Local multi drop timber shuttering and scaffolding amongst other building materials work on agency in which the stuff had to be shifted by hand all over the sites not just on and off the wagon.Effectively it was just a building labourer job with the added requirement of driving the stuff all over London at a driver’s wage not a building labourer’s one. 
I started on 7.5 tonners for cert in hoddesdon, doing multi drop in the west end. Up to 30 drops, all clubs, hotels and restraunts, with the odd embassy thrown in. Loads of stairs but a good job. Progressed onto 17 tonners and used to do a poxy bar in lamb street old spitalfields. 6 pallets of spanish lager handballed into the cellar and stacked. Done the usual brakes and 3663 crap on agency, a couple of weeks on securicor parcels. All crap hard jobs. More a mobile warehouseman than a driver. Tilts are graft in the wind and rain. About the most graft I do now is closing the trailer for a 20 foot box 
Hardest work now is trying to find my nob on a cold day 
brados:
Hardest work now is trying to find my nob on a cold day
Being a trucker you could use the euphemism of gearstick or perhaps if you’re into computers how about joystick?
But otherwise, I think that’s in breach some rule for being norty
First driving job I had was approx 40 yrs ago,120 drops a day but more in Nov and Dec, no collections but had to reload the van back at depot, Harrisons of Dewsbury it was, then became Haulfast then Carryfast now UPS.The job was ■■■■ easy, little light weight box’s in a transit van, but the perks of the job wore me out,
I was shattered every night when I got home.
Was delivering avon cosmetics to female agents houses who always seemed to be lonely and desperate to talk to someone,looked like a old man by the time I had done the job 3 years,
Went on artics handballing and roping and sheeting then cos it was a lot easier 
theonlybigman:
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!
Same as, multi dropping for IKEA out of croydon in central London & south coast , never ever again !..
kemaro:
theonlybigman:
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!Same as, multi dropping for IKEA out of croydon in central London & south coast , never ever again !..
same here. before i had my hgv did this sort of work in essex and east london in a luton van, bloody hard graft.
did the tilt thing aswell, full strip down in italy. boiling hot, and the tilt was old and knackered, took a fair while, and got covered in ■■■■. not touched another.
chilistrucker:
kemaro:
theonlybigman:
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!Same as, multi dropping for IKEA out of croydon in central London & south coast , never ever again !..
same here. before i had my hgv did this sort of work in essex and east london in a luton van, bloody hard graft.
did the tilt thing aswell, full strip down in italy. boiling hot, and the tilt was old and knackered, took a fair while, and got covered in [zb]. not touched another.
I always liked how they put a kitchen delivery as one drop & allowed the same time frame as a single item like a deck chair , some of those kitchens had well over 300 parts & those flat pack wardrobes were something else , I always had a porter who insisted on carrying everything alone , his motto was nothing on this truck will beat me , wonder how his back is now …
Sort of transport related so my most hardest and also dangerous graft was lashing containers on a container ship, you can be stood on the edge with a big drop down to the water or quay wall its windy raining and your trying to lift up a long lashing pole which is bleeding heavy.
And the crane driver doesn’t slow down so you can catch up either. Another horrible job was up on top of the containers undoing or doing up the bridging bolts right on the very outer container, horrible.
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.
Oh, aye . . . I forgot about that . . . used to run carrots and caulies up from StPol De Leon in Brittany to NW markets, twice a week.
If it was carrots, the tilt needed to be shut
If it was caulies, it needed to be open so they didn’t sweat.
You could guarantee it was alternate carrot / caulie loads . . spent my life stripping and making up the blimmin tilt 
(Can’t believe I used to run all the way down there empty to bring those loads back. Profit margins obviously weren’t as tight then )
kemaro:
chilistrucker:
kemaro:
theonlybigman:
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!Same as, multi dropping for IKEA out of croydon in central London & south coast , never ever again !..
same here. before i had my hgv did this sort of work in essex and east london in a luton van, bloody hard graft.
did the tilt thing aswell, full strip down in italy. boiling hot, and the tilt was old and knackered, took a fair while, and got covered in [zb]. not touched another.I always liked how they put a kitchen delivery as one drop & allowed the same time frame as a single item like a deck chair , some of those kitchens had well over 300 parts & those flat pack wardrobes were something else , I always had a porter who insisted on carrying everything alone , his motto was nothing on this truck will beat me , wonder how his back is now …
Was his name Stuart Reakes per chance?
Saratoga:
brados:
Hardest work now is trying to find my nob on a cold dayBeing a trucker you could use the euphemism of gearstick or perhaps if you’re into computers how about joystick?
But otherwise, I think that’s in breach some rule for being norty
The cold start nob obviously
Equitran:
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.
stacking field after field of them into '17’s by hand on a blazing hot day, loading them onto trailers then building them into a dutch barn with a black-painted tin roof.
handballing 1cwt (50kg for any youngsters on here) shredded beetpulp ‘tombstones’ out of the railway wagon, onto the lorry then handballing them into the feed shed. shoulders completely raw by the end.
handballing 4 artic loads of those good old 1cwt fertilizer bags into the store.
Think the most miserable work I’ve done was ‘shawing’ (harvesting by hand) turnips on frosty mornings, if you caught your hands with the blade the first you knew about it was when you stopped for tea and your hands thawed out enough to bleed, this happened just before you got the feeling (and pain) back 
Another one was handballing sacks of fishmeal off a flat - the smell was beyond belief. 
theonlybigman:
kemaro:
chilistrucker:
kemaro:
theonlybigman:
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!Same as, multi dropping for IKEA out of croydon in central London & south coast , never ever again !..
same here. before i had my hgv did this sort of work in essex and east london in a luton van, bloody hard graft.
did the tilt thing aswell, full strip down in italy. boiling hot, and the tilt was old and knackered, took a fair while, and got covered in [zb]. not touched another.I always liked how they put a kitchen delivery as one drop & allowed the same time frame as a single item like a deck chair , some of those kitchens had well over 300 parts & those flat pack wardrobes were something else , I always had a porter who insisted on carrying everything alone , his motto was nothing on this truck will beat me , wonder how his back is now …
Was his name Stuart Reakes per chance?
It sure was , he would be so bent over his nose was almost touching the ground , I’m guessing you had some runs with him too …
I helped to employ him, he has got a knackered back now lol! I don’t remember you though, Kevin Roberts is it?
I am Matt Wheeler who was in the office, did I do your assessment? Do you remember me? How long and when did you work there?
theonlybigman:
I helped to employ him, he has got a knackered back now lol! I don’t remember you though, Kevin Roberts is it?I am Matt Wheeler who was in the office, did I do your assessment? Do you remember me? How long and when did you work there?
I do remember you & you did do my assessment, pm’d you
Yeah I was once sent to Madrid with a tautliner instead of my usual Fridge… I had to pull those curtains all by myself!!!
Palmer and Harveys, dragging heavy/broken/badly strapped cages into corner shops/petrol stations and off loading the items, checking them off one by one in front of picky, lazy zb shop keepers 
never, ever again
Plasterboard, I used to deliver boards all round London including the city with a 40 foot artic, sliding 24 ton of boards off a trailer was hard work , there was a knack in that lifting and dropping the board before you slid it created a cushion of air that meant it woulld slide with no friction… it was hard work… but not as bad as the poor buggers who had to carry them up multiple flights of stairs
On a good day I could do 3 loads thats 72 tons of plasterboard lifted and shifted by hand