newmercman:
I was born a lorry driver, my Dad was a lorry driver, my Granddad was a lorry driver and my Great Grandad ‘drove’ a Horse and Cart
Blimey, makes my driving “career” look pretty tame.
Dad wasn’t a lorry driver (except when he worked for the market garden just after the war) but i loved lorries from the earliest memories.
At school age other lads read music and car mags i read Commercial Motor, travelled a lot by train in those days and one day when i was about 14 a very well spoken chap engaged me in conversation about what i was reading (not every middle aged bloke was a paedo then. 
, when i told him it was commercial motor he asked me what i wanted to be, i told him i wanted to drive lorries.
I happened to go to a very good school at the time (mortar boarded and caped masters) and this chap tried to dissuade me from pursuing lorries, to no avail i’m afraid…was he right i wonder, who knows.
Took O levels and passed a few but had no interest in furthering education or going into office based work, a childhood eye injury got forbade me from the RAF, so got a job in a tyre repair workshop then into tyre fitting.
When i passed me car test i went van and 3 tonner driving which living at Welwyn at the time saw me in London on multi drops half the week and long distance the rest of the time, London in particular proved the best grounding i could have had and learned me way around the country but especially London Central, learned to rope and sheet on 3 ton flat beds.
Big sister got into lorry driving before me which probably egged me on, one of the first lady drivers and i’m very proud of her.
Age 21 in 1976 i took and passed me class one, then had various general and specialist haulage and night trunk jobs till i got me first big break (moneywise) on Newsfast in the 80’s…after the print strike that is, nights on Newsfast was fantastically well paid (better than most even now) and had about 5 years on that, but like all good things it came to an end when TNT rewrote the contracts and about 90% of us took redundancy and walked.
Got me CPC and O licence in the early 80’s but held back for some reason which was just as well as the later diovorce would have probably cleaned me out woprse than it did.
Luckily i managed to blag a job on car transporters around 1990 but for a dodgy firm which quickly grew into a big company and went straight, stayed there for several years and learned the job then managed to get a job on one of the big transporter companies which saw me through paying the house off etc.
Bloody hard work though transporters, physically hardest modern lorry work there is IMO apart maybe from those 70 odd multi drops lads, and my knees mainly but many other bits are damaged by the job and its dangers over the years…mind you me fingers still split in the winter from roping and sheeting days of years ago…it goes with the territory we don’t winge too much do we and we don’t try ClaimsRus either.
Packed in the transporters about 3 years ago and luckily managed to get a start on tankers, this current job is the best i’ve ever had by a country mile, family company, mutual respect well paid and well looked after, which works cos you (if you have an ounce of common sense) look after a good job and your kit and make it pay for the company too…i won’t say where cos it took me years to eventually end up here, don’t want this place swamping out by the modern steering wheel attendants taking the ■■■■ out of the job and buggering it up cos i intend to see me time out here God willing.
So here i am still punching lorries some 37 years later and have no regrets and no desire to change what i’m doing, i’d like a real lorry again with a ■■■■■■■■ a gearstick and a Jacob Brake, but we all know that it isn’t going to happen as the industry and the tools to do the job are dumbing down as fast as they can make it happen.
Sorry thats been so long, was only going to write a two liner… 
As a general transport observation, this current job of mine and some of the earlier haulage based jobs have/had management and owners who appreciated good staff and their experience and efforts.
The attitude within the huge logistics companies now operating seems to be that they think there is a never ending supply of A1 drivers out there, they seem unable in most cases to recognise a lorry driver if they met one, we all know that those A1 drivers are an increasingly rare thing.
They value box tickers over competent drivers, i could list many instances but one that highlights this is one of my old transporter mates.
He’s driven lorries longer than me, been on general and then transporters for the last 25 years, he’s forgotten more than the most will ever learn.
He got made redundant off our transporter job some 4 years ago and went on agency.
He went into a big distrubution place, (where i was on agency for a while after i packed in the cars), for an assessment…they failed him for Christs sake because he didn’t tick some meaningless box on the frankly ridiculous daily check list…as it turns out he soon got back on the transporters where be belongs and luckily that poxy logistics operator didn’t get their greedy mitts on a far better bloke than they deserved, he could have done their brain dead work fast asleep.
Just a tiny example of whats gone so wrong, the industry and all involved have not benefitted from this dumbing down, especially the general public.
Cheers all.
A little vignette!
One of the main reasons I left Avis management for truck driving was the sheer incompetence of the senior management driven by American attitudes to profitability.
When I arrived on site at Euston I discovered that the business ethos was basically that the unit had to be more profitable every month. With fluctuations in the rental market this was frankly unachievable so creative accounting had taken over to fill the gap. We had about twenty five Mandators on semi-permanent rental to Bass Charrington which represented about 30% of our fleet. To boost the figures these had been forward invoiced for four months so their current earnings could not be properly added to our revenue. While I was there this period extended and extended. What happened in the end I do not know as I had left before the fan received the excrement.
Another American trait was a refusal by management to accept criticsm. We had staff meetings which included the fitters from the workshops and they were highly anti our fleet of 30 cwt Commer boxvans which were giving us endless problems out on the road with recoveries and repairs. The answer our finest from head office came up with was “Listen guys, if it’s got Avis on the side it’s the best equipment in the world!” Great stuff eh?