maga:
Not sure how old you are but guessing about my age 
. I started on long distance van driving for 8 months, I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. Long hours, crap money, stopping only for a toilet break, surprising how easy it is to overload a van too. only plus side i found was i got to travel all over including some of europe, id never get that chance in a lorry. If you do get an opportunity, buy some match sticks to prop your eyes open
It all depends of what company you do work for.
I do it (full time, then casual, now I am full time again, but looking for something more) for nearly 3 years now and I love it.
No tacho - so drive when you feel good, and stop when you are tired. Reasonable boss would not take jobs that are impossible to do safely. And if you are tired, just call the office and tell them “I am tired, I am pulling off”. My boss says “better late in this life than early in next one”.
Under 3,5t, so you can stay overnight with your friends, as you can drive virtually everywhere. I have often morning collection from Heathrow, usually I stay with my friends nearby or another ones near Shepperds Bush. Boss has no problem with me driving van to them, as he gets well rested driver and don’t need to pay for the hotel.
It also helps with food - you are not destined to crappy cafes or MSA’s - whenever you have some time, just take the side road and stop by some village pub, or do your own shopping and then enjoy your meal at the small car park in some nice nature surroundings.
In my line of work we rarely have heavy vans, it’s mostly small pallets, boxes or even single items. My recent deliveries included
- a bit for some sculpture, slightly bigger than a marker pen
- set of human eyeballs for transplant in dry ice
- four coffins
- some lab equipment in small wooden crate
- someone’s passport
- shop signs
- some spare parts for the ship, two euro pallets in total.
Today all I carried was two euro pallets at about 70 kgs each, one at 170 kg, a crate of 70 kg and a hand carry box.
Item weights are usually on the notes, so you can check yourself. I was overloaded only once, and only because the speditor assumes that the driver is 70kgs, and I am a little bit more so it made me about 50 kgs over the limits. Austrian VOSA told me to do not do it again and let me go 
Yes, sometimes you have to press ahead to make delivery on time - today I had to eat in McDonald’s (which I hate). But on the other hand, especially when far away from home, you might be told to wait for the back loads… The longest I had was nearly two days near Bergen. I’ve been to few museums, had a bbq at the bank of some nice fjord and played guitar with some tourist at the fire in their camp. Other time I spend all day on the beach then was driving through the country roads, as I had two days to go from La Havre to Bordeaux. And then there was that weekend on Cote’d’Azur…
Money can be good, if you are in the right company. we have quite low hourly rate (still better than some agencies offer me for class 2 though) but we are paid for all the time away. So for example I left Glasgow thursday evening, been in London in the middle of the night, took the kip, then delivered at 9am, drove for 8 hours doing few drops from Southend to Bristol, then drove to see my friends in London, stayed there overnight, collected from Heathrow at 9am went back via Manchester and Edinburgh. Two days away and I am paid as if I did 5 10 hour shifts for the agency…
It’s worth to have some special skills - ADR, level D, carriage of animals - then there is not much jobs, but when there are, they are really good. Of these three I would recomend level D if you have busy airport near you, I have quite a few odd jobs here and there in quiet period - also driving trucks or forklift - only because I have this certificate.
And if you get to the international company, you will learn the paperwork - CMR’s, other forms, customs etc. art of sealing the vehicle etc. Here the paperwork is exactly the same as for big trucks.
There are some downsides, like in British companies (ulike than in Polish, when it’s a standard, I don’t get it why it is not here) they don’t believe in sleeping cabs/pods so you have to be prepared to sleep across the seats (altough it can be worked along, for example I have vast network of friends who are happy to offer me a coach to surf and in exchange they stay in my place in Glasgow when I am away for Scottish holidays), on longer journey it is perfectly normal to go to the hotel. What I also do is I carry a karrimate with me and just pretend I am a motorhome especially that these longer journeys are often a hot shots with one crate or pallet and the rest of the van is empty and clean, as we cary mostly boxes and neat pallets with expensive stuff I prefer it to hotels, I will go to the hotels when I will be old
Also the vans, if they are not maintained properly, can be pin in the arse… I have the feeling that I am the only one in the company who cares about things like changing bulbs or windscreen wipers… The mileages are cosmic (10 plate van I drove today has over 392 000 on the clock already and it wasn’t the most busy one) and therefore the company don’t invest in them, they just run them to death and take the next one. Still it’s not too bad, I had to refuse taking van on the road only on two occasions, the “important” bits are usually kept well, it’s some annoying things like rattling, broken switches, dents, cracked windscreens etc.
Another thing is that if you are in time critical deliveries (and this is when the fun is), the job is very irregular. Basically speaking, you are on call 24/7. Very annoying when you try to plan something or even have social life But for a single young lad without family ties, I thing it’s a good, if you treat it as an adventure.
I fully support johnny’s idea of learning the ropes by getting into van driving. Just be careful and make yourself unbreakable rule number one: if you feel tired, stop. If the boss sacks you for that, it’s no loss, as if he tried to force you to keep driving, it was time to ditch the job anyway.
Van driving, along with driving for Hebrides Haulage, is the best driving job I ever had. And it is the best paying job I ever had, enough to say I ditched being a police interpreter for this. Now I am about to graduate so I am looking into some “graduate job” but I dread to think I won’t be on the road any more…
