I’ve been training with Phil at STS Training (marlow on this site) for the first 3 days of this week, and so I thought I would let you all know how I got on.
I passed my C in May and my C+E in August this year, and apart from a very brief drive in a concrete mixer last week, I hadn’t driven since my test. I’ve got some bits of part time work coming up and before I start them I wanted to get some more driving practice in to give me a bit more confidence.
So I turned up at 06h30 on Monday to find out that our first job is a collection of a 20’ storage container from Harrogate. I know Harrogate fairly well (I lived there for 17 years) so once we’ve had a quick check round the truck and put a tacho each in, we set off. This was the first time I had driven more than a mile or two since my test, and it was dark, so I was a little uneasy at first, but soon got used to it with helpful pointers from Phil. The truck he uses is a fairly old Volvo FL6 which isn’t the easiest thing in the world to drive, but I see that as a good thing really as learning to drive in a really easy truck isn’t going to prepare you very well for the real world. Anyway before we know it, we’re in Harrogate and we find the road and then the container. It’s down a narrow driveway that has all the consistency of wet concrete, so at this point Phil jumps in to reverse it down the drive (after making sure the builders JCB was at the top of the drive in case we had an issue getting out). Once the container was loaded we (well, Phil) managed to get it out of the drive and onto the road, where I got back in and drove it back, gaining confidence all the way. The rest of Monday was taken up (if I can remember right) with a collection in Leeds, which we then delivered to Batley, a reposition in Leeds (during which we swap the tacho discs over and Phil drives while I have my 45), and another two deliveries. I was pleased with my progress during the day as it seems was Phil.
Tuesday morning and today Phil doesn’t bother to put a tacho in, as he’s happy enough with my driving that he doesn’t think he’ll need to drive at all. Today rather than the 6 loads we did yesterday, we only actually manage 4 as they’re all a fair way away and there aren’t any convenient runs we can do by doing a collection and taking it directly to the next customer. The day is made a bit more interesting by one load being a wide load (a 9’ wide site cabin, which is about 10’ wide once you take the legs into account) which I manage to get to the destination without catching on anything.
Wednesday we’ve only been given 4 jobs but even these don’t look likely as they’re all a long way away (two in Bingley and two in Bradford, all collections). We do the first Bingley collection, and then go to pick up the second one, after putting it on the back I have my 45 and then we head back to the yard. When we get back it’s not looking like we’ll have any chance of getting both Bradford ones done, but Phil has a plan. He’s happy enough with my driving to let me out in his truck by myself, and I’m up for that too so we decide to head off to Bradford with me in his truck following him in the spare truck (another FL6). I really enjoyed this as the 2.5 days I had been driving it with Phil beside me had made me pretty confident in my ability to drive it, so it was nice to get a go by myself. The two containers (one store and one office) were safely brought back to the yard with enough time to spare to do a quick local delivery before the end of the day.
So, at the end of my 3 days, I’ve done about 900km of driving both an empty and a loaded truck on just about every kind of road (dirt tracks and cramped industrial estates up to the M1, M62 and M621), I now know much more about tacho regs and I’ve even had a bit of a play with the Atlas crane fitted to Phil’s truck (not sure I’m confident enough to work that by myself yet though). Phil also found time to show me how to decouple and recouple an artic that was in their yard so I know that too now (I used a drawbar on my C+E so had never done that). I reckon I’m ready to have a go at driving for real now.
Thanks to Phil for a really fun few days (and his boss Ronnie for letting him do this). I would recommend a few days of this real world driving to anyone who had just passed their test.
Have a look at http://www.truckdriving.co.uk/ for more information.
Paul
