I don’t know why I’m getting so worried I have driven enough fullers and twinsplitters to know I can drive. I stick with I shift now great in traffic.
Anyway you realy could start an arguement in an empty room. 
One poster has mentioned it takes an hour to get used to the Eaton twin splitter,so in that hour you have smashed the hell out of it.If a driver had never used one before,and asked someone in the yard to show him/her how to use,i bet nobody could,and why is it only a proper driver that can use it,worth his/her salt.?
kr79:
I don’t know why I’m getting so worried I have driven enough fullers and twinsplitters to know I can drive. I stick with I shift now great in traffic.
Anyway you realy could start an arguement in an empty room.
All this from a Tipper Biatch!! 
Proper driving dessy none of this up the motorway and on to a bay in a yard with miles to turn round.
kr79:
Proper driving dessy none of this up the motorway and on to a bay in a yard with miles to turn round.
As you say in your signature mate!
After all! Wasn’t that the purpose of the Motorway network? To move freight quicker! 
Just a little quicker than the average tipper wagons speed on a B road!
I’ve forgot what a motorway looks like upminster is the furtherst I’ve been in ages. Lol
kr79:
I’ve forgot what a motorway looks like upminster is the furtherst I’ve been in ages. Lol
The M11 ain’t too far away! Mind you! That’s more a DC than a motorway till you get to Loughton!
I think I’d have a panic attack il be on police camera action driving up the hard shoulder as I’m to scared to mix it with the fast traffic.
kr79:
I think I’d have a panic attack il be on police camera action driving up the hard shoulder as I’m to scared to mix it with the fast traffic.
If you did that on that stretch of motorway! Plod will assume your attempting to raid the Royal Mint! And chase you!
The easier the better for me, don’t feel the need to drive any sort of complex gearbox to feel like a “real” driver. I’m now in a job that means I have to do manual work, as in opening & closing curtains, about 4 to 5 times a night, that as well as driving 7 hrs to & from the hub mostly on motorways means I’ve got just about the easiest job I’ve ever had. I get paid a decent wage for what I do in a automatic 06 MAN so, to me, that’s progress.
I cannot see the point of taking what was a difficult job, making it easier, and then wanting to go back to making it harder.
Slackbladder:
The easier the better for me, don’t feel the need to drive any sort of complex gearbox to feel like a “real” driver. I’m now in a job that means I have to do manual work, as in opening & closing curtains, about 4 to 5 times a night, that as well as driving 7 hrs to & from the hub mostly on motorways means I’ve got just about the easiest job I’ve ever had. I get paid a decent wage for what I do in a automatic 06 MAN so, to me, that’s progress.
I cannot see the point of taking what was a difficult job, making it easier, and then wanting to go back to making it harder.
This^^^
What a load of Elitist nonsense.
Take the RAF’s old Harrier. To be able to hover, the pilot was constantly having to make adjustments to throttle, nozzle position and the control surfaces… The F35, the aircraft destined to replace the Harrier eventually has a button you can push to make it hover. That’s it, the computer works out all the fine adjustments leaving the pilot free to concentrate on other matters. Will this make the pilots who fly the new F35’s into bad pilots? Of course it won’t, it’s called progress.
I’m a “young 'un”, “noob” or whatever stupid name Old Timers think up… I’ve picked the job up very well in a short space of time and I’m sorry to burst a few bubbles but once you’ve learned how to drive a lorry and have the ability to navigate etc. reasonably well then it’s SIMPLE.
I see a lot of experienced hands make total dog’s dinners out of easy reverse maneuvers, and I see inexperienced drivers make a bloody good job of it. When I learned to drive an artic, my instructor with 25 years experience couldn’t complete the test reverse himself, so I had to figure it out myself!
The point is, yes the job has got even easier and that there are good and bad drivers at all levels of experience, but why try to stand in the way of progress just because you’re sulking that the job was never this easy when you started out?
Aye! auto boxes give the licence holders a chance to tune in their state-of-the-art radios tele’s etc. use the text facility on their phones whilst driving without giving a thought to concentrating on what they actually supposed to be doing. But I suppose that’s “Progress”… people. Bring back the twin-spitter and get back to proper driving.
Yeah let’s get back to the twin splitter because then, after driving for the 4 kms to the motorway, I’m unable to get it into top gear for the 2.5 hr drive before a break and so will be unable to touch my radio, iPod, phone, computer, iPad, tv etc.
While I’m on why don’t I take off the curtains and rope & sheet the double deck trailer, take off the air bags, oh yes I could also change out the unit for a horse or two, brilliant.
If you don’t like what you drive and yearn for the old times then tough, change jobs.
Now how about a starting handle that would seperate the men from the boys.
claretmatt:
What a load of Elitist nonsense.Take the RAF’s old Harrier. To be able to hover, the pilot was constantly having to make adjustments to throttle, nozzle position and the control surfaces… The F35, the aircraft destined to replace the Harrier eventually has a button you can push to make it hover. That’s it, the computer works out all the fine adjustments leaving the pilot free to concentrate on other matters. Will this make the pilots who fly the new F35’s into bad pilots? Of course it won’t, it’s called progress.
I’m a “young 'un”, “noob” or whatever stupid name Old Timers think up… I’ve picked the job up very well in a short space of time and I’m sorry to burst a few bubbles but once you’ve learned how to drive a lorry and have the ability to navigate etc. reasonably well then it’s SIMPLE.
I see a lot of experienced hands make total dog’s dinners out of easy reverse maneuvers, and I see inexperienced drivers make a bloody good job of it. When I learned to drive an artic, my instructor with 25 years experience couldn’t complete the test reverse himself, so I had to figure it out myself!
The point is, yes the job has got even easier and that there are good and bad drivers at all levels of experience, but why try to stand in the way of progress just because you’re sulking that the job was never this easy when you started out?
Ironically you’d hear exactly the same arguments between the ‘pilots licence holders’ who ‘fly’ the modern ‘electric jets’ as they call them as opposed to the ‘pilots’ who flew what they call ‘pilot’s aircraft’ like the Lightning,Phantom or even Concorde etc etc . 
It’s not a case of easy or difficult.It’s one of some prefer the job satisfaction of actually having to ‘drive’ a truck as opposed to having a computer do some of the more skilled operations involved in that.The inconvenient truth is that auto/automated manual boxes in trucks are just there to make up for the deficiencies of the licence holders as opposed to the drivers and are only specced on the basic financial motives that operators think that it’s more cost effective to spend money on technology that they don’t need to than it is to spend less to start with on using simpler and therefore better and cheaper technology that the licence holders end up costing them more for in the long term by their mis use of it.
There really is no case for using any other transmission in a truck than an ordinary manual roadranger,except maybe on a truck that’s used in mostly urban stop start conditions,or specialist types like rear engined fire trucks.If you find anything else in it like synchro boxes or autos of whatever type then it’s just a licence holder v driver issue that’s the reasoning behind it because no sensible operator would want to spend out more on anything more complicated than a roadranger in the real world of high maintenance costs and cut throat rates.Simples. 
kr79:
Now how about a starting handle that would seperate the men from the boys.
This is more fun than breaking a few fingers or thumbs.
newmercman:
The job has changed for the worse too, it’s easy to blame H&S or whatever else, but really the only ones to blame are the people doing the job, if they weren’t such a bunch of [zb]wits with a bad attitude then we may not get treated like [zb]wits with bad attitudes and wouldn’t be given a set of do’s and don’t’s at every place we visit
You don’t think its the other way around perhaps?
I’m sure we’ve all had to deal with the Bright and Shiny Managers, all dressed up smart in their Bright and Shiny hi viz, wandering around with a whole herd of other Bright and Shiny Managers, all desperately trying to climb the corporate greasy pole…end result is that they treat all drivers/operatives/tea-boys exactly the same way. No-one is allowed to think for themselves because they’ll get a disciplinary. No-one is allowed to show any initiative because they’ll get a disciplinary. No-one is allowed to ■■■■ without written approval from at least one of the Bright and Shiny Managers or else you’ll get a disciplinary… If you argue with them because experience tells you that their idea is daft, you get a disciplinary…
Everyone is treated as the lowest common denominator so everyone, eventually, acts accordingly…you treat anyone like an arse, why should you be surprised when they act like one?
Treat someone with respect, respect their knowledge and listen to their opinions and views, and you will get soo much more from that person. All for the cost of a little basic courtesy…
Nobody’s at fault apart from the Bright and Shiny Managers, the accountants that seem to be pulling their strings, SOME of the H&S nonsense and the poxy compensation culture that seems to be rife… 
You have a point Pistonbroke, but playing Devil’s Advocate, what about if the drivers had not needed micro-managing in the first place, then the shiny hi-viz tossers would never had got a foot in the door
I’m going to take the advocate thing to extremes here, some of you may remember back in the day when the unions were dead set against the sleeper cab, well what if they got their way 
Instead of parking in laybys and sub standard truckstops, drivers would now be parking in motel car parks, the days of flop houses has long gone, so we would all be parking our day cabs outside a cheap motel and getting to sleep in comfort, far fetched? Maybe not, the laws of supply and demand would mean that as people can actually make money out of lorries parking up and using the facilities, there would be more of them, unlike truckstops who need acres of land just to get a tenner out of a driver for an evening meal, the parking fee barely covers the mortgage and taxes on the land required, yet a motel charging fifty quid a night would be able to make money, yeah costs would have to go up, but so what, it’s the cost of doing business. As is often said, reps don’t sleep in their cars, mobile engineers don’t sleep in their vans 
So we go back to the truth, since the dawn of time lorry drivers have created their own monster, you can blame whoever you like, from the EU, the Polish, H&S bods with shiny hi-viz etc, but the sad truth is that the blame lies at the feet of the lorry driver/licence holder
It’s strange, I’d like to do a days’ work in an old tipper like a Constructor or Bison, but I wouldn’t swap the Liebherr 566 loader I was driving today for a “classic” shovel like a Bray or a Wetherill.