I did an agency job last week, and on a day run from Coventry I was expected to do…
Bury St Edmunds.
Ipswich x 2.
Lowestoft.
Norwich.
Hunstanton.
Kings Lynn.
And then back to Coventry.
I got Bury St Edmunds and the two in Ipswich off and then I turned around and went back to the yard, when I got there I was on 9:05 hours driving.
Grandpa you have a pm I hope 
Do you not think that the biggest problem today is that traffic planning is done by university graduates with a degree in something totally useless and who wouldn’t know what a lorry is, usually aided by a computer?
Many years ago my (ex) son in law worked as a midlands based driver for a large, well known haulage company from Sittingbourne. At first, he would come to me with his daily work sheet and ask if I thought it was doable. Invariably my response would be ‘no chance!’ But then I started to look at the jobs and worked out that if he never dropped below 40mph, never saw any roadworks or accidents, never came across fog, snow or ice, never had to stop for a pee (etc), if every drop/load was waiting for him to appear over the horizon and immediately raced to attend to him etc etc, then he could just about do it with less than a couple of seconds to spare! He confirmed that the traffic office was run by the aforementioned!
I have to admit that I have been very lucky in being able to spend 44 years doing a job that I loved! It was never a chore to go to work. For the final 20+ years I drove for a government department doing own-account work which, if I am honest, was the icing on the cake. If I had a job involving the likes of the situations noted in this thread, I can be certain I would not have been a driver when I retired!
Steve
Many years ago I did that place at Fradley one night.As an hourly paid man I sat in the queue moving up as and when,and waited for them to come and get me.That made them flap when they think you haven’t turned.
Another place in birmingham(name forgotten)in an old bus depot near Bromford Lane I managed to get myself barred.Catastrophe!
4hr 25m runs to places in the Midlands each way, then stuck in a tip queue “stop-starting” for 3-4 hours. Total duty time for full-timers seems to be 12 hours “getting it down to a fine art”
Yours truly gets it as a monday-friday agency booking, with me refusing to attend thursday friday because the first free days had used up all my 13hr+ shifts legally do-able.
I was new to agency back then. These days, I do two, and then try to keep one in hand in case I need to do a 15 hour on my last shift of the week.
f-- knows how a full timer can get away with doing what seems to be a MINIMUM of a 60 hour week, week in, week out… 
“Palletliner Work” - something I quickly learned to hate. Running from Croydon to Burton on Trent or Larkfield to Fradley park or Tonbridge to Birmingham Airport.
…or Fedex Sittingbourne to Stoke, where I went on break at 4hr 28m in their service approach road @ Parkhouse, only to have a “relief driver” come walking up to me to “stick their card in, and drive me through the gate”…
Grandpa,
Eighteen months to retirement , the way your worrying about the job you won’t make it. If you’ve got any sort of private pension 18months extra paying in will make about a pound aweek difference to it then the state pension will kick in at 65. Get out now before you make yourself ill, Plenty of silly part time jobs about to make your money up to a living wage,thats what I did at 63and I loved it. Sorry if it sounds a bit blunt but if the job affects you like it seems it is give this way some thought.
Old Guys Rule.j
Once they find to their joy you take notice of their deadlines and journey times, they’ll tighten times more and pile those extra little just nips on until you’re flying around like your arse is on fire and then the inevitable happens when you drop a big bloody clanger, rinse and repeat when the next starry eyed victim turns up.
Set your stall out from day one, do the job decently and as professionally as you yourself prefer and can maintain, that means different things to different people, if your way of working isn’t suitable then they’ll move you on soon enough and as places like that almost always pay rubbish its no loss either way, there’s thousand of hopeless wreckers with HGV licences out there just right for them.
These places pay poorly at best, yet the drivers on this work are the ones pushing onward tailgating overtaking lorries on roundabouts jumping lights late braking why? i especially avoid the night deckers returning from hub.
The work rate they expect it should be among the highest paid out there.
Grandpa:
trevHCS:
Grandpa’s setup sounds utterly bonkers.Glad I don’t work for these types of pallet companies as just going in and out of Palletforce is stressful and that’s a single shed (luckily don’t do often).
Only way to do pallet trunking is within the same companies depots, but there aren’t many who have that. Ours do, but pay probably not the best.
Palletways probably was a good idea initially, but it outgrew itself and just became a place of chaos. I did three nights and no more. For the last two nights I’ve been having a bath instead of a shower to get rid of the stress and ease those aching muscles. Tried general haulage sub-contracting for Aldi’s, but lost interest when I helped a same company driver pick up a split pallet of shampoo – all 1000 bottles of ’em! Then the run from Rugby to Hollyhead docks in 4.5 hours racing up the A41 with the Irish and the rest of them … Palletways is by far the worst I ever came across though.
Rugby to holyhead in 4.5 hours is a stroll if you’ve no worries about Stafford then take the M6 much more relaxing
They tell me that our routing and timings are done by computer, I tend to think that it’s done by one of them big tombola machine where all the places are put in on little slips of paper, the machine turns, 5 or 6 places drop out and hey presto you have your work! I have asked if the computer programme is the Grand Theft Auto version but that seems to go over their pointy heads.
The simple fact is that if you allow yourself to be pushed they will push, and then push some more. My response to them invariably is “don’t worry about it, tomorrow is a whole fresh day not yet started, they’ve ordered it, they want it, it’ll get there when it gets there”.
mike68:
And the reason why any driver with an ounce of common sense avoids anything to do with hire and reward unless it is specialised
Unfortunately not every driver with an ounce of common sense can either get or afford to take a job on not for profit, particularly as more and more of it is taken over by stobartski, wincantonski and xpoo.
This is why I like supermarket work.
Takes aslong as it takes.
3 deliveries in london can take 10-12 hours and no one in the office cares.
Ye it’s boring but I get to listen to plenty of audiobooks that make it bearable.
WaggerWagger888:
Grandpa,Eighteen months to retirement , the way your worrying about the job you won’t make it. If you’ve got any sort of private pension 18months extra paying in will make about a pound aweek difference to it then the state pension will kick in at 65. Get out now before you make yourself ill, Plenty of silly part time jobs about to make your money up to a living wage,thats what I did at 63and I loved it. Sorry if it sounds a bit blunt but if the job affects you like it seems it is give this way some thought.
Old Guys Rule.j
I think he’s trying ( rightly ) to say that there really isn’t many/any ‘silly easy part time’ jobs about.Ironically those that could be are being snapped up by desperate or lazy zb younger workers and then turned to zb because they then ask the guvnor to increase the workload to make their required wage up.Then when they’ve got it they can’t hack it and walk away.While 18 months from pension age ( let alone 5 years for those of us caught in the retirement age escalator ) is as bad as 10-15 years if you’ve only got 6 months worth or less of savings back up even if you haven’t got a mortgage or rent to pay.
Juddian:
i especially avoid the night deckers returning from hub.
The work rate they expect it should be among the highest paid out there.
Hub systems are the devils work.It’s a stupid flawed idea which ultimately requires more time,more people and more trucks to do the same job that could be done by direct depot to depot trailer swaps.That’s why drivers often then find themselves having to work longer shifts doing less hours driving than warehouse labouring and employers trying to cut the costs of all the unnecessary parked up trucks involved in going nowhere fast.
adam277:
This is why I like supermarket work.
Takes aslong as it takes.3 deliveries in london can take 10-12 hours and no one in the office cares.
Ye it’s boring but I get to listen to plenty of audiobooks that make it bearable.
What …and miss all the riveting conversation and driver’s exploits?
robroy:
adam277:
This is why I like supermarket work.
Takes aslong as it takes.3 deliveries in london can take 10-12 hours and no one in the office cares.
Ye it’s boring but I get to listen to plenty of audiobooks that make it bearable.
What …and miss all the riveting conversation and driver’s exploits?
He’s always got Dozy’s riveting stories to read on here to make up for it
Half the time you can’t even get in to Palletways Lichfield so there’s that.
If you’re in Rugby, try getting on the Tesco double deck trunking for Stobarts. Easiest job known to man although you might not have a job in a few weeks time. [emoji6]
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Although it sounds depressing, the posts here seem to sum it up. There aren’t the huge vacancies waiting to be filled, either in HGV work or anything else. In any area there are a set number of companies that advertise all year round for a reason and lots of agencies trying to fill those same vacancies using different wording to try to disguise what company it is. Then you have a couple of the small general haulage firms, an example of which is in the op. You can’t get anywhere near the big supermarket chains anymore as you could years ago.
I’m reading the posts from Carryfast and he sums it up. We all have a limited amount of savings (and a limited health and strength working life) and when they’re gone, they’re gone. I tried the local paper and absolutely nothing. ‘Find a job’ that used to be the jobcenter and only one agency with 12 adverts for the same ‘green truck’ jobs (general haulage curtain sider tramping and flatbed experience preferred). Office jobs want experience. Minimum wage night watchman/Security guard want an SIA certificate and preferred first-aid training …
I think this is going to be a long wait to get a job that I’m capable of doing at my age. As we speak I’ve just had a text from an agency that I’ve worked for before asking if I’m available tomorrow. I’ll pop in and see them later and explain my age, what I’m capable of doing and what I’m after. They’ll say ‘no problem leave it with us’ and I won’t hear from them again. At this point I’ll take any job, HGV or not, that I can do.
How about approaching companies direct,and asking for part time work.
When I was at Lockwoods… there was 3 or 4 retired blokes,that just covered holidays and weekends.
commonrail:
How about approaching companies direct,and asking for part time work.
When I was at Lockwoods… there was 3 or 4 retired blokes,that just covered holidays and weekends.
The op job was through an agency, but I approached the company directly. The job was impossible, their two permanent trunkers had resigned and they’d tried about 12 agency drivers with no success. I said I’d give it a try, don’t laugh, at £9.70 for the first 50 hours. With meal allowance included, a take home just bordering on £100 a night. It wasn’t the money, the job was just impossible and they’re still looking for someone who can do it. Another two I applied to directly explaining my age but willingness didn’t even reply. 
Am I available for work? Yes. Am I available for work that the three people half my age before me couldn’t do either? No. Can I un/strap up a curtain sider four times a night? No. Can I travel 100 miles and then do six drops legally? No. Those are now the standard job requirements and why you see everyone tearing around every night and why those companies are always advertising for drivers because no one else can do it either. The deadlines aren’t from some special software, they’re googling postcodes designed for cars which don’t include night motorway closures, winter weather, legal hours or speed limits.
It’s not all negative though. Whilst tramping I was given a run from a big distribution center near Wellingborough to deliver high value to a large supermarket RDC in Doncaster and another time to a High Tec place in Basingstoke. Bay to bay, but it was irregular, only once a week. Now that I can do, but those sort of jobs aren’t available on a regular basis. The companies do the planning and the driver is expected to fit in with their time lines and workload. That’s how it is everywhere now. All companies are stream lining, cutting costs to a minimum and the workload is now becoming impossible.