I have tried the ’ don’t give a toss ’ route Juddian, and I can’t do it mate.
A terrible affliction of having pride in what I do is the problem.
I didn’t say it would be easy and it will be utterly depressing as you plumb the depths, but once you get there you realise that you were just about the only bugger who gave a monkeys anyway, and so work becomes what it does for all the others, an inconvenience in the more important parts of your life.
eagerbeaver:
I have tried the ’ don’t give a toss ’ route Juddian, and I can’t do it mate.A terrible affliction of having pride in what I do is the problem.
I too have spent many long years in most types of this industry, tried the company tie route too, but the real deal is finding a smaller company pref on own account work, and doing what you got into driving for - driving!
It is easy to do the ‘don’t give a toss’ thing while actually giving a toss and having pride, just treat it like marriage. Some days you are the pimp and others you are the prostitute.
Learn to chill, drive two or three clicks below your limiter, finish your brew before you set off driving, let folks across the road and wave at people in coaches. Let the phone go to answerphone a few times, pull into services for a fake ■■■, snooze, sing and smile.
Are ADT (walking floors) your neck of the woods?
Is it purely day work your after?
They always seem a happy bunch of drivers.
(Saying that - I haven’t seen any of them for a couple of months)
I can just echo what the others have said bud.
Let’s face it the firms you have worked for Stobart, Downton etc, are enough to ■■■■ anybody off and drive them to suicide 
They don’t want personalities with initiative and standards, they want corporate yes men that toe the line.
(btw I’m speaking very broadly here, I have a couple of good mates at Stobarts, who are top lads, who were there since the old days before it was a yes men/robot gig)
Have you tried getting into own account stuff, where the haulage of goods is not the prime business model.
As an example, I once done work for a bed co in the Silentnight group years ago, good money good ts and cs, and proper pay structures, most days you were parked up after 5 as the shops were shut, and re.starting at 8.
There are all sorts of alternatives to general, so stop ■■■■ moaning, you are only allowed that level of depression after your first 10 yrs, not 2 and a half ffs 
Anyway…Cheer up it will soon be Christmas. 
What a way to go to work everyday you get up for work and you’re a happy go lucky guy with a bit of sense and as soon as you get to work you turn into a thick and dense person who don’t give a ■■■■ about the next 12 to 14 hours
What a way to live your life it must be so boring to just exist in your life it sounds like you people are a ball of fun not
I don’t think I could hack ‘General’, for all the reasons you’ve listed Beav and probably countless more. There’s more to life than that ■■■■.
I have only ever done farm machinery transport and I love it, not everyone’s cup of tea but it works for me.
nightline:
What a way to go to work everyday you get up for work and you’re a happy go lucky guy with a bit of sense and as soon as you get to work you turn into a thick and dense person who don’t give a [zb] about the next 12 to 14 hours
What a way to live your life it must be so boring to just exist in your life it sounds like you people are a ball of fun not
Nobody is listening to you, nobody cares what you think. Go away, drink bleach, curl up and die, seriously fella your bland and banal inputs are ignored and passed off as inconsequential, just like you are tbh.
Juddian:
There are different sides to the industry, there is good money for reasonable if unsocial hours, there is day and night work, there are specialist sectors within the industry where you won’t have to ever visit an RDC (my idea of hell) and where the people you meet don’t have scuffed knuckles from where they’ve dragging them along the floor.In larger companies you won’t get away from management of umpteen levels of incompetence (with the odd good one propping the whole bloody fort up dotted about), other workers who can be some of the best people around or the biggest arse holes going, but that goes for every single industry and organisation in the country.
Vehicles wrongly specified and left by unprincipled unhygenic idiots in a filthy damaged and neglected condition by steering wheel operatives is the unfortunate downside of shift type day working, you won’t get a decent lorry if you do and you look after it they will do their best to bent it scrape it and make it look like the rest, the problem being that these types now form an increasing number of the licence holders out there and the companies are eager to employ yet more of them, why?, don’t bloody ask me.
There is another way, it involves a few weeks or months of misery though whilst you adjust your set.
That is, you don’t fight them any more, you allow them to beat the pride you might have once had in the job out of you, you don’t care too bloody hoots if the engine goes bang, the lorry’s filthy so what, you couldn’t give a tuppeny fig if there’s a delay and the load is late or damaged or rejected or whatever…and the reason you do this is because thats how it is now, no one at the top of these companies cares, they bugger off home at 4pm on a Friday and they will not be available until 9am monday.
Its us, people like us who’ve been carrying on doing our best year in year out, taking a pride, trying to make the best out of it, and its time we bloody stopped, stop being efficient, stop thinking they don’t want you to think.
My mate has it sussed, but he’s been like this for years, he really doesn’t give a toss, he goes to work does what he has to and buggers off home and if the bloody place went up in flames he’d laugh his knob off.Find yourself a supermarket type job or similar Beaver, become a robot, just go to work go though the motions no matter how petty and stupid they might be, tick all their bloody boxes and bugger off home at the end of your shift with a happy heart.
It what they have made transport, its what they wanted, well they’ve bloody got it and i hope they enjoy it, i’ll join my mate in not giving a toss.
Try it mate, it’s quite liberating once you get used to it.
Alternatively try the car transporters.
Juddian=You are bang on with that post…So true!
the maoster:
nightline:
What a way to go to work everyday you get up for work and you’re a happy go lucky guy with a bit of sense and as soon as you get to work you turn into a thick and dense person who don’t give a [zb] about the next 12 to 14 hours
What a way to live your life it must be so boring to just exist in your life it sounds like you people are a ball of fun notNobody is listening to you, nobody cares what you think. Go away, drink bleach, curl up and die, seriously fella your bland and banal inputs are ignored and passed off as inconsequential, just like you are tbh.
That’s the perfect response when you hit a truth nerve I fully understand you are upset when you see it in words but i can’t gloss it up anymore than i have i think it’s having to admit it to yourself good luck with that bud
You need to get into a company like ours, admitadly its dead man’s shoes in our place as there are only four of us, some retirements coming up in three years though
Two possibly three nights out a week, every job different and lots of challenges (I picked up a flt at Hindley prison today and got out without being spotted… Try that 
)
You need to tax your noggin with a challenge now and then.
Its important to remember that you are not your job.Its work to live not live to work. Have a hobby or get more involved with your family.When you clock off thats it finished til you clock on again.
A truth nerve? Don’t make me laugh you imbecile. Most people here are sensible enough to ignore your childishly transparent postings, to my eternal shame I rose to your lacklustre bait and responded, obviously giving you the troll the attention you so desperately crave. Believe me on this though when I say that whenever you post something it is largely ignored, largely ignored primarily because you and your childlike utterings are inconsequential and therefore are not deemed worthy of a response.
I realise that you are probably lonely and desperate to be accepted by what you perceive to be your peer group, but trust me my friend you are looking for that acceptance in the wrong place here as quite frankly most members here care not one whit whether you live, die, prosper or flourish, honestly we don’t care. Go haunt somewhere else sad man.
alamcculloch:
Its important to remember that you are not your job.Its work to live not live to work. Have a hobby or get more involved with your family.When you clock off thats it finished til you clock on again.
Thats not so easy for lads on tramping whose lorry, and the road, is their life for 5 or more days and nights a week.
They’re still living basically the same as those of us that did it 40 years ago, yes they have the cab comforts and the electronics to keep in touch with home, but they no longer have the camaraderie and true warmth towards each other that lorry drivers had, almost a road family, years ago, they might only meet ■■■■■■■■■ at RDC’s, parking nazis and bloody ex sas 
security guards from leaving their homes on a mon morn to when they get home again on a fri night, they might be sleeping in ■■■■ stinking laybys if the cowboy who employs 'em won’t pay parking or trying to sleep in a MSA lorry park, which not only stinks of ■■■■ but with the noise of fridges and bloody night trunkers etc they might as well have pulled up on the bloody fast lane.
Its not all like that of course and if you have regular runs and learn your area you can find lovely little pokey places to park near to a pub that serves proper food…but you have to be in a job that pays enough so the night out pay becomes expenses not part of the wage, and therein lies the problem.
Your a Mon-Fri day man, so all the frustrations about dirty cabs & knob heads on the road aside I would guess that the root cause of your frustrations is hours. If you were parked up and off home after 9/10 hours everyday things would be dandy, but instead you have some fella in the office interfering with your home life giving you jobs timed 12 hours after your start time because it’s money above all else & ■■■■ the driver who has no life as a result. You struggle to summon the energy to argue with them day in, day out.
Am I warm?
Get a supermarket/in house number.
@ Maoster.
User control panel, friends or foes, enter the half wits name and hey presto, ignored.
Couldn’t agree more with your assessment mind.
In my mind a “Good job” is when you know exactly what you’re doing, where you’ll be, and where all the traffic pitfalls are likely to be in advance each and every day, able to plan forward.
A “Bad job” is when you constantly get chopped and changed around so you can’t so much as book a day out with the kids on your day off, because the day before, your shift will be moved so that you don’t finish until well into that day off. It drives me up the bloody wall what planners do all in the name of “Colleague has gone last minute sick, and we can’t get an agency in at such short notice”.
FFS I left agency for full time because I wanted to get away from that.
I’m sure it is possible to have it all:
Acceptable kit
Never-changing shifts
A life you can plan in advance
No requirement to carry “minimalist” colleagues
No need to do management’s job for them
Decent management that know what they are doing
Decent pay & conditions
Easy to stay out of trouble at.
Right now though, getting 5 out of these 8 is some feat. Still, I aspire to getting the full “Octodriver” rating sooner or later…
alamcculloch:
Its important to remember that you are not your job.Its work to live not live to work. Have a hobby or get more involved with your family.When you clock off thats it finished til you clock on again.
Even if you have a 9 to 5, 5 day a week job that’s still a lot of your life to spend ■■■■■■ off, plus the time thinking about being ■■■■■■ off before you go to work and getting over being ■■■■■■ off when you get back from work.
One of the worst job I ever did was normal hours, 5 day a week job, not a driving job either. Even though I had the hobbys, outside interests, couldn’t really say I was enjoying life though.
the maoster:
A truth nerve? Don’t make me laugh you imbecile. Most people here are sensible enough to ignore your childishly transparent postings, to my eternal shame I rose to your lacklustre bait and responded, obviously giving you the troll the attention you so desperately crave. Believe me on this though when I say that whenever you post something it is largely ignored, largely ignored primarily because you and your childlike utterings are inconsequential and therefore are not deemed worthy of a response.I realise that you are probably lonely and desperate to be accepted by what you perceive to be your peer group, but trust me my friend you are looking for that acceptance in the wrong place here as quite frankly most members here care not one whit whether you live, die, prosper or flourish, honestly we don’t care. Go haunt somewhere else sad man.
I would think the vains in your face are quite red now and you have probably broken the keyboard and thats because the truth always hurts look bud don’t panic if your only copin on now about how bad you have it because you read it here that’s ok let it all out you will feel a lot better for it just a little point you should not speak for anyone else here it makes you look like you know what your talking about and we all know that’s a hoot good luck coming down off whatever your taken
mr eagerbeaver the industry seems to be getting you down.DONT LET IT. click on the link listen and CHILL OUT…