Left school,got on a apprenticeship at Keltruck,stayed there for 6 years and then went driving.
I’ve got a few qualifications, City and Guilds parts 1,2,3,Part one of a Btec Diploma,City and guilds in Health and safety,various RTITB skills qualifications plus my 4 GCSE.S from school.
I’ve also got my Hazchem,oh and the most important one,LGV C+E!
I was a Farleys Rusk inspector before getting involved in Transport, I threw the bad ones on the floor 
I was working in a haulage yard from being about 12. H & S rules have changed. Truant officer was spending more time at my house than me. My first paid job was painting white lines on the new concrete M62 as the company thought I was 16 when I was 14.
Spent a couple of years in a commercial body shop and then went off to Germany in a caravan lorry when I was 18. When I was 21 I was taken on as a tanker driver and still doing it.
After school worked for agricultural contractor, tried and hated office job in land management, then white van man for March Engineering followed by stint training and then building transaxle gearboxes for them. Moved to US in 1985 worked in IMSA doing sportscar racing,then some vintage racing.Took CDL in 1995 as we didn’t have a truck driver and I had always fancied it .Jacked in being a mechanic in 2003 and went full time driving.Wish I had done it earlier.l
So Longwayround, what’s the night life like in NY compared to Brackley, bit quiet is it ■■? 
Blimey, seems only one of all these replies left school before me 
I left a very good grammar in 72 … much to my Mums disgust at ‘wasting a good education’. As I recall, I worked for Deccas as a Radio & TV Engineer for a good few years til they closed down their Battersea factory. Then buggered off abroad. Returned and took big boys test in '81.
Since then, haver driven in all sorts of life including 4 years as a chauffeur/bodyguard and 4 years as a coach driver helpin the Yanks “rediscover their heritage” over in Ireland (another way of saying we emptied their wallets).
Apart from 18 months spent living on a Greek island at the end of the eighties, I have been involved in driving something or other ever since 81. The Greek island exodus came about because of a horrific accident I suffered in '87 which resulted in me getting a 5 figure insurance payout. As soon as the cheque had cleared, I was on a plane to Rhodes lolol. Only left cos I fell in love with the Chief of Polices daughter and he wasn’t too amused about losing his only beloved daughter to a extremely well tanned, long haired beach bum (his expression, not mine … my hair WAS halfway down my back) and kept trying to have me committed to prison PMSL. He never knew I had a Greek bank account and was even more furious when I showed him the proof of my ability to live there without ‘working’. A bank book with loads of money in it … more than was in his, I suspect.
left school and went on a ytsas a steellstockist.
after that it was warehouse and shop work mixed in with a bit of bar work. asked to do a bit of 7.5 ton driving at one comapny then they put me through my class 2 test and i ended up in the transport office sorting the runs for far more experienced drivers then myself (nothing changes does it 
).that wasnt a job for me as i couldnt bite my tongue when customers were giving me abuse about where there delivery was.
that company was brought out so i moved onto another gained my class1 and here i am now.
jon
At school I was grade A student, being primed for Oxbridge, but sadly things at home weren’t so hot so I ran away at 16 and ended up sleeping rough for a year and doing a whole lot of stuff I won’t go into here for fear of incriminating myself. 
Eventually fell back on my classical music training and started busking, keeping it together for long enough to buy a 10ft caravan to live in. Spent the next 5 years travelling about the place in increasingly more ridiculous combinations of vehicles (including a horsedrawn barreltop wagon and a 1957 Fordson Thames Costcutter 4D with a bloody great showman’s trailer behind it - I learnt to drive in an early 1960s FG) funded by a combination of more busking and seasonal farm work - picking apples/hops/elderflower/daffs etc. on piecework, doing holiday cover so cattle farmers could have a break, lambing, you name it basically. Gave me a taste for driving big things, albeit somewhat illegally as I never actually got around to doing a driving test until 1997…
I was eventually forced off the road by what they then thought was osteoarthritis (misdiagnosed, it turns out, but that’s another story) and got a CITB all terrain forklift licence through an uncle with a building firm - we cashed in on a grant system and both wound up in profit - and used that for a year working for a firm who manufactured air filters, where I ended up reorganising and establishing their entire outside storage system.
Got into agency work as a specialist - getting sent into various companies to sort out the mess in their warehouses for what was then a very high hourly rate - before sitting in the rain in someone’s yard one day, looking at the queue of wagons stretching down the road and all the drivers watching telly whilst I got drenched and thinking “I’m in the wrong game” and shelling out for my Class 2. Did a year on rigids to get money for my Class 1, and here I am.
Ere Reef I must be a sad old git like you & rog cos, I have been driving for almost all my working life (except) for when i was serving my apprenticeship as a mechanic and did a couple of years after serving my time and went driving cos, the pay was better and the job of driving em was a ■■■■ sight easier than fixing em! 
I still do repairs for a hobby at a Transport Museum in the North West but I only do restoration work on old stuff (none of this plug a computer in gizmos) and it keeps my hand in as I am now on the downward path to retirement as I am now on the easiest job (containers) that I have ever had.
Bin there got the “T” shirt as they say from handball to tippers and general plus 18 years on distribution and now the final leg up to hanging up my boots as they say!
Ad Infinitum 
Walked out of school at 14 – 1974
Pety crook 1974-1980
Armed rober 1980/81
25 year jail term
Lgv traning as part of parroll
Now i drive a armerd artic for the bank of england printers
New labour foward thinking
I had a life…
Left school in 1976
British waterways for 3 month
British coal 2 months
1977 - 1980 started work at local motor bike shop in Pontefract called embanks for 3 years building and servicing bikes. passed my bike and car test with them .
Was made redundant when the rules changed on how long you could ride them till you had to take your test so sales dropped and the whole bike market changed.
1981 - 2006 started at royal mail as foot postman and van driver doing parcel delivery and mail collection in knottingley ,later had a regular round mainly delivering in a small village called fairburn next to the A1in North Yorkshire.
After 25 years was offered voluntary redundancy which i took last year ( august 2006 ).
Royal Mail paid for my LGV class 2 training and i paid for my LGV class 1 which i passed in Nov 2006 after 3 attempts.
have been for the last 8 months been working for Mastercare through a agency mainly for 2 - 3 days a week plus odd day offered here and there in the week still doing class 2
you never know i might end up back at royal mail ( HGV Driving )
david
Left school in '81 with a C&G in construction:
Apprentice Joiner [3 weeks] left
Dole [8months]
Labourer in a Concrete yard [6 months] left
Dole [1 year]
Hoffman Press in a dry-cleaners [8 months] left
Glazer [6 months] left
Hoffman Press in a dry-cleaners [6 months] sacked
Dole [2 months]
Production Line in a heater factory [4 months] sacked
Dole [18 months]
Storeman in a crisp factory [3 years] left
Glazer [6 years] left
Extruder in a plastics factory [3 years]
Storeman in a plastics factory [4 years]
Driving Artics [4 years & counting]
Director of ■■■■ Movies
Dogmatix:
Director of ■■■■ Movies
I was going to ask why you’re called Dogmatix…
after reading the above. I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!!
left school at 16 no qualifications.
got a job straight away for allders in there warehouse at hackbridge.
moved to crawley went on a yts scheme as a tyre fitter done that for a few years. on and off.
then done about seven years as a motorbike courier mainly in london but some distance work.
back to commercial tyres. which i got to admit i did enjoy, especially the roadside breakdowns, mainly m23,m25.
done various over things.
now driving for a firm i want out off asap.
I was an amusement machine engineer, which is why I never put money into fruit machines and is why I always have a quiet chuckle at the drivers on the P & O ferry when they tell me how much they win out of them (before trying to tap me for a tenner)
got class3 when i was 17 in army 1984 got class 2 in ta when i came out in 88 paid for class one got adr and hiab not done much else apart from a spell working offshore but the money at the time i was better off on the wagons 
I was a university student - reading Biochemistry at Manchester University. I stuck at that for two years - or was it three - before taking my HGV1 and starting work at Wilsons transport in Ardwick, Manchester.
I was with Wilsons for about a year, following that a vast variety of agency work. I had several favourite jobs - particularly working as a yard shunter for Jiffy Packaging, and also endurance testing the then new twin splitter for Eaton transmissions. I went back to university in the early to mid 90’s, this time to study computing, but before that I did several ‘rock and roll’ tours with Stardes transport. I continued agency driving during the university vacations. In total I was on the road for about 9 to 10 years.
Since then I have moved to Finland, where I have my own mini-digging business and small farm.
hiya,
left school at 15 straight down the mines got called a contientious objector by school mates who had done sensible jobs and got called up,so i chucked it and went shunting at a pipe works (internal) always able to drive dad had a garage got called up served in korea and malaya as a driver got demobbed went back in the mines until age 21 (1957) just drifted into driving,couldn’t say i loved it but it payed the bills and i just got stuck with.thanks harry long retired
I was a chef on board a ferry and one day three years ago i just had enough got off the boat got drunk fell broke my leg was out of work then done my class2 and been driving since.