Well, in the 3 days of this week I have had more adventures than I thought containers would provide!
What have I learned?
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When your boss says he’ll call you back in 5 minutes, then you chase him 15 mins later or you’ll be waiting for over an hour.
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When faced with a potential difficult situation, take your time and appraise the situation. I had to choose between 2 idential looking side streets to turn down in a residential estate in Blackburn (yes residential!) so stopped the wagon, and walked across to them (I didn’t want to reject the first one, go for the second and then risk having to reverse back up a steep hill) - sure enough the first turning had 2 cars down in parked in a chicane that would have been tight for a transit but turn 2 was nice and open
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Assert yourself. Today the traffic manager told me that I definately had enough tacho time to do a local run; I told him I hadn’t so when he tried to argue I said ‘got a pen?’ he had, and I whipped the tacho out and told him precisely what I had driven already. He cancelled or postponed the drop.
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Other drivers will help. In the docks, a driver got out his wagon and asked me if I was new and I said yes, and he gave me 2 handy hints (dock related - dont ask too boring lol)
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The best laid plans can be hijacked easily. Yesterday I had my box ready all lovely to go to Blackburn, and when I got there nice easy relaxed drive no rushing and on time cus I left at 7am, the warehouse was boarded up! It took the shipper 2.5 hours to get back with a mobile number for me to ring; then when I got to the new place it took almost 2 hours to unload as I had to handtruck 30 pallets of cocacola off with the forklift driver.
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Some people will try to wind you up. Normally office types talking down to you, I dont let it get to me - after all I am paid to be a ‘driver’ not paid for the stress of other peoples errors.
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Cockups do occur. Got today’s box from the docks last night, and noticed a discepency in the paperwork (ie roadnote = Liverpool, stock list = boston lincs), reported it to my boss, and the shipper - the shipper said ‘liverpool’ so off I went, and it should have gone to Boston. Not my problem (this could be a 6) cat. too lol), so it didn’t bother me; the only ■■■■■■ was the traffic jams on the M62 and M180 due to accidents adding 2 hours to the journey total
Certain things definatley start to fall into place; I am finding certain junctions easier to deal with for sure. Also turning in tight spots is getting easier.
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Night/Dark driving is a pain in the backside cus u can’t see the rearmost wheels for turning corners and so end up taking bigger sweeps to make sure!
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The new guy gets the slowest truck (53mph limited grr lol)