Unoffended coffin dodger here.
Jesus wept this isn’t nuns net or kitting circle its a bunch of hairy arsed, well hopefully the lady members arn’t so blessed, lorry drivers who prattle on about lorry stuff talking various amounts of ■■■■■■■■ depending on their viewpoint.
We’ve all got some input here, some of us have been doing it a long time, some of us who have been doing it a long time still haven’t got a bloody clue what we’re doing, been at the job for 40 years doesn’t necessarily mean we’re 40 years good, just as someone who’s been doing it for 2 years might be learning quick and damned good already or they might be another useless plonker in the making leaving a trail of destruction behind as they flit from agency to agency.
On the point of unpowered steering, well it was of a time, my lovely lady wife had her own removals lorry in times gone by and that didn’t have power steering so she knows all about pulling on heavy things…

I started on the lorries without power steering, and i get where Robroy is coming from but i’d put it another way in that what it did do was to sharpen up your manoeuvering bloody quick, you had to learn damned quick to minimise the shunts and to minimise the amount of lock you put on, after about three full lock to lock shunts fully loaded even if you were a strong bloke you’d be slowing up fast, you’d have one leg up against the dash to brace yourself and you’d be hauling the bloody wheel through like pulling an anchor in, course you tried your best to put the lock on whilst still moving to minimise the strain involved…and of course lorry work of the time heavily (being the operative word) involved roped and sheeted loads, some handball, try 21 tons of 1cwt bags of fertiliser at a time, so it was of its day a job generally for strong people…the ladies doing it that time were tough and strong, had to be, which was often inconsistent with their appearance and the way they spoke.
However in those days, which arn’t so long ago, there was a cameraderie which has all but vanished, so somewhere which was a pig to get in if there was another driver there he or she would help guide you in and give you a hand to fold your sheets when you’d got then undone.
Also the lorries were nearly all day cabs, and yes whilst they might only have a pair (if you were lucky) of unheated flat mirrors each side which you’d have to adjust by hand, but nearly all lorries had a decent back window to look through for your blind side reverses.
Oh and by the way, a couple of posters on another thread have mentioned spinning round to back in your good side instead of blind siding…well, that wasn’t an option in teh good old bad old days, you didn’t spin lorries round ripping the treads off the trailer tyres for no good reason (or you’d be severely bollocked if caught), you had to learn to back in on your blind as well and your good side…if you had to turn round somewhere you did a three point turn as you would reversing into a side road to turn…those of us steeped in those ways still do this and take other steps that modern lorries help with to lessen tyre and suspension wear, such as lifting the tractor mid lift when off road especially manoeuvering.
Anyway, back to the coffin dodging, any bloody lorry driver who lacks a sense of humour had better find themselves another line of work pretty damned quick, or the lunacy of the modern job modern bosses modern lorries modern people generally who are in most cases arse holes of the first order, will soon have you popping pills or worse, the job is bonkers most of the time, you work for idiots, you work with idiots, you get progressively more modern lorries which with each new incarnation are less able to do a days bloody work without some bloody fault developing, so a sense of hunour is essential to stop you doing a Michael Douglas in that there film he did the name of which escapes me cos me memory’s shot to buggery, ■■■■■■■■.
Anyway, Evil is gunna suffer in his own good time for being a cheeky sod to his elders, cos when this old bleeder kicks the bucket he’s going to haunt the little bleeder till the end of days…
