Well as some of you may have seen from other posts I managed to land myself at Bocm Pauls at Selby. Been there about 4 weeks now and thought i w would just write down a few of my experiences as i make the transition from “trolley driver” to bulk blower driver.
The job itself is basically delivering chicken and pig feed to farms 2 days a week i drive a Daf Cf on a 54 plate and the other 2 i get to drive a V reg erf 8 wheeler.
on farm you can be blowing into as many as five or six bins per load and these vary in time according to the distance and the complexity of the blow. usually work as a guide at around 2-3 mins per tonne. Some of the sites you also have to spary all the wheels and wear overboots and coveralls to prevent the spread of disease from farm to farm… you luck a right donk wearing all that get up i can tell you!!
We cover all sites from little “small holdings” to some of the larger amc and padley breeder sites with some padleys sites having about 250,000 chickens on em!!
The Farms are usually in the middle of nowhere as you would expect and usually involves trundling down long narrow single track roads for great lengths of time. And when you get to the end your not exactly blessed with loads of room! the good point is though instead of pedestrians and cars its buildings and tractors so they cant watch you make a balls up of it!!
a lot of the deliveries are “unmanned” so basically you arrive at a farm do your delivery and leave without seeing anyone just leave the delivery notes by the bin/silo
I’m also amazed by the large variety of feed and its very important that you get the right product in the right bin as some as additives and “special” stuff in it that could be harmful to other animals etc And also the price of the stuff at nearly £1000 a tonne for the good stuff is unbelievable!!
After you have done the first deliveries of the day its back to the mill to reload and its down to you to load. so basically its all about getting the right compartment of the trailer (out of 5) under the right spout in the mill and making sure you don’t overfill it etc and you’ve loaded it in the correct order to get it off at the other end.
The artic trailers carry a load of approx 27t and i guess that is my biggest difference in this job running around at 44t is ALOT different to a half full supermarket trolley. most of the trailers have rear stear APART from mine!! and all have lift axles on the trailer which is a bit of a nightmare on mine as it lifts automatically and you cant drop it and it makes the trailer really “cut in” with the axle up were as on the others with a rear steer it helps!
I think i have got the job just at the right time as i can see it been a bit of a bad job in winter but i should be a bit more used to it by then and it shouldn’t put me off as much.
The 8 wheeler i drive two days as the Eaton twin splitter so had a couple of interesting days with that but vie now got that hang of it a bit more and have stopped playing so many tunes!!
All in all its a good job with excellent shifts 4 days on a three week rolling rota and no Sundays basically every three weeks i get 5 days off on the bounce!
really having fun with a bit of off roading required on some farms and touch wood not turned down any wrong country lanes yet but im sure my time will come…
Well Done Bones, I’m glad you’re liking your new position.