PART 2…
So I arrived on my first day at 4am for a 4:45am start and my ‘driver buddy’ gave me the keys to my truck. A Volvo FH460. It was beautiful. It drove like a dream and was incredibly comfy. “Yeah, this isn’t your truck, this is the spare truck. Your truck is that one over there” A 2 year old Volvo FH500 with leather, microwave, and coffee maker. I’m guessing I’m going out in the spare truck in case I smash it.
…And what is it with these start times?? Anyone that says they make “good money” as a trucker is seriously deluded in my opinion. We make “good money” because we do two weeks work every week - national average is around 36.5 hours a week. I clocked up over 65 hours in my first ever week and that was supposed to be a gentle week to break me in!
It’s a general haulage firm with a couple of large contracts. They don’t double man the trucks so once you’re assigned a truck, it’s yours. 15 and 13 hour days are common. Tramping is the norm and this is what I want to do going forward.
There’s so much to take in…
‘buddy’ is telling me about the engine braking settings being set to ‘auto’ but to try 1,2,3 and auto to find what I’m comfortable with. Gearbox is a bit strange being set on a handle down on your left thigh (it’s actually really comfortable after a while) but really odd to begin with. "Don’t forget to lift the axles, Don’t forget to put it on break, don’t forget into ‘P’ mode to get it up a hill, check your sat nav? Have you altered the height display?..The first 5 hours went by in like, 10 minutes I was that busy.
In the first 5 days I spent about 10 hours on motorways. The rest of the time was on ‘A’ roads around Stockport, Macclesfield, Buxton, Congleton and Stoke. I said to ‘buddy’ I was really shocked how much time we spent on horrible winding roads, I thought I’d be pointing it down a motorway all day. That made him laugh. “yep, get used to it, you’d be surprised how much time you spend going down horrible little roads but they’re shorter and quicker and time and miles are money. Trust me, on a Friday afternoon you’re going to be using these roads”. I thought we were using these routes just to test my ability driving the truck. Nope, this is what I’m going to be every day.
We get to the first job. We’ve got an empty trailer ready to be loaded.
“any issues you can spot here that we might want to think about”
Errrrmmm, I dont think so.
“what about we’ve got a trailer over 15’ and that sign says Max Height 14’10” maybe we want to find another way in before we kill all their office staff? It’s up you Build, I’m just saying…"
Buddy is a bit of comedian. I like him.
The other way in for tall trailers means a blind side reverse onto a bay. Nobody ever showed me a blind side reverse on my lessons.
To give you new guys (and those in training) an idea of a blind side reverse - imagine driving a truck. Now imagine someone covering up the mirrors and ripping your eyeballs out then expecting you to back up a house on wheels into a space barely wide enough for the house, I’m talking 6" clearance on either side. And you’re not backing straight, you’re backing in on angle because the bays are angled and there’s shunters and forks whizzing around everywhere and you know you’re holding everyone up.
Because buddy was with me I gave it my best shot. I totally blew it. Buddy said I did well for a first attempt. I was furious at myself.
Buddy jumped out and guided me in. I felt a little bit better until he told me we were aiming for bay 9 and I ended up shooting for bay 10 and he didn’t have the heart to tell me so he told the forkies to fill us on bay 10 and not to give me hard time.
That was the first load.
Anyone interested in hearing about the 5 drops that day all to horrible little shops?
reversing onto a bay with a tri-axle trailer should be easier than with a 40’ single axle box that we had back in the day.
