On numerous posts, I would say the majority of us on here accept that the haulage game is infested with imbeciles, whether they inhabit the office, gatehouse or the wagons.
Has this industry always been one giant helmet warehouse, or is it getting worse? I know that the job is being ’ dumbed down ’ and I am also sadly well briefed on the H&S ■■■■■■■■, but putting those issues aside, why on earth is this job packed tighter than an Asian taxi rank with bellends?
Answers please…
It isn’t, or no more so than any other sector.
Education is definitley not what it was and people are ‘looked after’ more. Now that’s a good thing in many ways, but it also means that people seem to think less for themselves and then just get out of the habit. I also think automation has had a part to play in that.
Definitely getting worse. Due to insurance and h&s ■■■■■■■■, not many youngsters go with their Dads anymore. The majority coming into the game have no idea how it actually is, and have a bit of a shock. I’ve found the biggest bell ends behind the wheel are the mid 40s retrained mob. Ex printers, cooks, caretakers etc. Don’t really want to do the job, just press ganged in by the doll office. Warehouse and gatehouse nobs have always been, well, nobs! 
I think it’s a (sad) reflection of the country. My kids both work in different sectors, and they tell as many tales of stupidity as I do.
Unfortunately on the whole people won’t think for themselves as much as they used to, they won’t do things that are vaguely out of the ordinary in case of injury, and then slag the H+S rules that were brought in to stop them getting injured in the first place.
I think whereas 20 years ago a bad employee stands out, now it’s the good one that is noticeable.
eagerbeaver:
On numerous posts, I would say the majority of us on here accept that the haulage game is infested with imbeciles, whether they inhabit the office, gatehouse or the wagons.Has this industry always been one giant helmet warehouse, or is it getting worse? I know that the job is being ’ dumbed down ’ and I am also sadly well briefed on the H&S ■■■■■■■■, but putting those issues aside, why on earth is this job packed tighter than an Asian taxi rank with bellends?
Answers please…
It does seem (on this forum at least) EB that its getting worse in the UK. I got out of it many years ago and found stress levels instantly lifted. Ive now been back to the UK twice in the last few months but theres nothing there that would ever make me want to actually live and work there again…
albion:
It isn’t, or no more so than any other sector.Education is definitley not what it was and people are ‘looked after’ more. Now that’s a good thing in many ways, but it also means that people seem to think less for themselves and then just get out of the habit. I also think automation has had a part to play in that.
This is exactly it, we have it in the railway sector too. They want exact postcodes to where they are going or they just don’t turn up, but how difficult is it to find a train station■■? They want telling exactly what tools they will need each night even though they’ve been doing the same job for the last 3 months !!! Then, when as supervisor dealing with this day in day out, you finally lose the plot and rant at them, they complain to management and you get called in to explain 
People no longer required to, indeed subliminally discouraged from, thinking for themselves, a Borg like organism easily controlled with some bad guys untouchable and encouraged so the masses adhere to the state through fear, without getting political that should be obvious, encouraged to report (stasi/khmer rouge like) and mass condemn those who do not conform, the latest being motorists required to submit footage to the comrade general in charge of what was once known as the police all bad driving.
Though this move to east german style policing/manipulation/injustice has far darker implications for every one of us, Tommy Robinson a prime example this decade, maybe you next?
From children being indoctrinated at nursery and school, to universities and their safe zones where thoughts not in keeping with the current hymnsheet are no platformed (that well known extreme right winger warlord 
Germaine Greer no platformed i ask you), then on to the workplace now a gigantic production line where us mere drones are not required to think, just do what the many layers of management instruct us.
Reports of children being questioned over how their parents voted in the referendum, where exactly are we going.
We have schools pushing this transgender ■■■■■■■■, with youngsters barely out of nappies questioning their own gender or being accused of racism, wtf is going on who comes up with this garbage and who put idiots in charge who could come out with agendas like that where kids should be learning their times tables and how to read and write fluently and the basics of decency good manners and personal responsibility.
We/they have allowed the lunatics to run the asylums.
This hasn’t happened overnight its been going on years, the MSM shifting gradually into the role of mass state propaganda machine perfectly exemplified by the BBC chanel no4 and grauniad at one end and the daily mail and turncoat sun at the other.
What does anyone expect is going to be the end result in the attitudes capabilities independence and personal responsibility.
As for our lorry world in particular, well its going on everywhere in the industry, the dumbing down that is, they want the job simple and repetitive so they can get any minimal cost bugger to do it at a moments notice with minimal training 24/7.
Maybe its cost effective, maybe the cost of resulting damage is outweighed by the savings in what should be good driver’s appropriate salaries, i wouldn’t have thought so it’s not just damage its disappointed customers with poor service damaged goods and damaged premises and all these companies need more admin/supervisory/management to run the show because they’ve systematically lowered the bar and employed a good number who arn’t up to the job, but what the hell do i know.
Its disillusioning enough now for long termers who didn’t need any of this, but at least we can see the retirement light at the end of the tunnel, its must be doubly frustrating for the newer younger drivers who do have some nous, cos if you think its dumbed down now its anyone’s guess how bad things might be in another 10 or 20 years.
Whilst everything is based on cheap as possible for the customer i see little will change, when our transport industry is opened up fully to all other european carriers that will be another slide into base mediocrity.
There thats cheered you all up no end 
Thats why were am working the now the lazy crew as we call them are now gettin found out.They get the crap work and treated like kids at school.On the other hand if you get the work done and no hassels your left alone.
Juddian has hit the nail on the head!
Don’t get paid enough too get out of bed never mind start thinking for myself
Juddian:
People no longer required to, indeed subliminally discouraged from, thinking for themselves, a Borg like organism easily controlled with some bad guys untouchable and encouraged so the masses adhere to the state through fear, without getting political that should be obvious, encouraged to report (stasi/khmer rouge like) and mass condemn those who do not conform, the latest being motorists required to submit footage to the comrade general in charge of what was once known as the police all bad driving.
Though this move to east german style policing/manipulation/injustice has far darker implications for every one of us, Tommy Robinson a prime example this decade, maybe you next?From children being indoctrinated at nursery and school, to universities and their safe zones where thoughts not in keeping with the current hymnsheet are no platformed (that well known extreme right winger warlord
Reports of children being questioned over how their parents voted in the referendum, where exactly are we going.We have schools pushing this transgender ■■■■■■■■, with youngsters barely out of nappies questioning their own gender or being accused of racism, wtf is going on who comes up with this garbage and who put idiots in charge who could come out with agendas like that where kids should be learning their times tables and how to read and write fluently and the basics of decency good manners and personal responsibility.
We/they have allowed the lunatics to run the asylums.This hasn’t happened overnight its been going on years, the MSM shifting gradually into the role of mass state propaganda machine perfectly exemplified by the BBC chanel no4 and grauniad at one end and the daily mail and turncoat sun at the other.
What does anyone expect is going to be the end result in the attitudes capabilities independence and personal responsibility.
As for our lorry world in particular, well its going on everywhere in the industry, the dumbing down that is, they want the job simple and repetitive so they can get any minimal cost bugger to do it at a moments notice with minimal training 24/7.
Maybe its cost effective, maybe the cost of resulting damage is outweighed by the savings in what should be good driver’s appropriate salaries, i wouldn’t have thought so it’s not just damage its disappointed customers with poor service damaged goods and damaged premises and all these companies need more admin/supervisory/management to run the show because they’ve systematically lowered the bar and employed a good number who arn’t up to the job, but what the hell do i know.Its disillusioning enough now for long termers who didn’t need any of this, but at least we can see the retirement light at the end of the tunnel, its must be doubly frustrating for the newer younger drivers who do have some nous, cos if you think its dumbed down now its anyone’s guess how bad things might be in another 10 or 20 years.
Whilst everything is based on cheap as possible for the customer i see little will change, when our transport industry is opened up fully to all other european carriers that will be another slide into base mediocrity.
There thats cheered you all up no end
Am I alone in having noticed that Juddian is starting to post Carryfast like replies, droning on and on, leaving no opportunity wasted to bring up his hobby horses?
I do wonder wether its always been this way, it’s just now with the Internet we interact with many many more people than people in the past did. Plus everyone’s idea of what makes an idiot is different. I know many of you out there think me an idiot, I’d agree, yet others consider me the most remarkable and special person to ever grasp a steering wheel…*
*Joke, it was a joke. A joke.
The old boy I used to rent a flat from sold his haulage company in the 70’s one of the reasons was the drivers and it sounded just like the complaints today, I briefly worked in an transport in the mid 90’s and couldn’t believe how much some of the driver needed spoon feeding, not all of them some you left to get on with the job as it would be done which was good as you were spending far to much time either talking to the ones that couldn’t do the job or sorting out the mess they’d left behind.
The lazy people who these days use H&S as an excuse to only do the bare minimum were the same type of people who used demarcation as an excuse to do the bare minimum in the past.
I seem to remember leaving school and going to my first job and people saying what do they teach you at school, I think these people forgot they’d been doing the job for many years and in some cases had gone through an apprenticeship after leaving leaving school, so why are they surprised that certain tasks I had to ask question about seemed pretty basic to them.
I’m sure every generation looks at the school leavers and wonders why they don’t know the job. I saw this happen a few years ago when I worked at a race team, we took on the odd school leaver and the chief mechanic always got annoyed, he seemed to expect them to come from school able to virtually do the job, ok he was an awesome mechanic and fabricator, but I met people who worked with him when he first got into motorsport and from their stories he didn’t arrive knowing the job, but as soon as these lads didn’t grasp something he thought was easy he gave up on them.
I worked on the principal that at school they are told were to be and what to do, so I had to re-program them to plan their tasks from themselves, it was just a case of getting them a list of tasks and learning to prioritise them for themselves, but being available for them to ask questions, they soon learnt that nobody else would do the jobs or give them a nice timetable and nearly 10 years on these lads are doing very well in their current employment.
The dumbing down of the workplace has been going on since the industrial revolution, factories broke the jobs down into simple tasks so they didn’t have to rely on highly skilled workers who could hold them to ransom, far better to have a workforce that’s easy to replace, then you have control of them as you can easily find replacements if they demand better pay and conditions.
As for questions on this website, I think that sometimes the question and responses do seem a bit more dumb than when I first signed up on here, but I signed up for this in 2003 many people still didn’t have internet, especially drivers who were in general older and less tech minded, so maybe the members on here then weren’t a representative sample of the drivers out there at the time.
When looking at the World today, you have to bare in mind 2 things, we have a natural tendency to remember the past in a positive light and conformation bias.
switchlogic:
I do wonder wether its always been this way, it’s just now with the Internet we interact with many many more people than people in the past did. Plus everyone’s idea of what makes an idiot is different. I know many of you out there think me an idiot, I’d agree, yet others consider me the most remarkable and special person to ever grasp a steering wheel…**Joke, it was a joke. A joke.
Is that small print ?
It doesn’t matter how bad we think things are now, we’ll always look back on these as “the good old days”.
“the good old days”. Ain’t that the truth.
Back last century when I was a TM with 12 drivers, I knew how each of them worked. Our standard way of working was to divide the deliveries geographically and give the driver a wad of notes. He would sort them and then get loaded. One driver almost never queried anything; he would load up his lorry and go - even though he knew that sometimes he would be bringing stuff back. Another driver was always complaining that he got the difficult jobs… I don’t need to go on. I remember a driver going nuts because he had been pulled for a damaged tyre - It was all my fault of course. Even when I showed him his signed checksheet showing no faults, it was still my fault.
With a dozen drivers, I could easily manage their idiosyncrasies; with fifty or a hundred it just can’t be done. So you have to manage them all at the lowest common denominator. Stop them messing with the electronics; don’t allow them to do anything that needs training like changing a wheel and so on.
If you are that good; go and work for yourself and see if your boss is any better then.
when i left school at 15 I knew nothing, father had died when I was 12,(just as I was allowed into the garage and learning bike stuff) now we keep school children in school until they are 18 then they start work knowing nothing, even the graduates from uni know very little about actual work, so we are behind with actual on the job training to start with and every body knows teenagers know it all already, don’t get me started on ex forces drivers (there must be some good ones I know, I just have not met one)
Seemed quite a lot when I did it but also some good ones. There’s nob heads in every job field
Santa:
“the good old days”. don’t allow them to do anything that needs training like changing a wheel and so on. .
Training to change a wheel? How easy do some drivers want it??
Crack off the wheelnuts, jack it up, remove wheel nuts, swop wheel over, replace and semi tighten nuts, drop it back down and cram them up, job done. Its as basic as it gets yet some wont be able or refuse to do it. If i was an employer one of the requirements would have to be basic repairs/maintenance…
Darkside:
Juddian has hit the nail on the head!
Juddian always hits the nail on the head in response to posts like this.