Life seems a piece of cake these days, except for the chuffin volume of traffic ! !
Looking back on your career in haulage, what particular parts were ‘challenging’ ■■?
Back in the early 80’s, my regular seasonal run several years running was loading egyptian/cyprus spuds out of Heysham docks. Thing was they came out on ships pallets, and had to be handballed onto normal pallets.
I worked for Kammac then (in their very early days) and I used to load 4 trailers a day on my own, dragging each one out into the lorry park outside and pulling an empty in . . thats 80 ton handball each day every few days for about 3 weeks. (couldn’t even think about that now, 30 years later ! ! !)
I think the next worse was loading onions in Edge Hill railway station in Liverpool, also all handball … … the railway carriage was so low compared to lorry trailers that all drivers could do was throw about 10 bags up at a time and then leap up to our trailer and stack then on pallets … … it was hot, nasty and dusty as heck !
Soon after that I delivered to Gateshead and Middlesborough markets (from west Lancashire) 5 nights a week for nearly 4 years, and although I had the ‘hire’ of a forktruck, all 44 pallets (double decked) had to be handballed off onto the floor around the markets every night in order to get my pallets back.
Looking back it feels like I worked my whatsits off, and I suppose I did, but in reality I was young then and thats what you did at that age . … couldn’t chuffin do it now, haha (probably why my back in shot at now!)
What ‘grafting’ jobs did you used to do ■■?
Hardest graft I had to do was handballing small square bales of hay on and off, twine wrecked your hands while the bales wrecked your back.
Multidrop pet & animal food from an 18t curtainsider, Most came off as handball with a few odd pallets.
Before that it was multidrop solo furniture. That was in an 18t too but the driver didnt want to do any lifting so I did it all and he drove, and he was pretty useless at that. Thankfully after having our 4th truck returned to the yard (in a week) with bits of body hanging off that driver stopped working there and I got the agency to move me on, but even so!
I do agree that exercise is good in this job but not things like that, too much for too little pay.
Corner shop deliveries. On my worst day I drove 12 kms and handballed 11 tons of stuff…
Setting up the tension tent at Concord roadshows, that thing was bigger than a Circus tent and took all day for a team of six of us to errect… The good points were that once up and running we had well over a week of enjoying ourselves and getting rat assed.
When I did home delivery for Ikea through DHL normally anywhere from 3 to 5 tonne everyday, up to 30 jobs, all handball wherever the customer lived is where it went had some people live on 13th floor with 2.5 tonne of kitchen and no lift betty swollocks those days!
Most graft was one of the first jobs I ever had an actually helped me become a driver. Was at a depot for an animal feed company working in the warehouse going out with the driver when we were busy, all in bags and all handball, but loved 99% of it. The 1% I didn`t like was first thing on a Monday morning when you would walk around the corner and see an artic with 25t of shreaded beet pulp at the gates, was even worse if they had loaded from the bottom of the stack at the sugar works,■■■■ stuff used to set like bloody bricks and would try and break your shoulder.
It was sacks of spuds for me as well, but straight out of the Kent fields so first you had to find the field where they were lifting, then manage to get into the field without demolishing anything, then handball 20 ton of spuds & try & get them stacked neatly so they would ride, then struggle back off of the field followed by a 4 hour journey home. Kept me fit but certainly couldn’t do it today.
them bleedin big bags of coffee beans out of the docks, off their pallets onto ours…
building blocks 9x9x18 solid concrete, ten ton loads before hiabs…
360 bales of hay or straw onto a 16 tonner…
there’s a lot more but i’m worn out just thinking about them.
Yep lots of handball 20 ton loads in the past, load by hand the rope and sheet, then drive the no power steering no air assisted clutch motors to the delivery point then doing it all again.
In recent years the car transporters were hard graft but different, when on ferrying, up to 44 cars a day and depending how lucky or unlucky you were could be around 400 yards to fetch each car and another 400yards to walk back to truck after dropping.
Other times you could be on multi drop x2 loads plus reload and still cover 720kms in the day.
Couldn’t take your mind from the job for a split second either, do that and thousands of poundsworth of damage happen in an instant.
Good money but 2 weeks work in every week.
I was married for twelve years - that was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done! 
Second was delivering flour for Whitworths. All handball off and into shop store rooms.
3rd was tilt work. Very hard to start but got easier once I started actually learning from my mistakes
Sent from somewhere… Not sure where exactly but I’m probably only a bit lost
I think UK tilt work, especially doing ferry trailers, they were all damaged and never got maintained. A full strip out in a steelworks for an overhead lift could be a proper pain.
Another place I worked was when we used to clean or rebag fertiliser from Fisons in Goole. All the bags were slimy and split, we rebagged the worst and washed the best with a bucket and sponge. It was then handballed onto a flat trailer for delivery to discount garden centres and supermarkets. Not many places had forklifts and not many bags came in on good pallets.
I got onto the lorries by becoming a coal-man, when you’ve stood in a train carriage shovelling coal into sacks then delivered them then done it again in the afternoon you know you’ve done a days work.
Back in the 70s there was plenty of handball loads including sacks of rice from London to Birmingham loaded and unloaded from the trailer by myself.
Potatoes from Cornwall to Birmingham, scrap tyres loaded and unloaded by hand, farm feed in bags and plenty of other stuff handballed on and off lorries.
Now the hardest thing I do is come here and listen to people ■■■■■■■■ because they can’t have a lie-down on the bunk whilst being loaded/unloaded by someone else 
Stripped an old tilt down by myself in the sweltering heat of Spain - nearly killed me, the sweat was running off me, so hot it took me nearly 3 hours 
- I swore never to take a bloody tilt ever again.
Removals when stairs were involved and turf, all handball…my back creaks at the thought! Just remembered did dray work as well!
Delivering 20kilo blocks of cheese to wholesalers, Army & Air Force stores. Usually minimum 50 block delivery. All handball. Even in the depths of winter I was sweating in my shirt sleeves.
The opposide was handballing 200 cases of milk portions off at Butlins in Clacton & Warners in Dovercourt. Still did your back in but the scenery was better 
Farm deliveries as a drivers mate with 20 tons of fertilizer in 50 kg bags - slippery as buggery Sometimes thrice a day, all through Jan, Feb and March…
By far the hardest was a short stint on the drays delivering to pubs and clubs - I had a bloody good mate, which makes all the difference. Back- breaking under normal conditions but then at Christmas the volume trebled… 
I wouldn’t change a minute of it…
brados:
Stripped an old tilt down by myself in the sweltering heat of Spain - nearly killed me, the sweat was running off me, so hot it took me nearly 3 hours - I swore never to take a bloody tilt ever again.
Yeah I was thinking all along reading the thread about that. Tilt full strip outs in Europe in high summer. Luckily never done it (done part strips in the uk in the wind & rain) but have friends who were owner drivers who did it.
Done thousands upon thousands of the little hay bales off the field onto trailers (forking them up when you get higher) the unloading them into hot dusty lofts.
At 18 I was loading 2.25 tons of Scotch Cheddar cheese from Lockerbie creameries in 40lb boxes onto a Transit van & trailer. Try putting that weight on a ■■■■■■ van & twin axle trailer & driving it on a car licence today! Never seemed like work at all loading and unloading that. The van didn’t have a bulk head either, you just stacked it behind the seats.
Luckily the worst I’ve had to do on artics is pallet truck or cage loading & tipping.
Done some very precarious climbing though, often alone in deserted places, to get straps over various items.
