Which is the better job today 2024 bus/coach driver or lorry driver? What do you prefer and why?
Has any one switched from lorry driver to buses or vice versa? Or from buses to truck driving and then went back to buses? And why?
Was a fella on here about year ago from Yorkshire.
He gave up truck driving to become a coach driver.doing day trips excursions etc. He kept posting on here for a while and he seemed to like it.
As he said getting paid to go away over the country and Europe.
Staying over nights in hotels no more sleeping in a truck.
He seemed to enjoy it from what he posted on here
My late brother, back in the '70s or '80s gave up lorry driving when he married the wrong woman. She then made him become a bus driver, which he hated, so he bided his time and managed to get on the coaches. Less wages but more earnings by tips from grateful customers.
And I am sure that he would have declared any cash tips for tax purposes…as I did when I was on the domestic bagged coal. 
I very much doubt it. But I was very disapproving of him, believing that he should have campaigned for better wages instead. I regret it now, he died not many years later of a brain tumour, but, as an ex taxi driver (twice, big city, small city) I nevertheless disapproved of the tipping system and have never given tips myself feeling that they are demeaning to the receiver. Even in New York, where I have heard taxi drivers will turn nasty at the size of a tip rather than the complete lack of one, I think my insistance on paying exactly the amount on the meter, must have stunned them into silence. 
Coach Tour driving can be great fun, at the right point in life.
There are a few youth oriented travel companies which is a great lifestyle for people with the right attitude.
I did 4 years on the road with Contiki travel. It was challenging, wild and intense. Multi-week tours all across Europe, away from home for months at a time. It was more about the lifestyle rather than the money.
I ADR tramp now, for the money, but would consider going back into coach touring later in life.
However, I would only be interested in holiday touring not days at the races, or football days away.
I did a bit of part time coach driving and hated it (but needs must when you’ve a young growing family) Too much boring hanging about.
So it’s lorry driving for me, get your instructions/notes etc, get out and get the job done.
Of course I’m talking about many years ago, I’m well retired now.
But I never ever want to drive another bus/coach. 
When you’re a lorry driver you’ve only yourself and your manager to keep happy, when you’re a coach driver you’ve got to keep 50+ people happy.
I used to fancy doing Euro coaching, but I’m too used to artics and would maybe find a bit of difficulty with rigids…with 50+ passengers as witnesses if you f/up.
Should have done it at 21 when I had a lot of rigid experience…sounds a bit daft, but there ya go.
I had a mate years ago who did it and loved it, in fact I met him a couple of times over the water.
He was a ‘bit of a lad’ this guy, he told me his favourite perk doing week trips over there was there were always single women on board, and that he usually ‘did ok’ …maybe not on the pensioners trips though…although knowing him, maybe he did.
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Posted on wrong thread.
What a tit. 
3 years on buses, spat in the face by a teenage girl, my photo posted on social media with a fabricated story leading to my full name and spelt correctly (someone who knew me personally very well gave that info out) leading to death threats and the police involved. I’m not on social media but it was only a matter of hours before my full address was given. Multiple threats of violence (always from passengers on the same service) That same service needed a police escort along part of the route. Had a woman smoking a crack pipe upstairs too.
The good points, colleagues were the best ever, looking up skirts on the CCTV screen in my cab area, making the bus lurch violently every time a passenger went to drink his bottle of alcohol (drinking alcohol is banned on buses), sitting at a stop refusing to drive when people refuse to pay. Laughing at bell ends who tail gate the bus then get mad because you stop for 5 minutes at a bus stop because they are too stupid to keep a distance and drive around.
Do I miss it? No. I would have been driving the unilink service now had I not lost my licence forcing the change. So all the crap would have ended. However I now do what I’ve always wanted to do and I earn good money on a 40-45 hr week over 4 days. I’d be doing 70 hrs doing 13 on 1 off on the buses to get near what I earn. I also don’t come home stressed or have days where I want to quit. Almost quit one day, had enough of rude passengers, threw my bag and duty out the door during changeover making sure all the rude ■■■■■■■■ could hear me. My supervisor said to walk it off in my 2hr lunch break.
I drove a 12 year old AEC Regent coach from London to Lahore, sharing the driving with 2 others, everyone got on very well, never a cross word the whole journey. 
Might that have been a Regal? Or was it a coach body on a double-decker chassis? Or a Reliance, even? 
Having done HGV1 and coach driving, I’ve found it all depends on your personality. If you like socialising, don’t mind people watching you drive, like to go to touristy places, happy to drive without the radio or podcasts, prefer to stay in hotels, dictated by passengers when to stop for a break, happy to clean whole coach after getting back to depot, then coach driving is for you.
If you’re a solitary character, happier in your own company, don’t mind being at RDCs, factories, etc, prefer to drive with radio on and listen to your own podcasts, don’t mind sleeping in the cab, be your own boss, then HGV is the way to go.
Wages have improved a lot in coach driving (where I live in the West Midlands) and used to be crap. Probably still less than HGV though, max £15.50per hour in my recent coaching job.
Therefore, it’s very much an individual choice, and impossible to say which is best.
No idea, I was just told it was a 1956 Regent. I joined as a paying passenger to get to Australia but it soon became apparent that one of the drivers was not exactly an expert so I was drafted in. The other driver was an experienced lorry driver like me so we did most of it from then on.
We were supposed to go all the way to New Delhi but, as India and Pakistan were shaping up for a war at the time there was no traffic across no mans land. So I had to carry on by myself via train,walking across no mans land, and then train to Delhi.
An exciting way to travel to India though! And very much of its time. Couldn’t do it today.
Sounds as if it was a coach body retro-fitted to a Regent double-deck chassis then. It did happen. It rarely happened in reverse, though East Kent did fit double-deck bodies to single-deck Leyland TS1 chassis in 1929!
Sadly, although I had a very good camera then, I hardly ever used it, cursed myself every year since. When I got to Delhi and realised that I couldn’t continue by road to Singapore, I took a plane via Hong Kong to Darwin, and left the camera in the suitcase I deposited with Cox and Kings and never saw it again 'till I got back to England, several years later.
If we could go back to our youth armed with smart-phones we’d have a field day. Or would we? I see the young ‘enjoying themselves’ in groups and it seems to me that their entire experience is filtered through the lens. Instead of eye-contact and share smiles, they’re crouched over their machines planning the next shot. And a lot of people our age are now doing the same thing. Sometimes, our clever memories are enough. I don’t need to see your AEC to imagine its dusty sides as you climbed the rocky hills to the Khyber Pass or wherever - I can already smell the acrid air, the diesel, the sweat and the sense of excitement…
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Yes, but that wasn’t all, we had to get out and push it up some of those hills because at one refilling point we had got some dirty diesel. We simply had to keep topping it up as we went to try and work the dirty stuff out of the system.
Brought back memories a few weeks later when, after working in Darwin for a time, I caught a long distance bus 200 miles south to Katherine where there was a road train base, Buntine’s. We, the passengers, had to push start that bus because he had a flat battery.
Nice one. Yes, it’s easy to forget that buses break down in santitised Blighty nowadays. I remember travelling by train from Tehran to Kerman in the south and the railway locomotive broke down. So we were taken on by coach. The coach too broke down and we spent an afternoon kicking our heels in an MSA. I went into the truck parking area and chatted to drivers there. I was invited to sit at the wheel of a bonneted Mack while its driver plied me with coffee and showed me how the two-stick transmission worked. I got the distinct impression that if it hadn’t had heavy plant on the lowloader he would have let me drive it round the parking. As I DID have my camera on me, here’s the offending Mack!
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