Sticky Situation(s) (Prevention of)

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

No, not another reference to Fiona.

Rather a serious question (shock horror)
Been doing some work 2 nights a week for a National company that do overnight deliveries of very high value goods in a 26 tonner, to un-manned warehouses. Basically you get given an access card, codes and keys to get into the warehouses and you tip yourself, normally about 3/4 pallets worth, and the load is very easily nick able, small(ish) items that you could fill a van with several hundred grand’s worth of stuff you could easily flog on the black market. It’s only 5 drops and all done between 1am and 5am

Last Friday night I was doing such a delivery, just opening the rear doors and getting the tail lift down, with the loading bay ramp open on a huge warehouse in a big empty industrial estate miles from anywhere with nobody else within probably a mile.
The loading bay I was backed up next to was the last one in the row, and the corner of the building was about 10 feet away, as the tail lift comes down I hear two voices from just round the corner and one of them says “You F’in whack him, I’ll get the stuff”

Now precisely 3 seconds before I required a change of underpants I grabbed the nearest thing I could, which was a bit of plastic pipe, about 3 feet long I found on the loading dock, and shouted “Anyone comes round the corner and I’ll make sure you don’t leave here alive” now for anyone who hasn’t met me, I’m 5 foot 8, carrying about 2 stone too much and couldn’t look threatening if I tried, let alone holding a bit of plastic pipe on an industrial estate at night.

Thankfully they mistook the tone of my voice for anger rather than “I’m just having a crap in my pants before you kick it out of me” and decided to leg it across the yard and into the night.
Which is good news as they both were far taller than me, more muscular, and carrying crowbars.

Rang the office and the police, which duly took a statement and I went on my way. Now a week on an internal investigation has proved that there’s nothing wrong with the current way of working and it’s safe for all the drivers involved.

I did the run again on Wednesday and have it again Tonight and Monday and quite frankly I’m not looking forward to it.
I asked the police when it happened if there’s anything that I’m (legally) allowed to have about my person for self defence and the answer was a resounding no.

I asked if I was allowed to have a crow bar “For breaking down pallets after a delivery” and their answer was “If you had it on you and there happened to be no pallets around (it was all loose, large boxes, that night) then you’d probably get in trouble”

Do any TNet’ers have any useful advice for legally defending ones-self when the company doesn’t give a ■■■■?

I subscribe to the “I’m not paid as a security guard, take what you want” theory too, but I get the feeling that the two idiots who were after me the other night were more of a “Bash 'is 'ead in first” school of thinking lot.

Anyone had any, non embellished, tales of nasty situations?

2

Sorry I can’t help you but I enjoyed reading your post. :laughing:

3

Scarab:
No, not another reference to Fiona.

Rather a serious question (shock horror)
Been doing some work 2 nights a week for a National company that do overnight deliveries of very high value goods in a 26 tonner, to un-manned warehouses. Basically you get given an access card, codes and keys to get into the warehouses and you tip yourself, normally about 3/4 pallets worth, and the load is very easily nick able, small(ish) items that you could fill a van with several hundred grand’s worth of stuff you could easily flog on the black market. It’s only 5 drops and all done between 1am and 5am

Last Friday night I was doing such a delivery, just opening the rear doors and getting the tail lift down, with the loading bay ramp open on a huge warehouse in a big empty industrial estate miles from anywhere with nobody else within probably a mile.
The loading bay I was backed up next to was the last one in the row, and the corner of the building was about 10 feet away, as the tail lift comes down I hear two voices from just round the corner and one of them says “You F’in whack him, I’ll get the stuff”

Now precisely 3 seconds before I required a change of underpants I grabbed the nearest thing I could, which was a bit of plastic pipe, about 3 feet long I found on the loading dock, and shouted “Anyone comes round the corner and I’ll make sure you don’t leave here alive” now for anyone who hasn’t met me, I’m 5 foot 8, carrying about 2 stone too much and couldn’t look threatening if I tried, let alone holding a bit of plastic pipe on an industrial estate at night.

Thankfully they mistook the tone of my voice for anger rather than “I’m just having a crap in my pants before you kick it out of me” and decided to leg it across the yard and into the night.
Which is good news as they both were far taller than me, more muscular, and carrying crowbars.

Rang the office and the police, which duly took a statement and I went on my way. Now a week on an internal investigation has proved that there’s nothing wrong with the current way of working and it’s safe for all the drivers involved.

I did the run again on Wednesday and have it again Tonight and Monday and quite frankly I’m not looking forward to it.
I asked the police when it happened if there’s anything that I’m (legally) allowed to have about my person for self defence and the answer was a resounding no.

I asked if I was allowed to have a crow bar “For breaking down pallets after a delivery” and their answer was “If you had it on you and there happened to be no pallets around (it was all loose, large boxes, that night) then you’d probably get in trouble”

Do any TNet’ers have any useful advice for legally defending ones-self when the company doesn’t give a ■■■■?

I subscribe to the “I’m not paid as a security guard, take what you want” theory too, but I get the feeling that the two idiots who were after me the other night were more of a “Bash 'is 'ead in first” school of thinking lot.

Anyone had any, non embellished, tales of nasty situations?

A strong arm for wheel nuts is handy, make sure you have the correct size socket on for the truck though.
In enclosed spaces, you can’t beat some deoderant and a lighter, deoderant on its own in the faces would slow anyone down.

But, tbh, I wouldn’t worry too much about it, it was probably some lads having a laugh or something, are you SURE they had crowbars?
Also, if 2 of them had crowbars and you had 1, what chance would you have? If you hit 1, you’d probably get hurt worse than if you just took a blow, went down and they helped themselves.

Personally, I wear steel toe capped trainers, they’re fine if anything’s dropped on them but are also pretty damned good for running in :wink:

4

the worst i had i was delivering to a pret cafe in the centre of leeds same as you get the keys to the door chuck it in sighn the notes lock up an go
this 1 morning it was about 230 in the morning when 2 lads that had had a skin full came out start looking at the pallet asking can they have this that the other etc
knowing they were ■■■■■■ i just joked with em saying thay wont want anything its all crap and raw fish :sunglasses:
and off the walk to find a huge steel bin and rolled it into the waggon making a big dent and a took paint off knowing they were half cut and no reasoning with them i just said come on lads no need for that an off they popped :astonished:
like you a raised the issue with work they didnt see a problem that i was in the middle of a city centre were the pubs etc are still rocking on my own with keys to a building :imp:
my advice would be to play dumb as if you have no idea what your dropping and if aproched again let em take what they want you paid to deliver not scrap
but always make sure u have a mobile on you just in case

5

Read your post and sympathise. Fortunately I don’t have that sort of job.

Problem is, that if you do get threatened and stand back and say, “Take what you want…” I would put good money on the Polizei giving you a hard time and investigating you because there was no sign of resistance, on the basis that you must have been in on the blag.

It’s logical they’re going to look for the easiest route to solving a crime and if there’s no one else to accuse, you’ll do.

If I was in a similar situation, I think I would be insisting my employers to take out some serious, and specific accident and injuries compensation insurance, as well as supplying a panic alarm and fitted camera/s to the truck that you can switch on whilst you’re unloading. That way if anything does happen, you should get compensation, you have a chance of alerting the law, and whatever happens will be recorded for later use to prove your innocence, and identify the guilty.

As times get harder, I reckon your job will get increasingly more hazardous.

6

I used to get the same problem delivering wines and spirits for a large brewer and had to go to a lot of dodgy areas and do a trailer swap on my own. I’m a big fella, ex nightclub bouncer and at that time, fairly fit but I knew that I was dealing with low-life junkies who wanted stuff to sell easily for their next fix and they wouldn’t think twice about cracking a driver over the head with an axe to get it and I know that times haven’t changed for the better now! I refused to do it after a couple of incidents. If it couldn’t be timed to coincide with another driver being on site they could stuff it.
The trucks were fitted with a panic button that once pressed, the police had supposedly guaranteed a max of something like 8 minutes to arrive but even with this, I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life being spoon-fed!
Several people did it for a couple of trips and felt the same and eventually, the made it an early morning delivery whilst staff were at the depot or divided the load to send a bit in each trailer with other stuff.

If you feel you are in danger and lets face it, if one couple of scumbags know what you are taking and the place is empty until you arrive, lots more do, I would be seriously questioning the sense in this. There is obviously very little in the way of security at this site. A lot can be done, they could have perimeter beams, infra-red motion detect camera’s that would alert someone (via the internet) to the threat before you arrived and are commonly used in such applications. It seems to me that the company you are delivering to doesn’t give a ■■■■ about the risks to anything other than it’s bank balance. I would be very tempted to let the gaffer know that should anything happen at these sites I have previously warned of the danger about and reminded you of your ‘Duty of care’ about, after this time TO ANY DRIVER, I will do everything in my power to make sure they get taken to the cleaners both as a company and personally!

ps, they won’t just take the stuff and go quietly. They would much prefer you to be sparked out and not able to identify them giving them more time to move the stuff. They may be scum, but they do have a bit of common sense.

7

DoYouMeanMe?:
If you feel you are in danger and lets face it, if one couple of scumbags know what you are taking and the place is empty until you arrive, lots more do, I would be seriously questioning the sense in this. There is obviously very little in the way of security at this site. A lot can be done, they could have perimeter beams, infra-red motion detect camera’s that would alert someone (via the internet) to the threat before you arrived and are commonly used in such applications. It seems to me that the company you are delivering to doesn’t give a ■■■■ about the risks to anything other than it’s bank balance. I would be very tempted to let the gaffer know that should anything happen at these sites I have previously warned of the danger about and reminded you of your ‘Duty of care’ about, after this time TO ANY DRIVER, I will do everything in my power to make sure they get taken to the cleaners both as a company and personally!

+1

8

I had to do collections from Site with no People there.
I had to ring a Intercom,telling them who i am and what i’m doing and Door opened.
Sometimes i had to load things too heavy to put it on a Pallet or/and too heavy to load it with Pumptruck.Had to go all over the Place to find help.
The other Day i was searching a peace of Wood to make a Ramp to lift that Peace on a Pallet i found.
Said a Voice out of the nowhere.
“What are you doing”
i looked around and couldnt see anyone,so i asked. “Is it you,are you my Lord”
No laughed that Voice.Its me who opened the Door.
From that Time i told em what i need and he searched with the Camera in all Rooms to pilot me then to it.
So don’t worry :slight_smile: The Cameras have Microphone and Loudspeakers

9

If you continue to do this job carry a weapon and deal with the police later, at least you’ll be alive. They don’t do a bag over the head robbery anymore, it’s bar over the head numerous times. Like the other lad said, if those two scum know then so do the rest of their ilk !! I used to carry car parts delivering to unmanned drops, and the incident is on another thread of what happened to me but at least the company employed mobile security while I was tipping there afterwards. At a large parcel company I carried uncut diamonds and afte 3 trips refused to carry them anymore. Consider things carefully mate, nothing is worth your life apart from your loved ones.
Phil

10

When delvering for Unipart one night a car followed me from Thatcham to Reading, I did the slow down/speed up, they just stayed back. So when I went into the Penta garage, still there at the service road, I thought you can’t pull in there it’s a no way out situation so floored her and went to the police station and told them, but the car had then gone. The officer told me to go back to Penta and he’d send a car incase they were waiting. Sure enough they pulled out of a side road. The last I saw of them was flying up the road to the M4 with a police car chasing them.
As a side issue to this post, a few weeks later I was already in Penta and had closed the heavy gates as you couldn’t see the truck from outside. While in the middle of dropping cages I noticed the gates were open :open_mouth: , so I grabbed my crow bar and crept down the side of the wall where I could hear voices and see car lights around the corner. So at a count of 3 I charged, bar in hand. One took off running and the other was still in his car, coffee all over the windscreen laughing madly at his friend, who was slowly creeping back towards me, scared s******s, now looking, I could see his uniform, and then his mate in the van, mobile security :blush: :laughing: :laughing: After the following incident, Unipart had hired them to watch my delivery slot but nobody told me !!!
Phil

11

EastAnglianTrucker:
Problem is, that if you do get threatened and stand back and say, “Take what you want…” I would put good money on the Polizei giving you a hard time and investigating you because there was no sign of resistance, on the basis that you must have been in on the blag.

I know of a case where this has happened.
Big meathead said “Please can I have these boxes off this pallett”.
Driver, (who was clearly intimidated by the size and ugliness of the meathead), said yes.

Police knew who the meathead was, but couldn’t prosecute him because he never threatened the driver, he wasn’t carrying a weapon either. He just asked, and the driver said yes.

12

Scarab:
No, not another reference to Fiona.

Rather a serious question (shock horror)
Been doing some work 2 nights a week for a National company that do overnight deliveries of very high value goods in a 26 tonner, to un-manned warehouses. …

Hey mate this is unacceptable.
If you are working legit - and I assume you are - then the company you work for, and the company you deliver to, surely have “A Duty of Care” as to your safety when in their employ!

This is not your problem - it is theirs and they need to address it.

Get onto your employer to have it sorted. Alternatively refuse to deliver on grounds of safety.

13

Solly:
. Alternatively refuse to deliver on grounds of safety.

Sadly, this tactic usually results in the driver losing his job.

14

cieranc:

Solly:
. Alternatively refuse to deliver on grounds of safety.

Sadly, this tactic usually results in the driver losing his job.

Hey Cieranc - yeah I thought that might be the knee-jerk reaction of some employers but they may run into difficulty with the “Factories Act” and HSE. see this link:
hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg73.pdf

Don’t think they would want to dispute this.

15

We all know the text book answers mate, things work differently in the real world though :frowning:
Reality is, the employer will give the driver a hard time over it, rightly or wrongly.

16

The spanish main was brought down not by the actions of people like Drake & Raleigh, but the galleon’s own spanish captains and on-board guards who decided "We’re take over our own ship, and cop the lot - we’re not paid enough to risk being pirated away by the ingles!

If you don’t pay someone enough to do a high-risk & high value load job, then it is inevitable that the only way for the driver to profit from it long term, is to go along with the very ones that would rob you. :confused:

Sure, the firm & police would take a dim view of “Take it” which is actually what you’re supposed to do officially when threatened, but it’s not worth getting killed to save your own money - let alone someone else’s that couldn’t be arsed to pay enough in wages to encourage employees to be ex-sas martial arts trained types instead of the latest bod from jobseeker’s plus! :smiling_imp:

If a driver gets £8ph and a security guard on nights gets the same, then I reckon £16ph is about right (for the northeast, forget london!) to drive a high value load AND be responsible for your own security of it. :sunglasses:

Any firm not paying that is offering “systemic shrinkage” as a job perk instead IMO. :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth:

17

Winseer:
pay enough in wages to encourage employees to be ex-sas martial arts trained types instead of the latest bod from jobseeker’s plus!

I reckon there’s probably more ex-SAS drivers about than dolies.

18

Cieran - Yes I understand - but drivers need to express concern if put in a dangerous situation. It is up to the company/companies if they choose to disregard the law, it’s processes and the consequences of such an action if something happens and the driver is injured. Responsibility is also on the driver.
Either way they all need to be made fully aware of that. Cheers.

19

firstly i would make sure you are insured to do these deliveries in the circumstances you state, not the well your insured cos you are on companies buisness either… there can and as been cop outs of this by insurance companies and yes you can sue the company but this can take a hell of a lot longer then an insurance payout if the worst happened… when i was a sec manager in the midlands we picked up loads of ■■■■■■ keyholder contracts because of insurance problems, basically we would meet a driver/company employee ect at the premises and allow access or assist in whatever problem there maybe… and to be fair most companies insurance premium actually went down! if the warehouse have intruder alarms then its possible at a fairly cheap cost to have either a panic attack button installed near the doors/areas you use or even a remote one that you carry with you…

another is if they have cctv? sevaral security companies can monitor these cameras remotely, if infrared beams are placed across the yard as well and beam gets broken it can be looked at by the control room operator and any subsequent action can be taken… but you could phone control room and say you will be on site in 10 minutes and could they monitor you until you leave?

mobile security can also be an option, and not that expensive either…

20

It wasn’t a security issue like this but a vehicle related problem that was causing us serious traction problems, and it went on and on despite lots of ■■■■■■■■ talked…we’re looking into it.

I drafted a letter highlighting the danger and possibility of accident, some of our depot drivers co signed the letter too, letter duly hand delivered to management, copy handed to union rep.

Result? valves retro fitted to prevent the problem.

Verbal hearsay can be denied, written evidence cannot.

Put it in writing and get any of your co workers who feel similarly to sign the letter with you, that way should they do nothing the company management will have been negligent in the event of something serious, they won’t want to be in that position.