These networks (pallet force, pallet line etc etc) who all have their hubs in the midlands, they offer a full uk coverage for their networks, but how can some companies get their trunks to the midlands and back in a shift within the legal time? Such as Glasgow or Edinburgh to Birmingham and back. In a 10 hour drive? I assume someone covers anything further north than that up to Inverness. Again, in a 10 hour drive? No chance. Then down to Cornwall…Cornwall to Birmingham and back in a 10 hour?
Do companies double man for this or is there some other trick up their sleeve?
My mates mate used to double man up from Cornwall to the hub. He soon jacked though because the bloke he was with insisted on smoking in the cab and was a general plum.
Socketset:
My mates mate used to double man up from Cornwall to the hub. He soon jacked though because the bloke he was with insisted on smoking in the cab and was a general plum.
Yeah, there’s my point. I couldn’t think of anything worse than double manning. One reason I went into lorry driving was because I actually like working on my own with no one bothering me, and not having to work with someone for a whole shift who won’t shut the ■■■■ up when you aren’t interested in what they have to say. Not a chance would I do a double man job.
cheekymonkey:
No. Just good old fashioned changeovers. Gets you 10hrs distance.
Yup totally agree that’s why we do changeovers at Carnforth truck stop with Bellshill depot. Bout the same time drive for each of us makes it easy and simple and the stuff arrives when it is needed.
cheekymonkey:
No. Just good old fashioned changeovers. Gets you 10hrs distance.
Yup totally agree that’s why we do changeovers at Carnforth truck stop with Bellshill depot. Bout the same time drive for each of us makes it easy and simple and the stuff arrives when it is needed.
I used to do change-overs at Charnock -Richards with a Greenford based driver and then back to the Scottish central belt for years and never was late or had problems .
Socketset:
My mates mate used to double man up from Cornwall to the hub. He soon jacked though because the bloke he was with insisted on smoking in the cab and was a general plum.
Yeah, there’s my point. I couldn’t think of anything worse than double manning. One reason I went into lorry driving was because I actually like working on my own with no one bothering me, and not having to work with someone for a whole shift who won’t shut the [zb] up when you aren’t interested in what they have to say. Not a chance would I do a double man job.
At the moment Im working for UPN (united pallet network) based in fradley. Drivers from Scotland, just swapping the trailers, going through unload and dropping the empty trailer ready for loading, for another driver. Usually theyre come with two drivers and for about 3/4 trucks. Last week I spoke with one of the drivers from Scotland (Glasgow Edinburgh depot) and he told me, start time 5PM, at HUB about 10PM - midnight, back to home around 6/7 in the morning and 5 days a week like that. No idea about Aberdeen/Inverness depot. Dont know exactly, how is with drivers from Ireland, when I come there on my shift (starts 6 PM) we have already 5/6 trailers from Ireland ready for unload, then they are staing for night at HUB. About 2/3AM, we start to load Irish ones first. For ■■■■■■■ and Cornwall, we usually loading them before midnight. its like, driver from Cornwall comes here for unload and load after and ready to drive. But, UPN is really stupid for me, we have X shed and Y shed. First you have to go through X shed (waiting before X) unload pallets for X, then for (waiting sometimes to 1.5 hour) Y shed. UPN will move and expand their business in about end of 2019 or at the beginning 2020, still local somewhere next to Lichfield. At the moment we have about 7k pallets a night.
Plenty of double manning going on. Each man probably doing 6 and a bit hours driving per night.
A few outbased as well, so employ 2 men in the Lockerbie to Penrith area, night man trunks outbase to the hub and back, day man does outbase to the yard, then some locals or yard work, then brings loaded decker back down for the night man again.
Advantage is that the truck is manned day and night for 2 wages, where as double manned efforts need a 3rd man to do deliveries.
Disadvantage is the rise of the saturday pallet, used to be quite rare but a lot more common now. Means the day man has to run up saturday morning and needs transport home and has to be careful of his hours.
I personally have nor seen any Scottish pallet network members doing change overs.
Sounds fantastic. Get to nearly live in a truck with another bloke. At least pallet network companies pay fantastically well to compensate you for such things.
DickyNick:
These networks (pallet force, pallet line etc etc) who all have their hubs in the midlands, they offer a full uk coverage for their networks, but how can some companies get their trunks to the midlands and back in a shift within the legal time? Such as Glasgow or Edinburgh to Birmingham and back. In a 10 hour drive? I assume someone covers anything further north than that up to Inverness. Again, in a 10 hour drive? No chance. Then down to Cornwall…Cornwall to Birmingham and back in a 10 hour?
Do companies double man for this or is there some other trick up their sleeve?
I’ve driven for Shakespere, Larkfield who used to run a double decker palletliner up to Fradley Park, if memory serves (Near Lichfield, off the A38)
The driving time was between 4 and 4.5 hours each way, so “just about do-able.”
I also drove for a firm (now gone) called Prospect Commercials who had an easier run, to the Fortec Depot behind Watford Gap Services (entrance to depot off the A5) This was only a 2.5 hour run.
I drove for S&S (tonbridge) who sent wagons up to Brum Airport, about a 3.5 hour trip.
…Then there was the worst one - “Wings” of Croydon Airport estate, who ran up to Burton on Trent (Palletforce?) which was something like 4hr20, meaning if you so much as got stuck behind a malfuctioning traffic light anywhere - you’d have to take a second 45 minute break…
What I also didn’t like about this last particular job - was the fact that I’d used all my “over 13 hour” shifts up by Wedneday night, AND both of my 9-10 hours driving time in one shift.
I dropped the Thursday and Friday shifts upon finishing Thursday morning, perplexed at how any full time driver could do this legally monday-friday every week■■?
I work on the class 2 side of a north west based palletline partner distributor. An the class1 night trunk runs are all double manned. One drives there. The other drives back.
I’ve been double manned a couple of times, an it’s not personally something I liked. Being stuck with a person you don’t get along with is a form of torture and can really drag a shift out.
Lynx at Pudsey (West Yorkshire) used to trunk everything down to their new hub at Nuneaton, even Scotch traffic.
I often wondered if and how the 10am Next Day stuff for Lerwick arrived at the customer on time.
Three hours drive from Glasgow, M6 Killington Lake, swap cards, water the wheels, down to Midlands, tip and reload, repeat back up M6 and no need to stop for a 45 minute break.
Our lot run their own network and have I think 10 depots from Southampton to Falkirk, all with single manned runs. However, some of it is partnered off to people like Palletforce, Hazchem, Palletline, S&S and a few others.
For the Scottish stuff there’s trailer swaps at Wigan depot which is doable in 4 hours roughly each way giving a little bit of leyway but it’s all single manned. For North and mid-Wales area we partner with a company from somewhere unpronounceable via Wigan. For South Wales the stuff goes to Gloucester or Cannock from memory and gets swapped over to another company trailer there.
Scotland to Falkirk is a trickier one, but that would go Falkirk → Wigan → Gloucester → Cornish partner from there (swapping from trailer to depot to another trailer each time or several trailers). It can be next day as long as it’s able to get into the Falkirk or Gloucester depots by 6pm and on the truck by about 8pm, else it’d be 48H.
Not worked for the partners and don’t think I would going by the chaos at the depots, but there’s an awful lot of putting onto one trailer, stripping the trailer at a depot and then reloading another trailer goes on. Doesn’t work quite as well for Palletforce as they seem to be all partners who’ll want to go to a single depot, pickup and go back home rather than transhipping the pallets between various depots, but it seems to work well for them especially when they don’t need to run the trucks.
Btw, if anyone thinks this sounds “green” - it ain’t when a pallet going 50 miles down the road takes a 250 mile tour via a partner due to capacity…just don’t tell Greenpeace!
