harry:
Before tachos on international runs I would start work at 0800 &after pit stops etc. I would finish around 2400 & slept good ,every day was the same. Post tachos you started on days & ended up on nights feeling wrecked because of erratic sleep patterns. No Tachos & drivers discretion was a healthier way to live. If you had a big social function on the road you took the next day off with the hangover nothing was said ,the job got done & everybody happy.Post tacho the customer is screaming for the load & you are parked in a crummy lay by on a forced break. They call it progress?
Although i know the answer. Could you let the whiter than white brigade know if it was more or less dangerous on pre tacho haulage?
harry:
Before tachos on international runs I would start work at 0800 &after pit stops etc. I would finish around 2400 & slept good ,every day was the same. Post tachos you started on days & ended up on nights feeling wrecked because of erratic sleep patterns. No Tachos & drivers discretion was a healthier way to live. If you had a big social function on the road you took the next day off with the hangover nothing was said ,the job got done & everybody happy.Post tacho the customer is screaming for the load & you are parked in a crummy lay by on a forced break. They call it progress?
I’m in full agreement here. For the time being we’re still on paper log books here and its the same way, the driver does it his way and despite being away for weeks at a time, often doing 1000-1200km per day, because we have flexibility with what we log and when we log it, we’re generally much less stressed and better rested. Most British drivers dont want anything like that though because they’re afraid they’ll be asked to do more and work is a bad thing in Britain. I can see their point in a sense, if we had paper logs in the UK again then no doubt companies would be taking the pish left right and centre but at the same time I think the current system is at the other extreme with its complete control and forcing drivers to park in dangerous locations or especially those with no facilities. My digestive system and bowels for example dont shut down for 11 hours after operating for 13 hours so the over zealous regulations and complete lack of proper parking facilties can only result in one thing, namely drivers being forced to live like farm yard animals go crap in to carrier bags or behind layby/industrial estate hedges. If its a choice between either extremes I for one would chose the lack of regulation that paper log books allow for, rather than the total regulation that is the current status quo. I dont believe any government has business restricting my movement quite that much and at the very least we should be able to bobtail off card to obtain food, toilet and washing facilities. Even though we can bend the book as much as we so like here, we’re still allowed to legally bobtail 75km per 24 hours in Canada and log it as such, and despite that we’re not all crashing off the road, killing people wives and kids and being a general menace to society and and not only that, but thats after we’ve driven our legally allowed 13 hours per day so lets not pretend that botailing for 20 or 30 minutes once in a while in Britani is in the sligtest bit dangerous after a mere 9 hours driving. Thats my opinion any way.
I used to know the drivers that would do a one hitter from the French ports to Sunbilla near Pamplona, head down, then craic on with a one hitter to Malaga or the Valencia area and do the same going back, all on the fuse or the wire, they did not die and crash, and most of the time would have been over the drink drive limit getting on and off the ferry trips and when they stopped for the night.
To have done it legally would have daily rest at Bordeaux, or south of there,the Saint Malo port meant you could get down further.
If stopped with the wire/fuse an offer of coffee money settled the bill at the road side, but most had a secret switch hidden in the cab, some in the switches on the dash or the other crafty places.
The problem was if a driver did Europe legally, all the warehouses and packing houses got so used to drivers doing it on the wire that they thought that was how long the journey really took.
Big firms would book me on a ferry and expect that, when you told them it can not be done legally, they would just laugh and say well such and such can do it, why can`t you?
It was common then to load huge heavy unstable marble stone A frames, and fill the trailer space with groupage, or have ceramic tiles on the floor,groupage on top with a dodgy CMR with a false weight on it.
alte hase:
Some of the questions posted on TNUK are indicative of how stressed out the workforce has become ,‘‘I’ve gone 3 minutes over four and half hours, will I be ok?’’, replies such as, '‘you’ll be ok, as long as you dont make a regular thing of it, and write down your reason for doing it on a printout’!, a regular thing of it?, three minutes over?, seig heil! seig heil!,
Thats the worst thing about driving a truck in the UK/Europe, all this panic and carry on about something as pathetic as a few minutes here or there. I think its a terrible way to live, having to account for each and every minute and having to stay within the silly routine that the tacho insists that you do and then worry about prosecution when you accidentally go over for whatever reason. Anyone would think that with all this stopping and being still that is required that we’d actually have somewhere suitable to do this stopping, rather than the endless amounts of retail parks that once were truckstops and now prevent the HGV menace from parking up near their shops and the ordinary people who shop there.
In the early days I thought that tachos would protect the driver from greedy boss’s excessive demands.
But it soon became clear that they were being used as a tool by various sections of authority to penalise the driver & raise huge sums of money for transit countries. They treated the long distance driver as the enemy? Safety didn’t improve because as stated by the above poster the human body had to adapt to the machines timetable, instead of the machine obeying the drivers natural rhythm ,eg;some drivers have more stamina than others,some need more sleep,etc. With tacho rules the whole EU driver force are jammed into rigid time slot cages which serves no one except the armies of overpaid parasites that roam the highways & byways of today’s EU Disney
H&S circus. They routinely bite the hand that feeds them &retire early on wonderful pensions paid for by all the working men that did 15mins over the daily limit. You ask if things are safer now? Many accidents in the old days were caused by drivers asleep at the wheel. It’s the same today because of drivers parking up, fully awake & having to try to sleep in the middle of the day then kicking off at midnight when they are ready for bed.
The thing that worries me is that this is just the beginning . I feel sorry for all the youngsters who’ve never experienced the freedom & beauty of the open road. I can see a time coming when trucks & drivers are operated by the same crowd that are now running the wonderful drones. It won’t be spy-in-the-cab it will be fat uniformed controller in the cab.
Running bent? The EU has designed a system where the whole transport industry is guilty of running bent thru intricate Kafka-esque rules & regs.
harry:
In the early days I thought that tachos would protect the driver from greedy boss’s excessive demands.
But it soon became clear that they were being used as a tool by various sections of authority to penalise the driver & raise huge sums of money for transit countries. They treated the long distance driver as the enemy? Safety didn’t improve because as stated by the above poster the human body had to adapt to the machines timetable, instead of the machine obeying the drivers natural rhythm ,eg;some drivers have more stamina than others,some need more sleep,etc. With tacho rules the whole EU driver force are jammed into rigid time slot cages which serves no one except the armies of overpaid parasites that roam the highways & byways of today’s EU Disney
H&S circus. They routinely bite the hand that feeds them &retire early on wonderful pensions paid for by all the working men that did 15mins over the daily limit. You ask if things are safer now? Many accidents in the old days were caused by drivers asleep at the wheel. It’s the same today because of drivers parking up, fully awake & having to try to sleep in the middle of the day then kicking off at midnight when they are ready for bed.
The thing that worries me is that this is just the beginning . I feel sorry for all the youngsters who’ve never experienced the freedom & beauty of the open road. I can see a time coming when trucks & drivers are operated by the same crowd that are now running the wonderful drones. It won’t be spy-in-the-cab it will be fat uniformed controller in the cab.
Running bent? The EU has designed a system where the whole transport industry is guilty of running bent thru intricate Kafka-esque rules & regs.
harry:
In the early days I thought that tachos would protect the driver from greedy boss’s excessive demands.
But it soon became clear that they were being used as a tool by various sections of authority to penalise the driver & raise huge sums of money for transit countries.
I’ve never ever been done for tacho offences and neither have many drivers so its not a very good tool for revenue raising is it?
Basque- land was doling out fines of over £1000 last time I went there. Some police forces did better than others. Pay & go was the general rule all over EU. Customs officers also took their share of the kitty. Not many international drivers can say they haven 't been nicked for something or other ,no matter how squeaky clean they tried to be.
Problem started when they gave the cops 10/per cent of the fine. The fiver coffee money was not so interesting when they could trouser £100 plus.
toby1234abc:
I used to know the drivers that would do a one hitter from the French ports to Sunbilla near Pamplona, head down, then craic on with a one hitter to Malaga or the Valencia area and do the same going back, all on the fuse or the wire, they did not die and crash, and most of the time would have been over the drink drive limit getting on and off the ferry trips and when they stopped for the night.
To have done it legally would have daily rest at Bordeaux, or south of there,the Saint Malo port meant you could get down further.
If stopped with the wire/fuse an offer of coffee money settled the bill at the road side, but most had a secret switch hidden in the cab, some in the switches on the dash or the other crafty places.
The problem was if a driver did Europe legally, all the warehouses and packing houses got so used to drivers doing it on the wire that they thought that was how long the journey really took.
Big firms would book me on a ferry and expect that, when you told them it can not be done legally, they would just laugh and say well such and such can do it, why can`t you?
It was common then to load huge heavy unstable marble stone A frames, and fill the trailer space with groupage, or have ceramic tiles on the floor,groupage on top with a dodgy CMR with a false weight on it.
So what are you saying, that in the good old days everybody had to run bent to compete■■? Current regulations are far from perfect but are designed to protect drivers from the type of abuse that you describe, but there are still plenty that achieve a competitive advantage by running bent.
switchlogic:
Generally in my time I’ve found that those who ran or run bent never shout about it and certainly don’t mention it on a forum and those went an hour over there time once go on and on about how bent they run, what a big man it makes them and how great they are.
+1
I do bank jobs and share the money with TNUK members. I then drive a truck with no digi in on a daily basis
happysack:
I’m guessing bigr250 will be along just shortly to applaud Phil.
Why would I do that pray tell? Where exactly have I said that it’s OK to run bent? something you freely admit to having done & have been prosecuted for!!
I would say that running bent is a driver that as no regards to his or hers safety or other road users.My point is why would you want to do it you’ll never be thanked for it.
There are driver that make mistakes but are not running bent that’s life, we have all made the odd mistake.
But then there driver that put magnets on there truck pull the fuse add a wire, have 20 plus infringement’s per week these are the ones that are running bent.
there a big difference with someone trying to get home on a Friday and going over by 10 minutes and someone that drives for 20 hours without stopping.
delboytwo:
I would say that running bent is a driver that as no regards to his or hers safety or other road users.My point is why would you want to do it you’ll never be thanked for it.
There are driver that make mistakes but are not running bent that’s life, we have all made the odd mistake.
But then there driver that put magnets on there truck pull the fuse add a wire, have 20 plus infringement’s per week these are the ones that are running bent.
there a big difference with someone trying to get home on a Friday and going over by 10 minutes and someone that drives for 20 hours without stopping.
To the VOSA man or copper at the checkpoint there is no difference, it’s just another fine, some small some large, they don’t care about who, what, when, where or why, you broke the law so you pay!!!
delboytwo:
I would say that running bent is a driver that as no regards to his or hers safety or other road users.My point is why would you want to do it you’ll never be thanked for it.
There are driver that make mistakes but are not running bent that’s life, we have all made the odd mistake.
But then there driver that put magnets on there truck pull the fuse add a wire, have 20 plus infringement’s per week these are the ones that are running bent.
there a big difference with someone trying to get home on a Friday and going over by 10 minutes and someone that drives for 20 hours without stopping.
To the VOSA man or copper at the checkpoint there is no difference, it’s just another fine, some small some large, they don’t care about who, what, when, where or why, you broke the law so you pay!!!
Ross.
yes would agree with that, but I prefer a fine that going to prison, I have been stopped and there have found minor infringement’s i had the tacho printout explaining why there were there and was given a VW for it, if you have one infringement in 6 months on your card and you can explain it there not going worried about that, there more likely to do the driver that’s got 20 plus and no explanation for them.
delboytwo:
I would say that running bent is a driver that as no regards to his or hers safety or other road users.My point is why would you want to do it you’ll never be thanked for it.
There are driver that make mistakes but are not running bent that’s life, we have all made the odd mistake.
But then there driver that put magnets on there truck pull the fuse add a wire, have 20 plus infringement’s per week these are the ones that are running bent.
there a big difference with someone trying to get home on a Friday and going over by 10 minutes and someone that drives for 20 hours without stopping.
I was only ever done once when over the water, and that went into the policemans back pocket. He was quite open about the fact that if I wanted a receipt it would cost me a lot more. That was in Warsaw, Went through a weight limit.
■■■■ it!, Orys will be along now explaining with a 30,000 word essay how honoured I was to pay a corrupt Polish copper 50DM instead of 250DM and get a receipt.
Brian Smart on Sammy Williams got nicked in France & asked the cops for a blanco instead of the official reciept. Refused of course, but he was famous with the French truckers who were there at the time.
