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UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
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pierrot 14:

Gidders:
Those 24hr.places are very useful to know,thanks.I used to know a handful of such places years ago but I daresay they are no more.For overnight drivers in France,including motorways,any kind of refreshment is extremely hard to find.Even motorway services area may only have a small alcove with a coffee machine.The A10 between Poitiers and Bordeaux used to have a lot of good places but fewer these days.I still stop at Vivonne or Barbezieux from time to time.All over Europe,24 hr.facilities are thin on the ground.I suppose drivers do the same as I did and took a flask and sandwiches.

Gidders, you are so right about the motorway services here in France, boils my P, it’s like the world stops at 22.00, at least it’s not all of them that just open the toilet and coffee machine area at night, but it is so many now!!
I’m not sure, but is it like in the UK, remote services are worried about their staff being held up for the contents of the till, even though most payments are paid by card, more people around during the day, fewer at night, better target and less chance of being caught, even with CCTV? Also there’s less public visiting, why pay for someone to sit on their ■■■ all night to do practically nothing? Night time most of the pumps are auto anyway. Suppose it’s the world we live in.
If you’re in the St Dizier area on the N4, the routiers at Perthes is still 24 hr.

Most of the Motorway services are now 24 hours, at least to some extend. More rural garages, if 24 hours, tend to lock the door and grunt through the hatch. Sometimes even in English.
Many McDonald’s restaurants are now also 24 hours, which is not bad for the tea or coffee (free drink for every six).

I guess that it’s a bit of swings and roundabouts. Facilities in Europe tend to be beter, but opening times are restricted. Whilst over here, they are not as good, but available more.
I must admit, because for me Saturday or Sunday are not especially specific, I love working 4on-4off, and that seems to be a rota that is going to be hard to find over there, because of the Sunday ban.

It’s funny how you get used to spending so much time at home.

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(quote nodding donkey)I must admit, because for me Saturday or Sunday are not especially specific, I love working 4on-4off, and that seems to be a rota that is going to be hard to find over there, because of the Sunday ban.

It’s funny how you get used to spending so much time at home.
[/quote]
I always get my weekends (well most of them) but tbh wouldnt bother me which days of the week i had off. Been at home for two weeks nearly now and could get quite used to it. Housework makes a change… :stuck_out_tongue:

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Pierrot.Thanks for your info about the 24hr.place near St.Dizier which I will pass on to any of my friends who need to know.Personally I always travel from either Roscoff,Ouistreham,Le Havre,Dieppe,Calais or Dunkirk to south of Alicante.I use different routes,none of which is any better than another occasionally with some peage stretches thrown in.
In the UK all our motorway services are open for food and fuel for 24hrs.Some roadside filling stations are open 24hrs.with a staff member safely locked inside but there are more and more automatic card operated pumps now.
I have noticed that sometimes when refuelling in France and Spain,when you input your details into the card reader my bank is immediately debited with the maximum amount which can be charged,say €100.After filling I get my receipt for say €60 and my bank is then charged for this too.It could be up to a week later before my bank receives a credit for €100.This happens with both Spanish and British bank cards.
Do you ,or anyone else know about this or is it just banks extracting the urine?

44

Gidders, I won’t ask on here who you drive for, but I bet we’ve been on the same ferry without us even knowing it, be it at the bar or in the self. I’ve probably passed Franglais loads of times whilst he’s on his away to Ouistreham, I know who he works for and we have a mutual friend, a colleague of his and my neighbour.
You state that in the UK, services are open 24hrs for food, not all in my experience, for example after 21.00, Toddington n/bound shuts the restaurant, but s/bound stays open. Those that do keep going through the night, well it’s not quite routiers food is it? I mean how long have those sausages been sitting there on that hotplate :cry: :open_mouth: I’ve parked up at Thurrock services a few times and what I do there is order the fish and chips menu because I know that they will cook it there and then, you can actually see them out the back cooking the fish and the chips.
I can’t comment on the refueling charges for company cards here, our company uses DKV for emergencies, we have depots all over France with their own pumps so if we need some if we’re low, before returning to base that’s where we go.
I still have a UK bank account with money in it and a card and occasionally use it, very occasionally I must add because of the €/£ rate, but when I do, it comes up with a limit as to how much I can use, come to think of it, it does that on my French card. I know I’ve got enough in the account but it still says “limite €■■■” maybe it’s an anti fraud thing?..Pass!!

45

Gidders:
I have noticed that sometimes when refuelling in France and Spain,when you input your details into the card reader my bank is immediately debited with the maximum amount which can be charged,say €100.After filling I get my receipt for say €60 and my bank is then charged for this too.It could be up to a week later before my bank receives a credit for €100.This happens with both Spanish and British bank cards.
Do you ,or anyone else know about this or is it just banks extracting the urine?

Thats odd Gidders. I use Sabbadel and BBVA and both allow me to use anything up to the account in credit. Care needs to be taken with them though as no pin number is needed for till transactions (only cash machine), just a signature and if you watch no one ever bothers to check it, so very easy for anyone to use if you lose a card…

46

Gidders:
Pierrot.Thanks for your info about the 24hr.place near St.Dizier which I will pass on to any of my friends who need to know.Personally I always travel from either Roscoff,Ouistreham,Le Havre,Dieppe,Calais or Dunkirk to south of Alicante.I use different routes,none of which is any better than another occasionally with some peage stretches thrown in.
In the UK all our motorway services are open for food and fuel for 24hrs.Some roadside filling stations are open 24hrs.with a staff member safely locked inside but there are more and more automatic card operated pumps now.
I have noticed that sometimes when refuelling in France and Spain,when you input your details into the card reader my bank is immediately debited with the maximum amount which can be charged,say €100.After filling I get my receipt for say €60 and my bank is then charged for this too.It could be up to a week later before my bank receives a credit for €100.This happens with both Spanish and British bank cards.
Do you ,or anyone else know about this or is it just banks extracting the urine?

Pierrot’s suggestion of the24hr Resto on N10 is a good 'un. I’ve used that one. South bound parking is noisy but for sake of a few kliks use the other side?
Re cards on pumps, that seems strange. I’d be asking bank what’s happening and try avoiding those places.

Sent from my GT-S7275R using Tapatalk

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Pierrot.Sorry if I’ve misled you but all my driving now is by car.I boughta place near Alicante in 2004 and I now drive there and back about 3 or 4 times a year.1000 miles to the inch from Ouistreham.I passed my HGV test in 1968.In the 70s I did Middle East for a Dutch company for 5 or 6 years then operated my own truck all over Europe for 12 years until it wore me down.I lived and worked in Belgium for 11 years for Norbert on powder tankers.Good job.Couple of years on lift tanks out of Zeebrugge then returned to the UK for a couple of years bumbling around on agency work.Retired 3 years ago.I always liked driving around France,Spain and Germany particularly when the borders opened.No maut in those days.No worrying about migrants.
We may well have shared a boat sometime but I would be only one among the hordes of the clueless tourists annoying you.However,I am always happy to ease off and let a truck go.

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Gidders:
Pierrot.Sorry if I’ve misled you but all my driving now is by car.I boughta place near Alicante in 2004 and I now drive there and back about 3 or 4 times a year.1000 miles to the inch from Ouistreham.I passed my HGV test in 1968.In the 70s I did Middle East for a Dutch company for 5 or 6 years then operated my own truck all over Europe for 12 years until it wore me down.I lived and worked in Belgium for 11 years for Norbert on powder tankers.Good job.Couple of years on lift tanks out of Zeebrugge then returned to the UK for a couple of years bumbling around on agency work.Retired 3 years ago.I always liked driving around France,Spain and Germany particularly when the borders opened.No maut in those days.No worrying about migrants.
We may well have shared a boat sometime but I would be only one among the hordes of the clueless tourists annoying you.However,I am always happy to ease off and let a truck go.

Thanks for the reply , no mislead, me just presuming. :blush: You, like me, have certainly ventured in all sorts and seen lots.

We may well have shared a boat sometime but I would be only one among the hordes of the clueless tourists annoying you.

Gidders not all tourists are annoying and you are an ex trucker so I would presume that you respect other people.
Especially by you last comment:::

However,I am always happy to ease off and let a truck go.

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pierrot 14:
Now here’s the big bonus::::: We get :- well where I work anyway, and before Craig comes up with a comment, we at the STEF Vire depot are the paupers of the company :smiley: :smiley:

Breakfast allowance € 7.26
Lunch meal allowance €15.81
Evening meal allowance €15.81
Night out allowance €26.20
per week day, so if I do 5 days from 06.00 to 19.00 with nights out… I’ll let you get the calculator out :slight_smile:
Rates are higher on Saturday and more again if you are working Sunday/bank holidays
and even more if I go to the UK !

My average monthly wage is around €3000

Hey careful collègue, you’ll have me crying into my coffee here! If you’re the paupers of the firm you’d better not venture down this way as we must be the real vagagbonds!

IMHO I think anyone would be daft to come to France just for the money as they’ll never be satisfied compared to what they can earn in the UK . . . HOWEVER, there’s more to life here than just bottom line earnings. Working at our depot running afternoons and nights (back loading into the depot and doing trailer swaps) we’re taking home 2 to 2.2k per month, euros not pounds. That’s no nights out, night pay after 2100, tax-free meal allowance added after 0200. On top of that we get a 13th month bonus, half at Christmas, half at the start of the summer school holidays, plus a share of the profit that the depot has made: in recent years this has been around 2k, but this year it’ll be much less thanks to a variety of factors :unamused:

Add it all up and it’s not bad at, considering you’ve also got a healthcare package included, four weeks paid leave plus time off in lieu, and the option to retire at 57 provided you’ve worked a sufficient number of years/trimestres. And to put it into perspective, my mortgage is probably a third of what it’d be in the UK, and most services (water, electric, internet, phone) are considerably cheaper than Blighty.

You can forget about routiers on our work, we don’t have the time, unless you’re sitting at Niort depot waiting for a late arrival from Brittany when you might be able to nip over the road for a brisk scoff. Normally it"s 45min breaks and back on the road, sandwiches or a salad in the cab sat in a péage parking or on a supermarket car-park. Not trying to sound hard done by but I think it’s easy to get a stereotypical idea of something that bears little relation to reality. If you’re a distance driver then routiers are on the menu, but if you’re working on regional you’re rarely have the timr. On the other hand if you happen to eat back at base it’s a very convivial affair, all through January one driver per night brings a New Year’s cake for the evening meal and we’ll share it out along with a little dram of cider occasionally. The craic is good, and they never make any difference between nationalities, whether you’re a Morrocan, an Italian, a Brit or a Ukranian.

Viva la France eh!

Craig

50

pierrot 14:
I will translate it if you want

20minutes.fr/economie/emploi … re-trouver

If you live in France can you answer for one question.What life stile have France people.,When i go to some small France town to shoping or walking that day time all street empty,no people.What they do ■■?Saturday was in Macon go to hotel via all town that as well no people in the street.What is main different in life stile between British and France people■■?

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In one answer Andrejs, people in France still value family life.
Had one of our drivers here, that does England, he made a comment asking " Where do all these English people go to in their cars, the roads are always busy, it’s like 18 hours of rush rush rush. It starts at 5 and just never stops, not even around lunch time", roads here in France are a far distance from those in England. Where I live in the countryside, at the end of my lane is a quite busy departmental road, I can set my clock/watch at mid-day, there will be hardly be any vehicles using it right up to 14.00, then it’s back to normal. It’s the same in towns and villages, life doesn’t stop it just slows down.