I love these jobs worth drivers ,especially the ones who won’t take a load for reasons x,y,z ect you name it ,they create so much work for out side hauliers to cover through either ,not wanting or even risking a night out ,being a wimp or not knowing the ins and outs of basic stuff such as width and lenght ,over hang limits ect ! Keep up the good work all you moaning lot.
Silver_Surfer:
Granted, you wouldn’t want him idling the engine all night but in my opinion idling it for a half or a 45 is fair enough if it’s cold.
Fair point, and valid if he was in a day cab motor pulled up in a layby. He wasn’t; he was in a yard where (as is pretty common these days) leaving engines running for excessive lengths of time isn’t allowed, and he was offered an alternative.
One lorry doesn’t make that much difference I agree. When a dozen start doing it on a regular basis, on the grounds that “Well Fred was doing it last week and you didn’t tell him off” then the manager’s got an uphill battle.
We’ve been told that our wagons when idling use 2 litres per hour. Don’t sound a lot till you multiply that by the number of lorries doing it per night. Soon adds up to a tanker load across the fleet. That is big money a company can save and that’s why the y do it.
Sidevalve:
Silver_Surfer:
Granted, you wouldn’t want him idling the engine all night but in my opinion idling it for a half or a 45 is fair enough if it’s cold.Fair point, and valid if he was in a day cab motor pulled up in a layby. He wasn’t; he was in a yard where (as is pretty common these days) leaving engines running for excessive lengths of time isn’t allowed, and he was offered an alternative.
One lorry doesn’t make that much difference I agree. When a dozen start doing it on a regular basis, on the grounds that “Well Fred was doing it last week and you didn’t tell him off” then the manager’s got an uphill battle.
We’ve been told that our wagons when idling use 2 litres per hour. Don’t sound a lot till you multiply that by the number of lorries doing it per night. Soon adds up to a tanker load across the fleet. That is big money a company can save and that’s why the y do it.
Sorry but just no. Yet again drivers rolling over and being walked on. You try turning the heating off in their toasty offices and let the temp drop to sub zero numbers and then tell them to crack on with their work. They’d be up in arms about it. No different to us sat in the cab. We’re entitled to the same. If the company is too tight to spec night heaters when they order the trucks then they’ve only got themselves to blame when drivers leave them idling. I’d do exactly the same and in fact do so on a regular basis in one of our trucks as the night heater is inop.
Fair enough if the driver has a warm and comfortable canteen to relax in whilst being un/loaded, but if he has to stay in the truck then it’s fair game imho.
peirre:
Silver_Surfer:
Quality Peirre.As a scumbag agency driver I never tend to let people get to me.
Though I did feel a little sympathy for the newbie agency driver who was with me wanting to get his timesheet signed.The guy ranting was a star, an actual Ambassador of Sheffield
Having to take bad behaviour to keep your job is one of the worst things in life to endure, one of the perks of being an agency driver is that you don’t have to take it, obv there is the down sides too.
Left hand down!:
Fair enough if the driver has a warm and comfortable canteen to relax in whilst being un/loaded, but if he has to stay in the truck then it’s fair game imho.
Read the poster’s comment; he was told to use the canteen to take his break.
We complain often enough about canteen facilities not being provided at places like these; yet here we have a case of a canteen being available and the driver chooses to sit in his cab with the engine running, and because he’s on a break the lorry can’t move. So by keeping the engine running he is unnecessarily costing the company money. As I said it might only be a small amount of money but if everyone did it it would soon add up.
Nobody was expecting him to work without the heater on, so your point about turning the office heating off is not valid.
Sidevalve:
Left hand down!:
Fair enough if the driver has a warm and comfortable canteen to relax in whilst being un/loaded, but if he has to stay in the truck then it’s fair game imho.Read the poster’s comment; he was told to use the canteen to take his break.
We complain often enough about canteen facilities not being provided at places like these; yet here we have a case of a canteen being available and the driver chooses to sit in his cab with the engine running, and because he’s on a break the lorry can’t move. So by keeping the engine running he is unnecessarily costing the company money. As I said it might only be a small amount of money but if everyone did it it would soon add up.
Nobody was expecting him to work without the heater on, so your point about turning the office heating off is not valid.
To be fair, would you want to sit in an empty room to take your break? During the nights most canteens are dead quiet, often cold and quite boring. Not exactly comfortable to take a break.
Our lot are not too bad in the sense that the majority of motors have night heaters for us night drivers, and should you be allocated one without and leave the engine on idle to keep warm then they don’t complain.
andi_cardiff:
To be fair, would you want to sit in an empty room to take your break? During the nights most canteens are dead quiet, often cold and quite boring. Not exactly comfortable to take a break.Our lot are not too bad in the sense that the majority of motors have night heaters for us night drivers, and should you be allocated one without and leave the engine on idle to keep warm then they don’t complain.
Oh for goodness sake! If you want to sit in a warm room with company stay home and watch telly with the wife, or go to the pub. Do you think the fork truck drivers stay on their machines to have their break because they don’t want to sit in a cold canteen; assuming that it is cold? You’ll be wanting comfy settees and a blazing log fire next. 
You are lucky with your outfit; evidently the rules are stricter with the OP’s outfit but I still maintain that they’re not unreasonable. As said, the driver was told to go to the canteen for his break. That hardly makes him suffer.
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers. Last night I had to take a double-decker trailer from Surrey to a pallet hub in the Midlands. When it came to securing the load to go back, I discovered that some of the straps were over-long and I couldn’t get up to adjust the slider as it was well above head height and (unlike certain French hauliers) there was no step ladder I could use to get up to it. Some of them also had damaged fittings and wouldn’t close properly. I told one of the forklift drivers that the pallets in the affected area would have to come off as there was no means of securing them. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his customers without their freight and it wasn’t his fault that my company hadn’t provided the right straps. So I had to make the 150-mile return journey with those pallets restrained only by the outer curtain (illegal). I texted my agency and said I wouldn’t do this job again because of the problems with the trailer. When I got back, the yard boss basically denied there were defects with the trailer. I said it wouldn’t cost much to fit a few decent straps to it (he agreed but I’m not sure he’ll bother - the trailer is only rented and by the look of it so’s the tractor, although that was quite a nice motor, but it was the only truck in the depot that didn’t have their name on it).
IndigoJo:
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers.
I don’t think so for a moment. It’s you that cops a fine if DVSA pull you, or your load shifts and something pops through the curtain. You are just doing what a driver should be doing. Good thing about being agency of course, as others have said, is that you don’t have to go back there again.
Sidevalve:
andi_cardiff:
To be fair, would you want to sit in an empty room to take your break? During the nights most canteens are dead quiet, often cold and quite boring. Not exactly comfortable to take a break.Our lot are not too bad in the sense that the majority of motors have night heaters for us night drivers, and should you be allocated one without and leave the engine on idle to keep warm then they don’t complain.
Oh for goodness sake! If you want to sit in a warm room with company stay home and watch telly with the wife, or go to the pub. Do you think the fork truck drivers stay on their machines to have their break because they don’t want to sit in a cold canteen; assuming that it is cold? You’ll be wanting comfy settees and a blazing log fire next.
You are lucky with your outfit; evidently the rules are stricter with the OP’s outfit but I still maintain that they’re not unreasonable. As said, the driver was told to go to the canteen for his break. That hardly makes him suffer.
But wouldn’t you rather have a decent sleep/rest in the warm on your break?! Can you imagine the furore if he fell asleep whilst driving and ploughed into a bus full of children near the end of his shift after being forced to take his break somewhere like that?
Why won’t you think of the children?! 
andi_cardiff:
But wouldn’t you rather have a decent sleep/rest in the warm on your break?! Can you imagine the furore if he fell asleep whilst driving and ploughed into a bus full of children near the end of his shift after being forced to take his break somewhere like that?Why won’t you think of the children?!
There certainly would be a furore if a bus full of schoolkids ended up in a Tesco RDC at 2 in the morning! 
And no, actually. Far more beneficial to get out of the cab and have a walk to the canteen and a hot drink than take a nap. He wasn’t forced, anyway. He could have stayed in the cab but he’d have had to turn the engine off; he’s only being treated the same as every other employee on the site, what gives drivers special privileges?
Silver_Surfer:
dieseldog999:
Pimpdaddy:
Tesco drivers are jobsworths:!:beat this,parked in the Belfast rdc I sat on a break nightshift working for Tesco and lay back in the drivers seat nodding off for a 30 min break about 2 a.m. …10 mins later the t/m calls me on the phone telling me to switch off my engine as someone reported me as i was sitting in the cab with the engine still running.this was in feb,and Baltic.he said I should walk to the canteen and sit in there If I wanted a heat…Tosco…aptly named. prime example of a beancounter.
As if T need to worry about a truck engine idling in their RDC for half an hour…
well you know boucher road is in the middle of an industrial eatate/retail park,so no planning issues to worry about,hence your normal Tosco jobsworth at his best…
IndigoJo:
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers. Last night I had to take a double-decker trailer from Surrey to a pallet hub in the Midlands. When it came to securing the load to go back, I discovered that some of the straps were over-long and I couldn’t get up to adjust the slider as it was well above head height and (unlike certain French hauliers) there was no step ladder I could use to get up to it. Some of them also had damaged fittings and wouldn’t close properly. I told one of the forklift drivers that the pallets in the affected area would have to come off as there was no means of securing them. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his customers without their freight and it wasn’t his fault that my company hadn’t provided the right straps. So I had to make the 150-mile return journey with those pallets restrained only by the outer curtain (illegal). I texted my agency and said I wouldn’t do this job again because of the problems with the trailer. When I got back, the yard boss basically denied there were defects with the trailer. I said it wouldn’t cost much to fit a few decent straps to it (he agreed but I’m not sure he’ll bother - the trailer is only rented and by the look of it so’s the tractor, although that was quite a nice motor, but it was the only truck in the depot that didn’t have their name on it).
And no doubt your next thread will be moaning about how you’re not getting any work and don’t know how you’re going to pay the mortgage next month. It’s drivers like you that keep me working all year round so cheers for that.
IndigoJo:
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers. Last night I had to take a double-decker trailer from Surrey to a pallet hub in the Midlands. When it came to securing the load to go back, I discovered that some of the straps were over-long and I couldn’t get up to adjust the slider as it was well above head height and (unlike certain French hauliers) there was no step ladder I could use to get up to it. Some of them also had damaged fittings and wouldn’t close properly. I told one of the forklift drivers that the pallets in the affected area would have to come off as there was no means of securing them. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his customers without their freight and it wasn’t his fault that my company hadn’t provided the right straps. So I had to make the 150-mile return journey with those pallets restrained only by the outer curtain (illegal). I texted my agency and said I wouldn’t do this job again because of the problems with the trailer. When I got back, the yard boss basically denied there were defects with the trailer. I said it wouldn’t cost much to fit a few decent straps to it (he agreed but I’m not sure he’ll bother - the trailer is only rented and by the look of it so’s the tractor, although that was quite a nice motor, but it was the only truck in the depot that didn’t have their name on it).
What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?
Radar19:
What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?
I can pumptruck them off and dump them. 
Radar19:
IndigoJo:
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers. Last night I had to take a double-decker trailer from Surrey to a pallet hub in the Midlands. When it came to securing the load to go back, I discovered that some of the straps were over-long and I couldn’t get up to adjust the slider as it was well above head height and (unlike certain French hauliers) there was no step ladder I could use to get up to it. Some of them also had damaged fittings and wouldn’t close properly. I told one of the forklift drivers that the pallets in the affected area would have to come off as there was no means of securing them. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his customers without their freight and it wasn’t his fault that my company hadn’t provided the right straps. So I had to make the 150-mile return journey with those pallets restrained only by the outer curtain (illegal). I texted my agency and said I wouldn’t do this job again because of the problems with the trailer. When I got back, the yard boss basically denied there were defects with the trailer. I said it wouldn’t cost much to fit a few decent straps to it (he agreed but I’m not sure he’ll bother - the trailer is only rented and by the look of it so’s the tractor, although that was quite a nice motor, but it was the only truck in the depot that didn’t have their name on it).What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?
Short of threatening to leave it there and take the train home (at 1am), or unhitch the trailer and drive the tractor home, I don’t know.
Muckaway:
Radar19:
What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?I can pumptruck them off and dump them.
From the top deck? Without a tail-lift?
Radar19:
Muckaway:
Radar19:
What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?I can pumptruck them off and dump them.
From the top deck? Without a tail-lift?
Muckaway/cotswoldcrunch/nathan only drives a little rigid mate lol
tango boy:
Radar19:
Muckaway:
Radar19:
What do you do if you want those pallets taking off? Since they can’t be secured they shouldn’t be loaded but the forkie won’t remove them. Where do you go from there?I can pumptruck them off and dump them.
From the top deck? Without a tail-lift?
Muckaway/cotswoldcrunch/nathan only drives a little rigid mate lol
It’s not the size it’s the entrance you get into.
IndigoJo:
I think I must seem like a “jobsworth” to some employers. Last night I had to take a double-decker trailer from Surrey to a pallet hub in the Midlands. When it came to securing the load to go back, I discovered that some of the straps were over-long and I couldn’t get up to adjust the slider as it was well above head height and (unlike certain French hauliers) there was no step ladder I could use to get up to it. Some of them also had damaged fittings and wouldn’t close properly. I told one of the forklift drivers that the pallets in the affected area would have to come off as there was no means of securing them. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his customers without their freight and it wasn’t his fault that my company hadn’t provided the right straps. So I had to make the 150-mile return journey with those pallets restrained only by the outer curtain (illegal). I texted my agency and said I wouldn’t do this job again because of the problems with the trailer. When I got back, the yard boss basically denied there were defects with the trailer. I said it wouldn’t cost much to fit a few decent straps to it (he agreed but I’m not sure he’ll bother - the trailer is only rented and by the look of it so’s the tractor, although that was quite a nice motor, but it was the only truck in the depot that didn’t have their name on it).
Maybe you should have checked this before taking the (empty?) trailer out in the first place? To only “discover” problems with the trailer halfway through the run is rather like going out on a multi-drop job without first checking that the tail lift and pump truck are working properly. Or only noticing that the lights/wipers don’t work once it gets dark/starts raining…