The changing world of what we carry

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

Watching the news about more steel closures this morning, made me reflect on the changing world of driving over the years.

In the 1970’s many of the driving vacancies in the West Midlands were on steel or machinery deliveries. It was very much an industrial landscape and it is where I learnt to rope and sheet, use bolsters and wedges and plan a wide variety of loads of different shapes and sizes, often combined on the vehicle at the same time.

Move forward thirty odd years and many of the driving jobs out there seem to feed our obsession with shopping nowadays, with retail and distribution forming the bulk of many jobs in some areas. It does make you wonder what the world of driving will be like in another 30 years from now?

Excluding the trucks themselves, I wonder what other changes you guys have noticed over the years?

2

I could write a bloody book on this but will keep it short, you’ll be glad to know.

I started in the 70’s too, whilst we did long distance obviously, general was usually reasonable distance and much of it local, as much of the country had its own self contained industries large and small with lots of smaller units servicing the factories, eg Longbridge and the dozens of smaller factories that serviced it.
During the 70’s but especially the 80’s under our own lady fuhrer (enjoy your self destruction Germany) and continued under her replacements increasingly our own industry vanished and you’d travel past a factory one day, and the next it would be closed and 12 months later it was either an office block/shopping centre/barratts rabbit hutch estate or all three.

Today this country is more or less a large warehouse stuffed full of Chinese/Indian tat, hence the massive increase in lorry traffic from the main container ports to roadside giant warehouses increasingly staffed by immigrants, i don’t have a problem with that by the way seeing as the Poles/EE’s will generally be reliable and graft unlike far too many Brits and other nationalities who increasingly have no work ethic if they ever did.
Goods cover vast distances because we don’t have self sufficient communities any more, that foreign tat has to travel from port to warehouse and on to buyers, and it lasts 5 minutes cos its generally rubbish so its a rinse and repeat exercise.

Our future transport will increasingly be food and servicing an unending population explosion due to increasing immigration, hence more houses leading to more immigrants to more plastic and clothing tat (that also lasts 5 minutes) to more roads to service more warehouses needing more immigrants…get the picture?

Be interesting to see what happens when oil runs out.

3

Juddian:
Be interesting to see what happens when oil runs out.

We won’t need it because we will have all that nice Chinese nuclear electricity by then.

4

There is plenty of oil under the ground/sea/ice, it’s just not economical to drill it. Yet, watch it all appear when oil costs three times as much

5

Juddian:
I could write a bloody book on this but will keep it short, you’ll be glad to know.

I started in the 70’s too, whilst we did long distance obviously, general was usually reasonable distance and much of it local, as much of the country had its own self contained industries large and small with lots of smaller units servicing the factories, eg Longbridge and the dozens of smaller factories that serviced it.
During the 70’s but especially the 80’s under our own lady fuhrer (enjoy your self destruction Germany) and continued under her replacements increasingly our own industry vanished and you’d travel past a factory one day, and the next it would be closed and 12 months later it was either an office block/shopping centre/barratts rabbit hutch estate or all three.

Today this country is more or less a large warehouse stuffed full of Chinese/Indian tat, hence the massive increase in lorry traffic from the main container ports to roadside giant warehouses increasingly staffed by immigrants, i don’t have a problem with that by the way seeing as the Poles/EE’s will generally be reliable and graft unlike far too many Brits and other nationalities who increasingly have no work ethic if they ever did.
Goods cover vast distances because we don’t have self sufficient communities any more, that foreign tat has to travel from port to warehouse and on to buyers, and it lasts 5 minutes cos its generally rubbish so its a rinse and repeat exercise.

Our future transport will increasingly be food and servicing an unending population explosion due to increasing immigration, hence more houses leading to more immigrants to more plastic and clothing tat (that also lasts 5 minutes) to more roads to service more warehouses needing more immigrants…get the picture?

Be interesting to see what happens when oil runs out.

Long before then the Chinese will have ‘asked’ for payment for all that cheap zb and infrastructure investment in real estate and food stuff.In which case it becomes an over populated under fed population who’ve lost any freehold on their properties they might have had and have to work for their offshore Communist Party landlord/employer for their ration of rice and one bed flat in the tower blocks built where their houses once stood. :bulb: :frowning: At least until the Chinese designed and built nuclear power plant/s do a Chernobyl on them and being a small Island there is nowhere to run to and their chances then just depend on which way the wind blows. :unamused:

6

Is interesting that chinese will contribute £6bn . France EDF around £12bn . this is effectively a 35yr loan . projected cost has been revised to £25bn . not sure where shortfall coming from , but you will be paying it through yr bills !!

Is odd decision as Hinkley is sandwiched between Quantock hills and Englands largest source of energy : the Severn Estuary .

There are almost limitless opportunities for tidal , lagoon , offshore wind and wave power .

Indeed just across the estuary Swansea is building a lagoon on swansea bay
.

Altogether a strange one as england is world leader in the relatively low tech safe technologies that could harness severns regular dependable energy …

And are we really so skint we cant pay for these investments ourselves

7

boredwivdrivin:
Is interesting that chinese will contribute £6bn . France EDF around £12bn . this is effectively a 35yr loan . projected cost has been revised to £25bn . not sure where shortfall coming from , but you will be paying it through yr bills !!

Is odd decision as Hinkley is sandwiched between Quantock hills and Englands largest source of energy : the Severn Estuary .

There are almost limitless opportunities for tidal , lagoon , offshore wind and wave power .

Indeed just across the estuary Swansea is building a lagoon on swansea bay
.

Altogether a strange one as england is world leader in the relatively low tech safe technologies that could harness severns regular dependable energy …

And are we really so skint we cant pay for these investments ourselves

No one could make this zb up.The Cons destroy our mining industry or at least its workforce partly on the grounds that they are supposedly the socialist enemy within.The NUM are admittedly tied to a Socialist agenda for no logical reason and totally against their own interests.Then the Cons sell out the national security of the country and its energy consumers in the form of massive costs of nuclear energy,to the zb Chinese Communist Party.Along with the rest of the economy and with it the national interest.And still the forces sit by and do zb all about removing the government on grounds of national security.Probably because,maybe with the exception of Charles,the Royal family are supportive of the deal. :unamused: :imp:

dailymail.co.uk/news/article … -deal.html

8

As far as im aware no one has come up with a plan to decomission Hinkley 1 . its a filthy swine by all accounts . one of oldest in country of the same era as Windscale .
Until they do come up with plan , how can its clean up be costed ■■

Pretty sure chinese wont be paying for it tho

9

Why, if trucknet has so many experts on everything from solving the immigrant problem to world politics why are we in such a ■■■■■■■ mess, maybe no one takes them seriously !! I for one do not !

10

boredwivdrivin:
Is interesting that chinese will contribute £6bn . France EDF around £12bn . this is effectively a 35yr loan . projected cost has been revised to £25bn . not sure where shortfall coming from , but you will be paying it through yr bills !!

Is odd decision as Hinkley is sandwiched between Quantock hills and Englands largest source of energy : the Severn Estuary .

There are almost limitless opportunities for tidal , lagoon , offshore wind and wave power .

Indeed just across the estuary Swansea is building a lagoon on swansea bay
.

Altogether a strange one as england is world leader in the relatively low tech safe technologies that could harness severns regular dependable energy …

And are we really so skint we cant pay for these investments ourselves

I have no problems with Nuclear, in fact I think we definitely need it as a base load generator. What annoys me though is why do we need the help of others; we were world leaders in nuclear energy, ‘worlds first commercial reactor at calderwell’ why are we not building it?

Our governments are just too short sighted, and short term economics means we let important stuff slip through our fingers. look what we are doing at the moment with steel, China undercuts us so we allow our industry to close down, a decade from now we will have lost the skills and China will be able to charge us what they want - once leaders of the industrial revolution, now cant make basic essentials like steel. Idiotic is the word that springs to mind.

back to the changing world of what we carry; Coal from the opencasts was always my main thing, but thats gone now :frowning:

11

boredwivdrivin:
As far as im aware no one has come up with a plan to decomission Hinkley 1 . its a filthy swine by all accounts . one of oldest in country of the same era as Windscale .
Until they do come up with plan , how can its clean up be costed ■■

Pretty sure chinese wont be paying for it tho

If I’ve heard it right the Chinese have the freehold of the site as part of the deal ?.In which case it’s a fair bet that Chinese standards of what constitutes ‘clean’ will probably apply while the government turns a blind eye.While even if not it’s obvious that all the costs involved in nuclear clean up and nuclear re build eventually get passed on to the consumer.Which is one of the reasons why the choice between coal v nuclear is a no brainer especially for a country like us with self sufficiency in coal reserves.

The only reason why we went for nuclear to start with being our nuclear weapons programme.Which leaves the question why would a country like Iran,that’s floating on a sea of oil,be so interested in nuclear energy and why would China be so interested in running our nuclear facilities and in helping Iran with its. :unamused:

12

Bluey Circles:
I have no problems with Nuclear, in fact I think we definitely need it as a base load generator. What annoys me though is why do we need the help of others; we were world leaders in nuclear energy, ‘worlds first commercial reactor at calderwell’ why are we not building it?

Nuclear is nasty stuff that,with the exception of nuclear weapons facilities,isn’t worth the risk v reward equation.It’s also one of the most expensive forms of generation especially v coal.As for weapons no one with any sense really believes that America would ever let us press the button independently over something that they could get the retaliation for.So in general it would be best to just rely on US nuclear warhead production facilities and base our nuclear fleet in America with theirs.Which then totally removes the case for nuclear power.Except for anyone who believes that CO2 cooked Venus. :unamused:

While it’s equally obvious that without a domestic coal industry we don’t have a domestic steel industry either because they are inter dependent.So China not only gets a monopoly and control over a major part of our energy infrastructure requirements.It also takes out an even more important alternative in the form of coal and with it a major strategic industry in the form of domestic steel production.IE defensively we’re a sitting duck and paying a potential enemy for the privilege.

13

A lot of you keep slagging off the chinese…so can you all stop it…i love my chinese…especially a chicken chow mein with a curry sauce…if you continue, and they get the message, i will have to resort to indian food instead, like a chicken tikka, a balti or dare i say it…a madras…so behave… :smiley:

When i started in this industry there were no containers, everything went by road except coal and a few overnight parcels…these were trained into regional depots for onward delivery often by the little Scarab ( a 3 wheeled tractor unit ) pulling a 20 ft trailer…the maximum length trailer at the time was 27ft with a single axle trailer. Our docks were always full of ships and many trucks waiting to load and deliver their cargo, and were very unionised, truck drivers also had to belong to a union to gain entry to the docks…as were many companies like FORD of dagenham who also insisted on having a ford vehicle only enter their site, not that we had many foreign trucks around anyway, apart from the odd Magirus deutz. The first sign of containers was from Freightline, a subsidiary of british rail, these would mostly contain ( get it ) coils of steel for Vauxhall or Ford, and all were open containers with ropes and sheets, we had to chain these onto our trailers as twist locks were only available on the railways. As time moved on we were allowed the luxury of a 33ft trailer ( i had a primrose ) with twin axles and twistlocks…which made the job a lot easier and safer. It was always easy to find another job as most companies had spare trucks all the time, and the transport yards were full of pot holes and mud, which often ruined your jeans and polished boots within a couple of hours. For me, a lot of collections were from the docks-warehouses that smothered London, i worked for Beck & Pollitzer at the time and some of the work involved collecting tea chests form Ceylon, China etc and taken to Lyons plant in Greenford for blending, the loads often came from above , tied with rope and lowered over your head onto the bed of the trailer for stacking, quite often your hands would get cut many times on the metal straps that made up the tea chest, gloves were available but mostly rubber ones. Bosses we worked for had mostly been on the road themselves, or the office staff had, so it was great that there were people in the office who understood our predicaments. Our night out money was given before we left for our journey north, and our wages were paid weekly. The trucks varied from Leyland Beavers ( and later the Ergomatic cab ) whereas our crane hire yard had the original Scania Vabis 6 legger unit, for the low loader work.I could probably write a book on the changes but theres a limit as to hpw much i want to put on this page. We all know what we have today, nice trucks ( still drivers moan ) we had to drive with no heaters ( the night heater had not been invented ) roping and sheeting in terrible winters, even summers when it was pouring down, no wet weather gear back then, or baseball caps, the planners today are mostly kids with no experience of the industry, only interested in a future promotion, and not a clue about routeing or whatever. Changes today have made life a lot easier, more comfort, better wages, easier clean work for most, and of course the option of international work, not like it was in the 80s or 90s but still there…we have mobile phones today, back then we never, but what i do miss is the cameraderie between drivers, we slept 3/4/5/6/ to a room, we went for a few beers and fish and chips to end the evening, we talked about football, or work, our families, we met many drivers again and again and would remember them and their names, we were a big family all doing the same job, and i`ll tell you what i enjoyed every minute, and if i could turn back the clock…i would do it all again…in fact i am nearing 70, and i am still travelling across europe…i have a mindset, that allows me to think about what happened back then, and what happened today, i am content, with my job, my family and my life, but as they say all good things come to an end, and i am thinking of making this my last year having spent around 52 years in this industry, starting on a 5cwt van and working up to 44tons travelling everywhere.