Always struggled with this one.
I mean…what’s the thought process?
You’re loaded
I’m obviously empty,but you think you’re gonna be quicker away(from a standing start)than me 
Same as when you come out of the roadworks.
Hit the national speed limit sign…and they’re straight out for the overtake.
How do they know what my set cruising speed is?
commonrail:
Same as when you come out of the roadworks.
Hit the national speed limit sign…and they’re straight out for the overtake.
How do they know what my set cruising speed is?
Yep, or the classic mostly from the likes of GIST/DPD (other trunking networks are available 
)etc etc - pull out to overtake the empty flatbed just before the bottom of a big hill. There’s not even an excuse of “I thought it was loaded”. 
Maoster - Were you comfortable with the DAF’s minimum following distance? I used to find the maximum was “a bit tight” for comfort 
slowlane:
Maoster - Were you comfortable with the DAF’s minimum following distance? I used to find the maximum was “a bit tight” for comfort
Absolutely comfortable mate, my eyes aren’t what they used to be so when the big blur becomes a lorry I’m comfortable! 
. Joking aside, I was comfortable with that gap at 40mph or less, any faster and I’d obviously require a larger gap.
I will say this … After 48 years driving a manual gearbox there is a rumour that I may be getting an automatic, the bone pain I get from this chemo will take a slight relief if it actually happens, in the 12 years working for this company I have only ever seen one auto box and that was on an owner driver truck, so he paid more.
all this gearbox talk again ,it’s not just the gearbox that some drivers struggle with it’s the bloody twin plate ceramic clutch not helping things ! At least fodens had organic ones .
Punchy Dan:
all this gearbox talk again ,it’s not just the gearbox that some drivers struggle with it’s the bloody twin plate ceramic clutch not helping things ! At least fodens had organic ones .
The environment, think of the children and kittens being poisoned by all that nasty noxious dust spewing from the bellhousing each gear change. How did we all make it this far in life with this dangerous old tech… 
commonrail:
Always struggled with this one.
I mean…what’s the thought process?
You’re loaded
I’m obviously empty,but you think you’re gonna be quicker away(from a standing start)than me
The answer to the thought process question is simple: There isn’t one, because it comes back to the point that these idiots are car drivers with a HGV and do not understand that their approach needs to differ when in a truck.
the maoster:
It was a 65 plate Franglais so basically the same as yours I’d imagine. I thought that on the roadworks experiment it performed quite well tbh. Although I only did around 400 miles over two days in it, perhaps living with it permanently might prove tiresome.I set the gap to minimum as I found it to be too intrusive if set any higher. It did give me one “false” harsh braking though when the car in front was leaving via a slip road after overtaking me; I’d done the usual mental calculations and deemed that I didn’t need to come off the gas, but oh no, the truck wasn’t having any of that! Apart from that one occasion I was quite impressed overall.
That unfortunately is a big flaw in the system i think.I’ve had my Daf(66 plate).With all the wizardry on it for a year and half now.I love the truck.But that sensor is a pain for picking up vehicles that are slowing on slip roads.Thats something that really needs sorting out.
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TiredAndEmotional:
gingerfold:
These are three of the stand-out examples of bad driving that I witnessed in a car journey of 400 miles round trip a couple of weeks ago. (Three in 400 miles is probably quite good, but unfortunately they were all by artic drivers). These incidents had nothing at all to do with the modernity, or otherwise, of the vehicles, but they were the result of bad, impatient, or inconsiderate driving.
M6 southbound through the Cheshire section roadworks, speed limit 50 mph. I was in the middle lane keeping up with the traffic flow, quite a gap behind me but in my mirror I saw a rapidly approaching Volvo FH. Obviously the speed limit didn’t apply to him (or her). At the first opportunity I pulled into the nearside lane as I didn’t want that impatient driver on my back bumper. Sure enough the van he was now behind didn’t move so the Volvo subjected it to tailgating, flashing headlights, and blaring horn. The Volvo was on the Nynas contract operated by Harry Lawson of Broughty Ferry, a company I have known for 40 years and that I have always had respect for.
M6 southbound through the roadworks near Corley Services, 50 mph speed limit. I was in the middle lane slowly overtaking an Italian registered artic when just as I passed him he started to speed up and undertook me. Anticipating what his next move would be I eased off and started to create a gap. Sure enough, without any indicator he pulled out in front of me into the middle lane. A less experienced driver than me not aware of what was happening could easily have been in an accident.
Slip junction of the M60 where it comes onto the A666 / M61 split. This has always been a tricky junction since it opened 45 years ago when traffic volumes were nothing like they are today. There are 4 converging lanes with traffic crossing, or trying to cross, lanes. I was in the nearside lane of the slip approach from the M60, just coming out of the 50 mph limit when an artic moved out from behind me to take the outer lane. As we got into the 4 lane section he cut across me to get into the nearside lane of the M61, so effectively using all 4 lanes and causing other road users, me included, to either brake or take evasive action. The artic never slowed down at all; an 18 plate white Volvo with a Whistl trailer. This was the most dangerous piece of driving of them all, he could easily have taken out several cars and other LGVs.
Then today I have had a complaint about one of my drivers acting in identical fashion to (1) above. He is a driver with 30 years of experience.
I wouldn’t be acting on any complaint from the general public without some proper verification of any alleged incident. Rarely a day goes by without one of those idiots taking it upon themselves to be deliberately obstructive or antagonistic towards a truck driver just going about his business. Get cameras fitted if you’re concerned about the behaviour of any of your drivers, there’s haters out there.
All our vehicles have dash cams and driver facing cameras, and like you say there are two sides to every complaint that’s made against a driver. I haven’t had any problems with drivers accepting cameras in the cab, they accept that they can be there for their own protection, as has already been proved on one occasion when a complaint against a driver turned out to be completely malicious.
eagerbeaver:
Punchy Dan:
Olog Hai:
It’s painfully obvious that the standard of many lorry drivers is now no better than the average clown in a car. The reason for that is simple: They are car drivers, and they have somehow fluked their way into passing a couple of extra tests. No more, no less.Them and their aggressive tailgating, their use of their vehicle as a weapon to intimidate others and their failure to grasp that a lorry should not be driven in the same manner as a car makes them serious accidents waiting to happen. The only reason we don’t see even more multi-hour motorway closures as a result of collisions involving trucks is thanks to those drivers out there who do have the ability to look further than five yards ahead of them and are able to think on behalf of the ever-growing bell-end element.
Then again, it’s hardly a surprise. Combine wages that are generally dreadful with an expectation of 60+ hours per week, a lack of any kind of entrance barrier, and trucks that as good as drive themselves, and it’s hardly a surprise that the job is now infested with bottom-of-the-barrel half-wits who would struggle to drive a greasy stick up a dog’s arse. I’m not against making the job easier by using automated gearboxes, high-power engines, steering that you can turn with one finger and all the anti-collision stuff that has appeared recently, but when it’s combined with all of the above, the results aren’t difficult to work out. That’s what we are seeing now.
gingerfold:
I was in the middle lane slowly overtaking an Italian registered artic when…Slowly overtaking an LHD artic on a motorway in a car is crazy behaviour. Either get past him quickly and out of his way, or hang back for the same reason until you can scoot past. Doing anything else is asking for trouble.
Being as Gf was in a 50 mph section he couldn’t do much else.
Yes he could. As rightly said-get past him with a quick press of the throttle.
AVERAGE speed limit of 50 mph. 5 seconds of 55-60 mph won’t be a problem (assuming sufficient space in front to do so).
Your comment in brackets is correct. The outside lane was full, the vehicle in front was doing the same speed as me, the foreigner on my inside suddenly accelerated, so I dropped back when I anticipated what he was going to do. It’s interesting that different opinions have been made about that particular situation I was in, drivers do react in various ways to any given incident, split-second decisions and all that, hopefully we make the correct decision at the time, but sometimes it’s the wrong decision with all the potential consequences of that.
gingerfold:
TiredAndEmotional:
gingerfold:
All our vehicles have dash cams and driver facing cameras, and like you say there are two sides to every complaint that’s made against a driver. I haven’t had any problems with drivers accepting cameras in the cab, they accept that they can be there for their own protection, as has already been proved on one occasion when a complaint against a driver turned out to be completely malicious.
No union presumably?
I’ve heard the propaganda before how driver facing cameras are there for the driver’s protection too, didn’t convince me then and doesn’t now.
I’m more than happy with twenty cameras around the outside and two more on the roof if you want, but the camera in my face is my own personal line in the sand, if others are too scared to object (easy to single drivers out one at a time where there is no union worthy of its name) that’s up to them, for me it isn’t going to happen.
Be assured there are more of us out there, shall we say the sort of staff you can rely on, who object to having their very own personal surveillance, gulag style, than there are the other sort.
Some companies have been forced into driver facing cameras because they’ve employed cheap as chips chumps, and the results have been exactly as anyone with an ounce of common could predict, but there are countless thousands of competent drivers still who somehow manage, some for decades (lifetimes in many cases), to go through their driving years without ever needing to be spied on with their own personal audio equipped cctv, drivers whose work is never questioned because it doesn’t need to be, yet because the bar has been lowered and companies reaped what they sowed in spades, everyone must be assumed to be at idiot level needing to be watched.
As for malicious reports, i would hope that a company would know its staff well enough to trust them, if that isn’t the case why employ them at all when there’s apparently (or how some operators seem to believe) untold numbers of A1 top class drivers out there itching to be employed by them, the truth of course is entirely the opposite but still companies can’t help themselves alienating their core staff.
Despite what you may think i have seen the results over the years when companies can’t just bloody leave things alone, 3 different very good jobs i’ve had they either tried to change the shift patterns which worked (to get more days/nights for the same pay), or in one case tried to change the operation completely when new top brass (who knew the square root of sod all about car transportation) came on the scene…getting shot of the experienced top brass who made a huge success of the company for years.
Invariably many of the staff who can find good jobs took the redundancy or buggered off anyway when the writing was on the wall.
In many cases i’ve met up with the managers months and sometimes years after, and every time they’ve said they regretted what was done by the know alls and wish they could have turned the clock back, because they had reliable competent core staff and they found that those umpteen A1 potentials in the piles of applications forms turned out to be anything but or the new operating system didn’t bloody work and many other problems.
What higher management always fail to realise, is that if they the managers all failed to turn up for work for a day week month the job would still go on because there is always a ■■■■■■■■■ of conscientious worker bees who know what must be and just get on with it.
If those core reliable worker bees don’t appear nothing gets done, period.
Thank the good Lord my time at the wheel is nearly over.
gingerfold:
All our vehicles have dash cams and driver facing cameras, and like you say there are two sides to every complaint that’s made against a driver. I haven’t had any problems with drivers accepting cameras in the cab, they accept that they can be there for their own protection, as has already been proved on one occasion when a complaint against a driver turned out to be completely malicious.
All I can say is that it sounds like you have the usual cross section of gullible and subservient drivers.
We have the 'event type’driver facing cameras that only (allegedlly ) record if harsh braking and/or accident situation occurs.
As Juddian pointed out they aint going to stop any bad driving whatsoever just record an array of gormless face contortions just before one of these numpties hit a bridge or whatever.
I personally take it as an insult to my professionalism as a driver, so mine is strategically covered.
Also don’t give me all the official co. line horse crap that they are ‘‘There to protect the driver’s interests’’ we both know they are not…end of.
They are there purely to catch you out… sipping a coffee, eating a sarnie, or scratching your arse, or more seriously for the d/head contingent…using non hands free phones. 
Sure, you will get the odd occasion where a driver can clear himself, but for every one case as such, there are dozens of the other examples I pointed out, which imo.are trivial…apart from of course the phones.
My biggest thing with them is this potential scenario…
You are a bit tired one morning, do a ■■■■ big yawn, then ten seconds later no fault of your own, some knob pulls out in front of you, ends up under your front axle, and you find yourself on a dangerous driving charge… for driving under fatigue. 
I’m sure there are many more examples that could and will be derogatory towards the driver.
So basically mate if you (and your drivers) are sold on the idea of driver facing cameras and all the official line ■■■■■■■■ to justify them…then I aint.
Btw…how do you know your drivers are happy with and fully accept them ?
They must be the only group of drivers that I’ve heard do all 100%.
If I know most UK drivers today they will belly ache amongst themselves about perceived injusticies but say absolute Jack ■■■■ to the guy they ought to be, and just bend over, and ■■■■ it up, leaving the few of us who do speak up to suffer because of the majority.
Robroy, why are you so angry with me? I’m only attempting to have a reasonable discussion, there’s no need to rant at me. All I will say in response is that in a 50 years working life I have done every job in transport from changing wheels to driving and managing. So do I know the job and my drivers…you bet I do mate.
And to Juddian, I’ve managed drivers in a very strong unionised company, as well as non-union companies. When I left the former the Branch Secretary came up to me on my last day and said to me…“we’ve had our disagreements and arguments, but you always listened and you were fair”. If when I do finally call it a day in this industry of ours and my epitaph is to be one of listening and being fair, then I’ll settle for that.
gingerfold:
Robroy, why are you so angry with me? I’m only attempting to have a reasonable discussion, there’s no need to rant at me. All I will say in response is that in a 50 years working life I have done every job in transport from changing wheels to driving and managing. So do I know the job and my drivers…you bet I do mate.
I know, I aint angry at all with you personally…and rant??
(Btw…what’s the relavance of your career details to this discussion, I too have done all that over the years, including employing drivers… so what’s your point exactly?)
I just get sick of all the crap in this job today, and those in management thinking ALL drivers are as thick as pig ■■■■, and can not see the true agendas of this type of modern management type bs, …while trying to pull the wool over our eyes, with policies and schemes, solely designed to keep us in check, and to watch and monitor us constantly while trying to do our jobs.
Hope that explains.
robroy:
I just get sick of all the crap in this job today, and those in management thinking ALL drivers are as thick as pig [zb], and can not see the true agendas of this type of modern management type bs, …while trying to pull the wool over our eyes, with policies and schemes, solely designed to keep us in check, and to watch and monitor us constantly while trying to do our jobs.
Hope that explains.
That goes back to the introduction of tachographs.IE plenty who believe they are there to stop tired drivers running off the road.As opposed to there to stop and detect drivers taking ‘unofficial’ or ‘extended’ breaks or starting ‘late’ and finishing ‘early’ .Thereby effectively enforcing 13-15 hour shifts and minimising time spent on break.
There have always been drivers that range from very good to very bad and everything inbetween. What kind of gear changing device they had made no difference.
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robroy:
gingerfold:
Robroy, why are you so angry with me? I’m only attempting to have a reasonable discussion, there’s no need to rant at me. All I will say in response is that in a 50 years working life I have done every job in transport from changing wheels to driving and managing. So do I know the job and my drivers…you bet I do mate.I know, I aint angry at all with you personally…and rant??
(Btw…what’s the relavance of your career details to this discussion, I too have done all that over the years, including employing drivers… so what’s your point exactly?)
I just get sick of all the crap in this job today, and those in management thinking ALL drivers are as thick as pig [zb], and can not see the true agendas of this type of modern management type bs, …while trying to pull the wool over our eyes, with policies and schemes, solely designed to keep us in check, and to watch and monitor us constantly while trying to do our jobs.
Hope that explains.
If it’s any help, as management I get fed up of all the crap too. The bullshine paperwork we have to do for no tangible reason is ridiculous. It gets very close some days to thinking I can’t put up with it anymore.
I don’t encounter gingerfold often, but the few posts I have read of his, I suspect he runs a bit like me, knows his staff, values them, has a relationship with them. I took his career history to explain that he is different to a 25 year old with a degree in transport management, specialising in reverse logistics.
We don’t have driver facing cameras and zero intention of getting them. Just one more thing on a to do list.
albion:
robroy:
gingerfold:
Robroy, why are you so angry with me? I’m only attempting to have a reasonable discussion, there’s no need to rant at me. All I will say in response is that in a 50 years working life I have done every job in transport from changing wheels to driving and managing. So do I know the job and my drivers…you bet I do mate.I know, I aint angry at all with you personally…and rant??
(Btw…what’s the relavance of your career details to this discussion, I too have done all that over the years, including employing drivers… so what’s your point exactly?)
I just get sick of all the crap in this job today, and those in management thinking ALL drivers are as thick as pig [zb], and can not see the true agendas of this type of modern management type bs, …while trying to pull the wool over our eyes, with policies and schemes, solely designed to keep us in check, and to watch and monitor us constantly while trying to do our jobs.
Hope that explains.If it’s any help, as management I get fed up of all the crap too. The bullshine paperwork we have to do for no tangible reason is ridiculous. It gets very close some days to thinking I can’t put up with it anymore.
I don’t encounter gingerfold often, but the few posts I have read of his, I suspect he runs a bit like me, knows his staff, values them, has a relationship with them. I took his career history to explain that he is different to a 25 year old with a degree in transport management, specialising in reverse logistics.
We don’t have driver facing cameras and zero intention of getting them. Just one more thing on a to do list.
Yeh,.well.I know nothing about him or his firm, he could be the best or worst boss in the game for all I know. I just got a bit annoyed by his claim that he had ‘‘no problems introducing driver facing cameras’’ to his staff.
I mean, come on… who tf in their right mind wants, (or even accepts without any question ) a bloody camera facing them , unless as I said, they were terminally gullible, brainwashed, or totally switched off to the genuine reason for it.
It is really amusing how some people think that an auto box has made the job easier and that useless drivers are now flocking in their drones because of it. The job has never been hard to begin with, only the conditions have altered. You do not or have never had to go to University or college to drive a lorry. Any one with half a brain can drive a manual truck and an auto makes it even easier. Driving and drivers are not judged on if they can drive a manual gear box or not, they don’t have to nowadays. That doesn’t have any relevance or bearing on a drivers ability. Trunking up and down a motorway all day is what has made drivers useless along with being micro managed. You may as well say that power steering has had an input into dumbing the job down. The fact of the matter is that driving is easy and anyone with no qualifications can do it. It attracts this type of person as you can do twice the hours everyone else works in a week and they see this as a good option to earn more money. That’s the main problem, not auto boxes.