous reason.
What i simply can’t work out is why would they do this, what possible benefit can it be to a company, especially one in specialist or more involved work that may well rely on absolute communications to do the job and where complete service to the buyer (customer) has put them at the top of the industry field they are now in, so good language skills and some common bloody sense (not necessarily bits of paper NVQ’s or other quals) is of paramount importance.
Some of the better jobs have grown so big so quickly that the top layer have taken their eye off the ball and employed various competences in the several layers of managers that supposedly run the operation for them, maybe a few minutes spent back with the coal face workers by the now ivory tower crew would be time well spent , before it gets to irredeemable levels of despondency in the ranks, surely they must know they are being told what they want to hear by these managers.
Thirdly, despite the above, in practice in the day to day operations those who still stubbornly take a pride in their work and work ethics get taken the ■■■■ out of, by having to do the jobs that need a bit of nous or are longer in time than the simpler shorter work, which then get saved for the well in mob…not to mention the reliable non ■■■■ taking staff having to shoulder the work the perma sick notes arn’t doing.
The irony of all this being, the sick notes precious ones and mates are thought the world of and get the best work and depending on pay schemes the best pay for the shortest hours.
There are many reasons we are leaving the industry, being lorry drivers we are individuals so each of us will have our own reasons for staying or going, maybe that’s the base reason, they don’t want individuals they want the Borg.
Well when all they’ve got is the Borg we’ll see how that works out.
i hung my keys up for the last time in 2008. now i really do regret it and to go back to driving now i need medical /digi card cpc
i left for a job with more money and more time at home. now the wages are not as good and have to work more hours when they are there just to make ends meet.
I’ve been off for 6 month with a bad back. Was told to stop driving in 2010 with a disc bulge, latest MRI now shows 3 discs away. I kinda miss the banter and the fact that the day does fly in but don’t miss the idiot planners, tailbacks, CPC nonsense, £8.65ph in Scotland, Scani’s and the variable start / finish times.
Best of luck in your new job mate.
Juddian:
We’re all in slightly different boats and have slightly differing needs and wants from the job.The biggies that are ruining the job for me are.
The speed with which the job is being dumbed down to lowest common denominator, where they actively don’t want skilled competent staff (why for Christ’s sake?) they want barely competent robots, this is happening everywhere except small family owned operations where the owner is still hands on, once it gets big even at the best places this rot is setting in and fast, and no one upstairs gives a toss…
This isn’t just my personal bee in my bonnet about modern lorries designed that any bloody fule can use them (which means any bloody fule does use them), its the dumbing down of the whole job, where skills and competence are fast becoming unwanted.The second, and this is the one for me, is that these companies are beating out of us (me) the pride that some of us possibly foolishly take in our work and work ethics, this goes hand in the hand with the previous reason.
What i simply can’t work out is why would they do this, what possible benefit can it be to a company, especially one in specialist or more involved work that may well rely on absolute communications to do the job and where complete service to the buyer (customer) has put them at the top of the industry field they are now in, so good language skills and some common bloody sense (not necessarily bits of paper NVQ’s or other quals) is of paramount importance.
Some of the better jobs have grown so big so quickly that the top layer have taken their eye off the ball and employed various competences in the several layers of managers that supposedly run the operation for them, maybe a few minutes spent back with the coal face workers by the now ivory tower crew would be time well spent
Thirdly, despite the above, in practice in the day to day operations those who still stubbornly take a pride in their work and work ethics get taken the ■■■■ out of, by having to do the jobs that need a bit of nous or are longer in time than the simpler shorter work, which then get saved for the well in mob…not to mention the reliable non ■■■■ taking staff having to shoulder the work the perma sick notes arn’t doing.
The irony of all this being, the sick notes precious ones and mates are thought the world of and get the best work and depending on pay schemes the best pay for the shortest hours.
There are many reasons we are leaving the industry, being lorry drivers we are individuals so each of us will have our own reasons for staying or going, maybe that’s the base reason, they don’t want individuals they want the Borg.
Well when all they’ve got is the Borg we’ll see how that works out.
That just about sums up many operators these days.
One point I found was that the management are managers and therefore have made the grade, why would they want to discuss issues with mere drivers?
I worked in public service for many years and the policy was to promote the idiots so they didn’t cause too much harm on the shop floor. Needless to say it didn’t work as indeed it doesn’t in many industries.
Having school leavers as planners is another bone of contention in places, I worked in one where the night man didn’t know what time the in-house workshops finished.