Im talking about head honchos that make decisions, i’ll give you a few examples insert some benny hill music as you see fit.
Building a 2 feet wall (for no apparent reason) and painting it black, you tell them someone will hit that on nights, sure as ■■■■ it gets hit the same night
Building 4 new dock doors on a steep incline and them ordering a brand new terberg, you tell them the legs will ground and most likely so will the rear impact bar. Sure as ■■■■ it grounds now they need to wind up the legs on a brand new terberg, what is the point in having a terberg then?
Building a dock door at a 45 degree angle to another and you telling them if a trailer is on one door you cannot get another trailer on the second door.
Building another dock door you telling them the cab will block the access road when hooked up, sure as ■■■■ it blocks the access road now im told this door is getting ripped out and relocated - god help us where they put it
Installing wheel locks when the rest of the doors are salvo and you telling them their terberg will rip mudguards off for fun, the wheel locks then get ripped out for salvo system.
Remember the steep incline i was talking about well now they want to start double deckers but the deckers wont go on the doors so they need to spend 25k on each door because of this stupid incline, steepest incline ive ever seen at a bay
Double deckers we have previously run trials and we just cant make it work weight wise, now i got told today this is definitely happening doors being converted, customers being audited to see who can take a decker. We will be the only depot in the fleet to run deckers, why? Because we are ■■■■■■■ stupid up here.
They just dont listen to the little guy rant over.
Sounds familiar, new venue opened that no existing wagon will fit into. Any driver who was asked said that sending the stuff on a van and handballing it was the only realistic option. The place has a low narrow alley off a main road very close to a major junction and can only take deliveries after 0900. They spent a small fortune on having a little truck built especially to do this one drop but it still can’t get under without high likelihood of damage.
The prats with the Terbergs who don’t wind the legs up are the reason so many are bent, they lift them up to about a 25 degree angle with all the weight on one axle and the under-run bar scraping on the floor, you have to get out to release the handbrake so why so lazy that you cannot give the handle 3 or 4 turns?
The powers that be are hellbent on having a complete automatic gearboxed fleet. We’ve pointed out their shortcomings; one site is on a steep incline with narrow gateposts that the autos just kangaroo and stall when creeping through (the customer now insists “Fodens only” ) and they’re crap on our landfill too.
It pees me off they don’t listen when vehicles are specced.
Pencil pushing ■■■■ heads who sit in an office all day making big decisions having never worked on the shop floor/front line, whatever you want to call it!!!
Simple, because 98% of what they say is complete and utter bollox
And ‘they’ get flown off to Marbella to play golf by some smmothe talking salesman who flatters their ego and bamboozles ‘them’ with made up statistics that prove that [insert make of truck here] is the answer to ‘their’ prayers.
switchlogic:
Less than £200 for a night heater? Bet that’s a quality item!
Refubrished, supplied and fitted in few hours if you go to Poland (we do all Europe, so we could do it “by the way” if we were somewhere nearby), three months warranty.
My friend put it into his van, very happy with it. He paid less than 700 pounds for Webasto and Pony sleeper box (also second hand).
But this is off course dependable of the deal - I know a polish courier company, they fitted 11 sleeper cabs and night heater and got a huge discount - they paid less than 900 pound per van for brand new items. I am not sure of the make of night heater they use but as for the sleeper boxes they use some Polish ones. Drivers are happy with that outfit.
So it is real to have it done for a fraction of price here (altough I would have to do some research to find such places).
We have a pony sleeper box. The boss put a heater in with the switch in the cab. It is useless. How do you get the heat into the box? I won’t sleep up there in the winter. Engine running is the only way to keep warm.
There is a company I do a little bit of spare driving for that have just had a couple of new tractors and matching trailers, all streamlined with the trailer lights tucked underneath and out of the way, very nice except that at night you can’t see the sides of the trailer or the rear of the trailer unless you put your foot on the brake so you can see a reflection on the road, I mentioned to the boss (not driven since they stopped making steam powered Fodens) and his son (not even got a truck licence) that a pair of rubber markers on the side edges of the rear under run bar would be a good idea and all I got was ridicule about crap drivers etc etc, just spoke to the driver who did last nights run and surprise surprise he has smacked the nearside of the trailer on a concrete bollard, he said it was pitch black and he couldn’t see where the back of the trailer was, he normally has a different trailer with better lights and this was a regular drop for him, he told the boss too about the lights.
rant over.
