Hello all!
Had a short stint as a truckie this week, after almost a two years absence from the profession. Figured I had to get something out of the tacho card I renewed last year for almost €50.
As I usually work in a different field nowadays, a long trip was out of the question, so after learning I could either a: sit in the office at my place of employment in northern Norway for the next two weeks, 7am-3pm, drinking coffee and boring myself to death as there was nothing better to do or b: head home to Estonia and find something useful to do, I had to make a choice.
I chose option b, took the 1400km drive home and after a day with the family went to the yard of a friend of a friend to take a Volvo out to Oslo.
This is the steed I was given the keys to, a 2013 FH500 with just about half a million kilometres on it. And boy have those kilometres been rough.
Climbing into the cab, one is greeted with the stench of stale cigarettes, thick enough to cut with a knife. Getting past that, the buttons and stalks are just dirty, the radio works intermittently with the display out of function so you never really know, what you’re listening to.
Passenger seat un-tiltable, the retractable part of the bed doesn’t lock, so it stays under and angle which makes for an unpleasant sleeping experience.
Thanks for the welcome coffee though!
The headliner looks lovely.
Loaded with 22 tons of Cider from the local Carlsberg brewery, don’t know if it tastes the same coming it out as it does going in, as is true for the beer produced there
Load on, seal on, head back to the yard for the wife to pick me up, have a couple of hours to spend before I have to head for the port so we’ll go and pick up the dining table for our newly finished (barely) house. The boys will not miss an opportunity to climb into the cab as well
Head back to the yard for 6.30pm, the ferry to Sweden goes at 9pm with check-in at 8pm latest. Grab a newspaper and some drinking water at the Circle K in Keila.
Some lights work, some don’t. It’s expensive to get a lorry serviced at either the dealer or some other reputable workshop, so you can save a lot of money by doing the work yourself.
Coincidentally you can save a lot of time by not doing the work yourself either.
Surprisingly many trucks going to Sweden on a Thursday night, as you only have time to tip and reload in the greater Stockholm area. I’m one of the latest to get on, which means one of the first to disembark tomorrow.
The port is located in the lovely Soviet-chic town on Paldiski, known for it’s depressing architecture, history of nuclear submarines and lately a 17yo kid, who stabbed a random stranger 11 times to relieve him of his Adidas track suit. All the while displaying it on Facebook.
Parked onboard, had the fridge at +10c, so can safely turn it off for the trip without the need for a hookup. A familiar owner-driver reversing into place next to me. If I ever will figure out the point of driving old bangers for a mars bar a mile, I might become one once again
Onboard I had the cabin all to myself, not uncommon. Cabin is clean and pretty quiet.
Dinner already served at 8.30pm, usually the food on cargo ships is pretty decent, this was more like, nah.
But I can bet quite a few drivers accept a less-than-great wage just because you can sleep and eat on the ferry all the time. There is of course also the shower in the cabin, but one has only so much time you know.
Read the newspaper and drift off to sleep for a 5.30 alarm. Take a good hot shower to start a long day and head over to the cafeteria for the breakfast. No pancakes and the pizza looks to be a store-bought frozen one. Meh.
Only the swedish air-freight wagon and drag got sent upstairs amongst the trailers, Kapellskär nearing.
Bought the Eurovignette for Sweden online, two days, from now on it’s , well ,boring
Traffic nearing rush hour while approaching Stockholm about 45 mins after departure, fortunately I’m heading for Oslo on the E18 so turn off west before reaching the city limits
Heading well away from Stockholm, overtaking is stress free with no smaller vehicles waiting behind me. After this overtake I got a message from the gaffer, saying I’m booked to unload at 6pm. Surely driving at the limiter is pointless now, I set the cruise at 80kph and that’s where it says for the next two days.
The gaffer actually lives in Bali and due to extraorbitant costs for cellular communication uses Facebook messenger to communicate.
That’s enough for today, maybe more tomorrow!