A wee update!
I’m now 2 weeks into the job and loving it. My first week out was informative and fast paced, and it seems the sort of work I’d be happy to stick with for a very long time. There was an initial hiccup with my PPE which has now been sorted out, and a seemingly endless stack of paperwork, procedure, certificates, training records, disclosure forms and other necessities are filling my folder.
I’ve just returned from a week in Grangemouth doing my ADR, which I’m delighted to say was a first time pass. I’ve also done my speed awareness courses, ADR awareness certificate, Smith Driver Training and am now allowed to drive the tankers myself under supervision and get some proper experience ahead of my PDP. The local fuel stores seem friendly, clean and professional and I’m looking forward to how the rest of the job goes!
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Don’t get complacent, 100% concentration, ALL the time. It’s easy to ‘c ock up’ in the fuel job.
Speaking as an old retired fuel man who has had ‘an incident or two’ in a long and illustrious career. 
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Wee bit of an update on how things are going now I’m 2 months in…
I am now the second most senior tanker driver in our depot, with the most senior considering moving away within the next year or two. Feels a bit weird being in that position, but it’s manageable. We’ve had a lot of personnel changes, a new depot supervisor being the main one and he has no background in HGV/Fuel jobs so it’s all a bit new to him too. Our most senior driver and him don’t see eye to eye on many things, so somehow I have ended up falling rather nicely in to place.
Passed PDP a few weeks ago and now I’ve got a small amount of experience under my belt, I am enjoying the job even more. Summer months so mostly commercial and marine deliveries with the odd domestic where it falls into the route schedule. Working this way has been absolutely fine for me, as it’s giving me a good base of knowledge to work through regarding the meters and delivery systems (we’re running Dreamtec tablets in our trucks, found both that and the electric Haar meters a bit daunting at first in comparison to the manual foot valve toggles I’d first learned on but it seems second nature now) without c*cking it up too much on a domestic job with a customer hanging over your shoulder.
Our depot has enough trucks and a relative lack of drivers, so each driver gets his own truck and usually take turns in the little 4 wheeler getting to the REALLY rural places. Our other trucks are Scania P320’s (a 13 plate, 18 plate and a 22 plate next gen XT pack), pretty standard fare and I’m in the 23 plate P360, which has rear steer and for some reason nobody else seems to like. It’s a good running truck and has it’s quirks like the rest of 'em, but I find it one of the nicer ones to use. 5 pots (5k, 2.5k, 5k, 2.5k, 5k), instead of the 4 (3k, 5k, 5k, 6k) the others have. The load seems better distributed on mine and you’ve more choice of where the product can be loaded, which is never a bad thing and is certainly handy for trips to the outlying isles on the ferries!
Anyway, hope you’ll excuse the notification for a bloke rambling to himself. The wife’s sick of hearing about kero now and I’ve nobody else to blab to, so I’ll blab to myself here instead. Picture attached taken during some domestics up the north end of the island at Eshaness.
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what are the winters like there.
The local well known Heavy Recovery specialist has a facebook page featuring some of the recent jobs they have been called out to attend. A significant proportion of posts feature deliveries to remote, narrow, twisty country locations where something has gone wrong for vehicles like rigid tankers and dustcarts which have to gain access along unsuitable lanes or tracks; often involving loss of traction, bogged or the surface has collapsed.
about the only people that could come rescue him where he is i suspect is the raf. I am assuming he doesnt work on the mainland and got the ferry there of course.
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Not great, but not bad either. Usually a bit of snow, certain areas are known to be icy and the more rural locations will scarcely see a gritter, but that’s fine. Less enjoyable in a rear wheel steer mind you 
Those are the usual suspects, I previously worked road resurfacing and gritting in the winter and it’s amazing how quickly things can go wrong even when you are paying attention. Most of the roads up here are in decent fettle but some are a bit dicey at best. Narrow lanes and drives leading to properties are the worst.
Mainland Shetland that is We have the coastguard if things go REALLY Pete Tong. Other than that there’s not much in the way of local crane hires so I’ll just try to stay out of ditches as best I can!
I meant mainland as in scotland i wasnt comfortable saying you lived in Shetland.
I know someone that was a teacher up there. But they couldnt hack all the deaths of their friends that were oil workers. Do the oil companies not have heavy equipment you can borrow if you get stuck.
In all fairness that’s not wrong either, I lived about as far north as you could get without getting wet for my entire life before moving up here a few months ago.
Don’t think there’s as much of that these days, much of that would have been back when the oil workers and offshore boys still lived hard, a lot of deaths occurred from that alone. Sullom Voe is quite an impressive operation and is VERY health and safety conscious these days, same with most offshore folk to be fair. Think Sullom and maybe another local company would likely have a crane or two fit for lifting a truck out if it came to it, I’d very much imagine a lot of places you’d struggle to get a crane to so would likely be a farmer with a tractor job.
from memory i think they said that a lot of their friends were killed by helicopter accidents either taking them to the rig or back home.
