Irlamsdriver:
Nettos is exactly the same at South Elmsall in the fact that you have to unload yourself with a pallet truck or with an electric one if your prepared to sign the paperwork. The first point though I’d like to raise about this is not about the RDCs but the companies we work for. Under the H&S Act our employers have a responsibility to ensure that we are trained adequately, I have never received any manual handling training form a single company I have worked for in the transport industry. Whether its just for opening the curtains, or lifting up the tail lift manual handling training is something which we should all be shown. Anybody who incurs an in injury whilst loading or unloading should bear this in mind. Secondy it is no good just asking for this training verbally it should be put in writing. that way when your employer turns around and says they have shown you etc you can say erm no you havent here is my request etc etc etc. As a Union trained Health and Safety rep I am appalled so far at the utter lack of Health and Safety training within the road haulage industry in general. Health and safety is everybodies responsibility.when i worked for the lane group on there magnet contract they sent me on a health and saftey course and a manual handling course which taught me how to lift and handle kitchens properly,but when we came to tip at magnet stores the shop staff expected us to carry 2 4.1 metre work tops to the back off the shop,we told them they get paid to unload the wagon with a forklift not my arms but dont buy a magnet kitchen as it is proberly smashed to bits with the muppts that load the boxs at darlington but lanes aint a bad firm to work for.
I think the one that takes the biscuit is Lidl’s at Belvadea. They start queing up just after 5.00am and the goods in usually roll up as late as 6.30. Then they make you stand ourside of the warehouse to book in, this can take up to 45 minutes. Then when you get on a bay you have to wait for a truck.
I have refused to go there anymore, I have told the company I pull for that I would rather have the day off, and untill more of that happens they will continue to take the mickey out of us.
I know a mate of mine ran over his foot with one of the electric trucks, and we got the Union to fight his case and he did get compensation, but I wonder what would have happened if he had not been a member of a trade union.
On a lighter note- the best one I ever saw was years age when Alde were at Lutterworth.
These two Irish lads came in, and the old story " you have to tip yourselves" reply was " we don’t know how to use the trucks"
Anyway they ended up tipping themselves, but here’s the good bit. In the next lane to where they were tipping was a full load of flour, and everytime they took a pallet off their truck they happened to catch a pallet of flour. When they had finish it looked like Christmas.
The guy in charge told them not to come back anymore, I won’t tell you what they said.
I’ve done Lidl at Belvedere too. I was on agency for MacFarlane’s at the time. Waited about 30 mins to get on a bay and then fired up a pallet truck and I was off. Only trouble was, even though the truck was apparently fully charged it struggled like hell to move the big pallets of pop out of the trailer. The drive wheel just lifted up off the floor and spun round like a [zb] ! 
The other thing there is that none of the warehouse muppets can speak English. 
Don’t get me started on Lidl’s.
Just spent 3 years often running out of Lidl’s in Bordeaux delivering to their stores in the region.
It’s not so much the fact that you have to load yourself but the fact that the idiots in the warehouse don’t know how to stack a Europallet.
Not hard to teach them that 3 sit exactly side by side in a frigo trailer and if you stack one too wide they don’t fit.
Good job there were electric pallet trucks, you couldn’t ram them in without. Trouble is they are damned hard to get out the other end if there is no leccy. There were 2 stores like that.
One had a French Canadian manager and we had three blazing rows over timing and damaged goods before I sat him down and explained the hours laws and the loading at Cadaujac.
All of us hated it with a vengeance. It was the punishment job if you upset the boss, trouble was even if you didn’t there weren’t enough miscreants to cover the work.
Glad to be out of it.
Salut, David.
Don’t get me started on Lidl’s.
Just spent 3 years often running out of Lidl’s in Bordeaux delivering to their stores in the region.
It’s not so much the fact that you have to load yourself but the fact that the idiots in the warehouse don’t know how to stack a Europallet.
Not hard to teach them that 3 sit exactly side by side in a frigo trailer and if you stack one too wide they don’t fit.
Good job there were electric pallet trucks, you couldn’t ram them in without. Trouble is they are damned hard to get out the other end if there is no leccy. There were 2 stores like that.
One had a French Canadian manager and we had three blazing rows over timing and damaged goods before I sat him down and explained the hours laws and the loading at Cadaujac.
All of us hated it with a vengeance. It was the punishment job if you upset the boss, trouble was even if you didn’t there weren’t enough miscreants to cover the work.
Glad to be out of it.
Salut, David.
Don’t get me started on Lidl’s.
Just spent 3 years often running out of Lidl’s in Bordeaux delivering to their stores in the region.
It’s not so much the fact that you have to load yourself but the fact that the idiots in the warehouse don’t know how to stack a Europallet.
Not hard to teach them that 3 sit exactly side by side in a frigo trailer and if you stack one too wide they don’t fit.
Good job there were electric pallet trucks, you couldn’t ram them in without. Trouble is they are damned hard to get out the other end if there is no leccy. There were 2 stores like that.
One had a French Canadian manager and we had three blazing rows over timing and damaged goods before I sat him down and explained the hours laws and the loading at Cadaujac.
All of us hated it with a vengeance. It was the punishment job if you upset the boss, trouble was even if you didn’t there weren’t enough miscreants to cover the work.
Glad to be out of it.
Salut, David.
ALRIGHT BONDITRAM, WE GET THE PICTURE 
i was working for cutlers out of poole a few years ago i come up against this problem,and i found out if these electric pallet trucks have a plate you stand on this is classed as a FORK LIFT TRUCK and you need a fork lift truck license. i dont know if it is still the same
The footplate thing is interesting, since all the warehouse bodies are given ride on type leccy pallet trucks (I worked warehouse at Lidl RDC Worle once for my sins). All of us had them, and we had almost no training, yet they count as propper forklifts under H&S do they?
Oh dear…
Rob,
There’s nothing like a bit of emphasis to get the message across 
Tried three times to submit but it was just too slow and didn’t seem to complete so gave up, thinking I hadn’t posted at all.
Now if I can’t get this right, how dangerous is it to put me in charge of a pallet truck
Still keeping out of the nick?
Salut, David.
BondiTram:
…Still keeping out of the nick?Salut, David.
Oi… 
saw this today in paper .
Daily Mirror
Headline
Ban Over My Trolley
Teacher Patricia Evans has been banned from a German-owned supermarket -because her trolley was pointing the wrong way.
Patricia 50,was told off at the check-out at store chain Lidl in Penlan,Swansea,because her trolley was pointing forwards instead of backwards .
When she objected,a cashier said: “Don’t bother coming back - you’re banned!” ,Yesterday,Patricia , of Carmarthen, said :“It was outrageous.”
Stuttgart -based Lidl said “We do have a policy that trolleys must be correctly aligned.We are investigating this”.
omfg talk about jobsworth lol
Source : bottom of page 20 in the daily mirror on Tuesday February 3rd 2004
metalhead10:
saw this today in paper .
Daily MirrorHeadline
Ban Over My Trolley
bit on the radio today said trolleys have to be the right way round so checkout op’s can see in the bottom to make sure you’re not nicking stuff
this seems a bit OTT though
I wasn’t aware they had anything worth nicking ? 
I heard the same on the radio today.
Excuse me for my ignorance (I hold a degree in engineering) but isn’t a trolley just a bunch of air held together by some bits of wire. 
The only way to make them more transparent would be to make them out of perspex…so where’s the problem in checking them, regardless of which direction they’re pointed 
Jules