Please write a few lines about your job
I’ll be undergoing training in a couple of weeks; interesting reading through these threads & wanted to read more first-hand stories of truckers’ jobs
Thank you
My job is a very nice. I like.
Best job Iv ever had!.. start anytime from 1-5am & home between 7:30-11am…
It’s not Hgv driving though I sacked that off a few years ago!
I quite like my work, too.
I collect and deliver stuff, and do some driving in between.
Almost slavery - paid a pittance-i have to beg coffee from foreign drivers.
But the scenery is nice and the traffic mostly ok,
And the restaurants are for the most part superb,
And I do enjoy listening to the radio all day .
Work ? I try to do as little as possible.
Do checks
Go A
Wait
Go B
Wait
Go Home
I think it was a serious question. I like my job and wish I’d known about the company 20 years ago, could have saved myself a whole load of grief. It’s all - mostly - “please” and “thankyou” and “would you mind”, the kit is tidy (third party look after maintenance/MOT and so on). Money is adequate - we are guaranteed 50 hours so are effectively salaried. Anything over 50 is paid at time and a half. And we get a handy bonus at Christmas. All parking/meals paid on a night out, full uniform provided, usually get an early finish on a Friday.
There’s a lot of regular repeat work which means you are familiar with forkies/warehouse staff, which can be to your advantage if in a hurry. Sometimes you’re away for two or three days, other times you might spend a day on local shunting. Today I went from Corby to London SE26, tipped, reloaded and ran home. I’ll tip in the morning, reload round the corner and go to Rotherham, tip and come home.
Should add that the firm look after us in other ways. When I had some agg with DVSA a couple of years ago, they made sure I got advice from a solicitor specialising in haulage law and when I went down to Exeter Magistrates’ Court to face the music, they even paid me as I was “on company business”. When we started getting taxed on nights away, the NO money went up to £32.50 so we still clear £25. Equally, they’re not daft - they know it’s give and take, and what they give, they’ll get back in time. It’s a good number though and I hope it’ll see me through to retirement. Hope your training goes well!
It’s crap. I stand out in the ■■■■■■■ rain unbuckling the curtains in some ungrateful factory where I am made about as welcome as a turd in an ice cream parlour for having the temerity to bring them the raw materials they ordered, and I reminisce about happier times when the job was a hundred times better, driving down to Istanbul or Athens or Sicily or somesuch without some pointy-shoed graduate watching me on the tracker and phoning me to ask why I just stopped for a ■■■■.
In a short sentence, back breaking and soul destroying.
However the pays ok and I only work 4 days a week so I can have my kids the other 3.
A love/hate relationship.
I collect dry mixed recyclables in a dustcart. I’m currently learning my route so it may improve, but at the moment it’s…drive for a few mins…get out and unlock gate…reverse through and tip bins…back and out and drive few mins to next job…repeat for 10 hours.
But I get paid in the early £30k’s for 50 hours a week and nobody moans about me bringing back work and finishing bang on 10 hours (as long as I get most of it done).
Hard job made easy by years doing it.
I drive a beavertail plant 8 wheeler with Hiab, if it can fit on the body I’ve probably moved it. Over the years I have moved thousands of excavators, dumpers, fork trucks plus most other types of construction plant, military tanks and vehicles, boats, tractors, building materials, telephone boxes, bits of aircraft and even Christmas trees.
It’s a job that constantly throws up challenges, often there is no help so I am expected to load, secure and unload on my own in awkward places or narrow lanes. Collection of items is worse as they can be filthy, damaged or inaccessible with excavator buckets strewn far and wide across a site. There is not a whole lot of help I’m just expected to get the magic wand out and make it happen.
It’s hard work and potentially dangerous, get better or die trying is my motto as it’ll never get bored of finding ways to try and maim or kill you.
But for all that I find it hard to beat, I’m a (week)day driver doing roughly 10 hours work a day and home similar time every day, close to home and paid well for doing it. Very little else advertised could pay me more money without a lot of extra work, anti social hours or nights away.
I’m nearing 13 years in same job and although I am growing weary of it for the reasons listed above it’s hard to leave it.
^ Good post by 8Wheels.
I started driving on non HGV work. Little bit of agency then as a coalman. Open sack door to door.
No free gym membership offered!
Paid for my own Class1. General and container UK work. Rope and sheet giving way to tautliners.
Couple of years off the road then into Euro work. Tilts,tauts, and tankers. Easy as Athens, Balaerics, Casablanca. Fond memorie, but “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there”.
Currently on multi drop and collection, 99% in France.
Salaried, left to get in with it. Home weekends. Eating in some nice restaurants. In between factory work going along small lanes in country areas others holiday in. (St Tropez town is ok this time of year, but a pain in the summer). Biggest problem is avoiding drivers who plead poverty and try to cadge cups of coffee off me.
Ex. Typo
Too good to be true,really.
Probably won’t last.
Wish I’d took current job years ago. Walking floors good kit one driver has own unit and trailer. Sheet internal bulkhead and floor remote control . Home every night good pay and spoken to with courtesy and mannerz
I enjoy my job, it’s very easy going with good perks, terms and conditions, pay, and kit, we’re not chased and we’re always spoken to with dignity and respect. The only downside is it’s shifts so I have to put in some weekend work but then again I only work 4 x 11.15 hr shifts so a good bit of time away from work.
I’m 54 hopefully it’ll see me out.
I love mine, best money I’ve been on. Recently it was decided I was “doing too many hours” so some of my drops were taken off my routes so I tend to be at home now by 3pm.
Like oldtimer am on walking floors. Bit dirty ,bit smelly as we do domestic waste among other things but same oldtimer wish I’d got on it years ago. Very little physical so my container gut has reappeared! 
Family run firm so all good. 18 months till I retire so hopefully they will put up with me till then.
4 on 4 off home every night, shunting loads in a gp tank, load in manufacturing plant and tip into storage tanks about 3 miles away, good salary and do between 40 to 48 hrs every 4 days.
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Motley going by the work you do can you recommend a good satnav 
Beau Nydel:
Motley going by the work you do can you recommend a good satnav
Mines only good for Stanlow [emoji16]
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