How long was it until the Severe Daily-Anxiety of driving a lorry stopped occuring for You personally? :/

NEW AND WANNABE DRIVERS (INTERACTIVE)
1

I extremely enjoy driving (my car) :: So decided upon a career-change, to become a HGV driver.

(I would’ve ideally liked car or van work, but only have an automatic-license, so would be extremely limited in job-options | Combined with the fact that I wanna spend 95% of the time driving, ideally on motorways, not spend my days doing multi-drop work)

• I initially did Class 1 training - But failed the test.
(Realized also though that Class 1 lorry size was wayyy beyond my personal level of comfort anyways!)

• I subsequently did Class 2 training (via Chevron, the forum sponsor) | Passed the test with ease | But then found even doing an assessment-drive in a Class 2 lorry (18t) extremely daunting! :confused:
- Fortunately the company I who my assessment & interview was with were extremely accomodating, and still offered me the job :: Saying I could start on 7.5t lorries, to gain my confidence at driving HGVs.

Fast-Forward to now (1-month on):

• I am still driving the 7.5t lorries | Just about managing to handle & cope with the size of manouvering them | But have no intention nor desire of even trying Class 2s tbh!

• The company I work for is unbelievably good!
(The 1st week I was paired-up with an experienced driver, who showed me how to do the paperwork side of stuff / How to open & close the curtain-side straps / Plus what the different procedures are for ‘‘checking-in’’ at various collection & delivery hubs || Plus have also offered me a flexible shift-pattern as per my request, were I now work 3 x 12-hour shifts per week)

• The ‘work’ itself is extremely less physically-arduous compared to how this forum describes 7.5t work! _
(7.5t lorries here typically do just 2-4 stops per day maximum | 100% of that is forklifted on & off your lorry, as it’s all Air-Freight Cargo-Crates | And so over 90% of the shift-time is spent driving, rather than collecting or delivering)

But whilst, on paper, this job is literally the ultimately best ‘‘dream job-specs’’ I could’ve hoped for as a HGV-driver…
I still (even 5-weeks on) feel extremely anxious & nervous about physically driving the lorry on roads! :frowning:

  • Once I’m on the motorway, just cruising along for 100+ miles, I am fine & ok, then.

  • But it’s when I have to drive around roundabouts (*specifically when I have to drive in the middle-lane/right-lane, on busy multi-lane roundabouts, that I feel extremely nervous!
    (Like I’m literally on the cusp of endangering every other road-user within the proximity of my lorry, due to how I am angling & manouvering my lorry as I drive around the roundabout!) :cry: :frowning:

  • I also struggle massively with reversing, especially if it’s even slightly narrow/busy/or angled.
    *I have bought a £100 portable reversing-camera, which clip-onto my lorry for every shift | As without that I physically just could not safely reverse at all!
    (But even with that, I still struggle + feel alot of nervousness about having to do any form of reversing in any area which isn’t a massive open-wide space)

I have over the past 5-weeks:

• Driven to locations 100s of miles away from my depot (near Heathrow).

• Driven into + out off London.

• Driven in the pouring rain + darkness.

• Driven around dozens of multi-lane roundabouts | (Without the back-end of my lorry having swung too far out to of crashed into any cars on on my left-side - Yet atleast!).

• Had to reverse down+ around curved-slopes, (on a few occassions), when driving upto the entry-gate for the wrong company, and having to thus reverse back down & around (in the dark), to be able to turn-around.

• Even managed to somehow handle 30-45minutes of driving on countryside-roads, (the ones specifically signposted as not suitable for HGVs | on which 2 cars cannot even pass eachother during 90% of the road-route, let alone a full-size lorry), when I was delivering to a farm last week :: And thus had to perform over a dozen ''reversing backwards down + back-around corners on single-lane countryside tracks, until reaching a gully, where the on-coming car could squeeze past me! -_-

But yet I STILL feel extremely anxious & nervous about having to turn-up to work next week / every future week on-going, and drive a lorry down roads + around multi-lane roundabouts!! :cold_sweat: :cry:

But so my question is:

How long was it, when you personally first started driving a HGV lorry, until you stopped feeling extremely nervous non-stop constantly + like you were endangering the physical-safety of every other road-user?

2

Can’t really say, it’s lost to memory, the beginning of my HGV driving was a couple of decades ago, and everyone is different in how long it takes them to feel truly confident.

I got a huge boost by getting work driving bin wagons very early on, and my hazy recall of that time suggests that after a couple of weeks of narrow streets (and back lanes!) with cars “parked” left right and centre, plus masses and masses of reversing every day, any beginners nerves were soon gone. Plus, I’m not a naturally nervous driver.

Why on earth would you take your car test in an automatic?

3

Hmmm how can I say this without you taking it the wrong way? Here goes.

Either the nerves will fade or your just not cut out to be a lorry driver. And tbh a 7.5 tonner isn’t a HGV anyway. Driving or reversing a 7.5 tonner is no different to driving or reversing a car or van tbh just larger and longer and with less visibility.

Admittedly I started out driving vans when I passed my test and then 7.5 then C and then C+E. Over a period of years, maybe if I had gone straight to C+E from a car maybe things might have been different.

I can’t say I have felt nervous or anxious driving that I can think of, apart from initially on lesson and tests which is absolutely normal for most people.

First days and a new job and out on your own again some nerves/anxiety is normal usually for a few days maybe even a few weeks but after that it really should be becoming second nature in my opinion.

I’d say it’s probable your not cut out for the job and it isn’t for you like you thought it would be. However given a bit more time it may well ease and you’ll find your rhythm and maybe even later progress to a C lorry and maybe even the future want to try C+E again. But only you can know truly what is right or wrong for you, we can only go on the information you have given us.

Some nerves occasionally is totally normal especially when challenged with something new or difficult even for experienced drivers otherwise it wouldn’t be normal.

There of course is driving confidently and being over confident, and well as being under confident as a driver.

Is it possible you are overthinking things far too much and causing the nerves and anxiety yourself unnecessarily?

4

What is “nervous”? Genuine question.
If you mean alert and twitchy, that is good. If you ever stop being being that way you could slip into being one of the brain dead that daily avoid accidents t6hrough the awareness of others.

That is pretty extreme I reckon. But then again maybe you and I have a different attitude to life and risk overall.
If you loose sleep with worry, then it might be bad news for you in the long term,
I would rather share the road with a nervous driver than an over confident one. Too many of them already.

5

Is what you are describing imposter syndrome? I would say, from relatively recent experience, and starting out in a 7.5t myself, your imposter syndrome should be lifting next week. Although you are aware of your achievements, you don’t seem to notice a progression in the lessening of your anxiety and the growth of your confidence.

Have you done any minor damage to mirrors/gateposts/low walls etc yet? Because if you haven’t, you will so you need to be ready for that and to learn from it more than have it knock your confidence. The learning curve is steep, as you are discovering. Your experience should be gaining you confidence. It should be gaining you a sense of where your back end is. When you are going around roundabouts, watch you back wheels and you will see they are well within the lane. Once piece of advice that has stuck with me is “just follow the line/curb around”.

Do you notice that car drivers seem to need about 2m of space all around their car? That even when there is plenty of space for both of you, some car drivers stop to let you through when they didn’t need to? Maybe you still have your car hat on a bit and you need to wear your lorry hat a bit more.

Good luck and I hope that sinking feeling goes away soon.

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6

as someone said follow the left hand white line when baring right and the other way round for the other way unless you have some ridiculous overhang you should be fine same on roundabouts.

as to reversing two bits of advice the acronym goals (get out and look stupid). Don’t worry about being laughed at 99% of the people that laugh have beaten up old dogs with lots of damage on. If its a new site that you haven’t been to you may well have to go speak to someone to find out where they want it use that time to have a look. second bit of advice is ditch the camera most need calibration and setting up properly to be of any real use and what will you do if it fails. If you have done the look around you will of seen the low wall or post that isn’t in your mirrors if you think your getting close get out and look again

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7

About 5 minutes, in 1962. Passed my car test in the morning and was driving a Commer Bantam for the Coop in the afternoon. Gradually progressed through larger 4 wheelers and multi wheelers until one Saturday morning the Boss said ‘you’re taking that artic to Liverpool docks on Monday. Get some practice at home over the weekend’. A few years later I started on drawbars, 3 of them in Oz, and thought that by that time I had got the hang of it all. Later as a manager I converted a smal fleet from rigids and artics to drawbars with demountables, much more versatile and economic. :grinning:

8

I will read & reply to the posts from everyone else Tomorrow/or Tuesday (my next day off)…
But a sentence in this message of yours caught my eye (in my hotmail inbox):

How the hell did you know that:
‘‘I had done/would’ve done some minor-damage to a low wall’’?!? :astonished: :astonished: :neutral_face: :neutral_face: :dotted_line_face: :smile: lol

~

But yes, that already occured (I believe it was during my 2nd week of the job). :+1:

Was basically a situation where I had to reverse-park onto bay infront of a workshop;
Was barely space for my lorry to fit onto it (without blocking the road infront :: which was a narrow road / but in pretty busy use by other industrial lorries driving along the estate).

So I reversed as close upto the work-shop as possible (to take my lorry’s nose off the road);
Only to be greeted with the customer (workshop-owner) coming out shouting that my lorry had damaged/dented his door-frame.
*The back top tip of my lorry had touched the frame, yes | But I was moving at literally below 1mp/h, and so the ‘‘dent’’ I had made was very minimal :: Plus sat alongside 5 other similar-dents, no-doubtly made by other lorries before me.

~

I was so overwhelmed by this though! :anguished: :fearful: :pleading_face: :pleading_face: :cry:

The customer phoned my depot to report it, who phoned me and told me I had to phone their insurance + to take photos :: Then return back to the depot.

*I literally felt so so broken inside | Plus thought I’d be returning back to a:
‘‘Look we gave you a chance mate, you’re a nice guy, but just not good enough to be a HGV driver - So here’s your p45, and the dvla/police may be in-touch with you if the customer pursues a claim against you’’.

The actual reality when I arrived back at the depot was simply 1 of the managers ‘‘handing me my next cargo-delivery spec sheet’’. :no_mouth:

I started talking about what had happened :: But he just brushed it off almost, saying that based on the photos it was a minor thing which occurs regularly as part & parcel of the job - So to not worry about it.

9

I went to a drop just before xmas that you had to reverse back onto a scissor lift. Goods in bloke was a bit of an attitude and sarcastically told me if i say stop stop you do know where the brake is.

Turned out there was a reason they had another scissor lift to the left of this one and when i looked at it both uprights that were about 5 inch square tube with 3/8 walls and been bent to a 45 degree angle and both bracing pieces had been bent as well as ripping the whole thing out of the ground and back a foot. Yes it was an “experienced” driver

moral of the story is don’t worry about minor things if you got to leave your nose in the road slightly to be able to affect the delivery so be it.

10

Ignore the crap they spouted to you about DVLA?police being in touch with you, they sounds like complete ■■■■■■■■ of a company to work for anyway.

It was a minor bump for a new pass, it happens to all of us no matter new or old. A minor bump that would have naff all to do with either the DVLA or police. It is down the the insurance company to arrange the repairs in the claim.

Yes it is possible the company could try to get the money back from you if your were negligent by suing you for the damage, but the onus would be on them to prove you were negligent in your duties. Which generally is unlikely.

Stop worrying about crap that companies will tell you and try to get you to accept. That kind of behaviour to s new pass that has a minor bump does nothing for that person’s confidence at all. And certainly won’t have helped you.

Insurance is insurance for a reason, it’s part of the game of running a business, and most large companies will self insure up to a certain amount anyway, around 10k claim limits seems to be fairly normal for self insuring, So any claims costing less than that they just pay out for those claims. Only claims above their self insured amount go through the Insurance.

11

Don’t over think it and just get on with the job.
Drive with a sensible and mature attitude and stop unnecessarily undermining your own confidence.

12

The first few weeks are obviously the worst. Everything is new and you possibly don’t really know your way around. Perhaps you haven’t really ventured far out of your local area before. You haven’t been on big roundabouts and spaghetti junctions before. You don’t know about the tail-lift and how to handle the satnav, paperwork, any handheld device you have been given and you don’t know how to handle a pallet truck. There is a lot to take in, no doubt. It will get better though and that is guaranteed.

When I get in a van now, which is often a personal hired van, I sometimes wonder can I get it turned in this or that street. I have to get out and look because I am unfamiliar with the size of the vehicle through not doing it very often. Someone would probably have a look at me struggling and never think that I was an HGV driver. Confidence is all about the familiarity with what you are doing. Equally, there are those that are over-confident and will have a prang because of that.

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13

Hello, and thanks for all the replies guys. :+1:

In regards to reversing:
Whilst for my first few weeks I was extremely lousy/crap at reversing | I am now much more ‘competent’ at it, compared to how I used to be.

*98% of that is due to having my reversing camera, (which I don’t use for ‘‘positioning’’ as such / since it’s a clip-on camera, thus not perfectly centred anyways) | But it does provide me with a visual-view of what (who) is actually directly behind my lorry, Plus also shows me just how close-up to another object I am getting, (at my depot for example, due to limited parking-space, you have to reverse upto being literally just 5-10cms infront of the lorry you’re parking infront of!), plus when I’ve had to reverse down busy town-centre roads (with cars behind me/reverse backwards around corners in the dark, again with rows of queuing cars behind me), it simply would be impossible to do that without being able to see what/who was actually behind my lorry + their proximity to my lorry!

I do ofcourse additionally ‘‘get out & look’’ when it’s possible to do so :: But in a large % of situations that is simply not physically safely do-able (and/or) wouldn’t actually be beneficial, when there is constant changes going on behind you as to people walking/cars moving constantly behind you, as you’re reversing.

So this £100 reversing camera (which is literally just a magnetic clip-on camera that you magnetically clip-on to the back of your lorry / Links via wireless-bluetooth to 5’’ screen ~ Thus no wiring required at all), has literally been a life-saver for me!

In regards to roundabouts:

The issue that I have with them *(specifically when having to drive in the middle/right lanes, on multi-lane hectic busy roundabouts), is that:
‘‘Due to the curved shape of the roundabout, because my lorry is a ridgid shape + length, when the front of my lorry is positioned inbetween the lines of my lane :: The rear-end of my lorry will ultimately be jutting-out into 1 of the lanes either side of me / Due to the fact that the roundabout is a curved-bend shape :: But ‘the curvature of the bend’ is smaller than the length of my lorry’’.

So basically; As I’m driving around the circle-shape in middle-lane, whilst the front of my lorry is positioned between the lanes - As I travel rightwards around the circle (within my lane), the curvature of the circle bends…
But so whilst the front of my lorry follows that bend, the left rear-end of my lorry will inevitably be jutting-out into the left lane :: As it is a longer-length vs the length of the bend’s curve.

(I can see this, as I look into my left mirror, and can see that my left back-end of the lorry it jutting-out into the left-lane as I travel rightwards around the roundabout || However it’d be physically impossible for me to prevent that from happening, as I cannot make my lorry shorter, nor make it’s shape bend as the roundabout does!)

Overall, in regards to me continuing to be a HGV-driver:

Tbh, I had never in my life even considered (let alone planned), to be any form of driver for my career - Let alone a lorry driver! :neutral_face:

The mass-majority of the guys I work with all seem come from ‘‘industrial backgrounds’’…
Where they grew-up in ‘‘working-class households, had experience & exposure to industrial environments such as lorries & warehouses from a youngish age’’ | Thus becoming a HGV driver was a pretty natural flow for them.

I on the other hand only even bought my 1st car 3-years ago (at the age of 31)!
*I have however driven 56,000k miles in it now, over the past 3-years, (literally driving all over the country) | Which is where & when my passion & love for driving developed :: And thus led me to deciding to quit the industry that I’d spent the past 16-years building my career in, and instead become a professional-driver for my new career choice.

~

I have only been working as a HGV driver for 1.5 months now, so do realize that it’s still extremely early-stage, and thus would be premature of me to make any permenant-decisions just yet;
But the way I’m feeling at the moment basically is:
‘‘I have proven to myself that I am just about competent at driving a HGV lorry on a commercial-basis, yes :: But I don’t actually enjoy driving a HGV lorry / Wheras I genuinely enjoy driving my car’’.

Unfortunately though the trade-off quiet simply seems to be that if you want to actually work as ‘‘a long-distance/cross-country driver’’ for your day-to-day job, the only choice you have is to be a HGV lorry driver. :frowning:

As the only work available for van / 4.5t drivers seems to be:
Amazon (100+ parcels per day of multi-drop hell!) / Supermarket home-deliveries (so constant heavy-lifting + difficult finding parking) / Or furniture & white-goods deliveries (which I did years ago as a drivers-mate, and never plan to put my body through that physical-damage ever again!)

I am aware (or rather have seen), when parked-up the airport cargo hubs, that there are a number of cargo-logistics companies which use transit-vans & 3.5tonners for doing cargo-freight deliveries.

I’m not sure whereabouts these jobs are advertised (*as I cannot find any of them listed when searching online) :: However I am thinking that this sort of work may potentially be much more enjoyable for me vs driving a HGV lorry?

~

The company I currently work for does have a fleet of 20-30 vans, but they’re all manual unfortunately (*apart from 2 electrics).

But so my present thinking is:
I will stick at this current job for the next 1.5 months (to atleast get 3 full-months logged onto my CV of being a HGV-driver),
Plus to also see if after having done this job for 3-months I have started to actually enjoy driving a lorry / Or if I still dislike it, and constant wish it was a van I was driving.

(But if at that stage I still am simply not enjoying driving a lorry, or worse if I still feel constantly nervous & stressed while doing it :: I will at that point start emailing ‘‘the cargo-freight’’ companies based around here, and asking if they have job vacancies for Automatic-Only van/4.5t drivers, and then take things from there.

14

Lots of different points there.

Van/courier/express work can be very competitive with tight margins. Lots of owner drivers with low overheads work in it. Unless you (your employer) has an angle on it…it is not easy. Auto licence will likely be a problem.

There is also car delivery (not car transporter) to consider, but an auto licence only will be a definite disadvantage there as you`ll be different vehicles all the time.

Try to stick with the trucks for the time being as you say. The nerves should drop and enjoyment rise up a bit with time. You will only find out if you give it a fair go.

15

Of course driving a car around in your own time is less stressful. At the end of the day driving a large vehicle or any vehicle for work purposes is work and whilst you can get a bit of respite listening to the radio and being free to think, being in charge of a large vehicle is a significant responsibility that requires concentration without lapses.

Unlike the perception of quite a few members of the general public, it isn’t a ‘jolly’. I often say that there isn’t a perfect driving job. Even if you find one that is A to B the same route every day with no handball, it will have something inconvenient, like the start time or shift length. It probably won’t be that well paid and to earn a decent wage, you will need to put overtime hours in.

That is kind of what it is like and these forums are rammed full of complaints, moans and groans etc about the general state of the transport industry. It isn’t exactly like we are keeping it a secret.

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16

Regarding roundabouts, large vehicles can straddle lanes as appropriate. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough room so the driver can pre-empt this and take up two lanes. In this regard the driver of the large vehicle will incur the ire of the car driver, but in actual fact the car driver is being saved from him/herself.

In other situations at junctions, the driver of the large vehicle may have to position appropriately and wait for a gap in traffic in both directions to be able to turn left. A driver may need to swing out to the other side of the road in certain instances in order to miss whatever street furniture / pedestrians may be on the nearside when turning. All the time when doing these manoeuvres, the driver must also be looking out for cyclists that may be in the blind spot.

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17

when reversing up in the yard pick a slot that has a vehicle on one side in the same position you are in then just go back until your mirrors are level

18

Hello, and thanks for your replies.

But yes, the actual reality of driving a HGV lorry (well so far for me personally atleast) is that it’s alot less ‘‘glamourous / easy / enjoyable’’ vs the picture of how the job is portrayed. :roll_eyes: :expressionless:

Whilst I am have been extremely lucky to of found this incredibly rare job/company, which offers a role where you have a very minimal amount of drops + zero cargo-lifting (*even as a 7.5t driver)…
For some reason I am still returning home every evening feeling exhausted (both physically + pyschologically)!

~

When I did my training-week at this job (with a long-term 7.5t driver), he made it seem like it was:
A relaxed & laid-back job, where he was basically just spending everyday casually cruising around the country in his lorry, listening to music whilst enjoying the scenery, barely having to speak with the depot-managers, and thus overall having a nice enjoyable job.

But the reality I personally have found is that even though the job involves no physical lifting/carrying of boxes…
You (or atleast I personally) cannot simply just ‘‘cruise around roads’’ in my lorry (like cars & vans can do) :: As I instead have to spend every single second non-stop (60-minutes / per hour) either bending my neck sideways to constantly keep looking in my side-mirrors every 10-20 seconds (to endure my lorry isn’t drifting outside of my lane at all) + Be constantly using my brain to monitor the upcoming road-junctions ahead of me, and position my lorry in the correct lane/position to be able to navigate through every single road/junction of the entire route! :neutral_face: :face_exhaling: :face_with_head_bandage:

~

In regards to pay:
I personally earn an hourly rate of just above what I’d get if I was working as a Tesco home-delivery driver (*although I get the luxury of being paid for 12-hour shifts / rather than mini 8-10 hour shifts).

But tbh the hourly pay-rate isn’t an issue/factor for me at all.
(I would be delighted to accept a long-distance van driving job paying minimum-wage, for 3x 12-shifts per week VS a £13p/h job, but having to drive a big lorry!)

19

I will bet that doing a long drive was quite tiring when you first started driving cars? And is easier now?
What you find hard now could be almost boring in a few years time.
If driving ever becomes mind-numbing then you aren`t concentrating enough, but it will get easier.

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20

have you got your seat positioned correctly and the mirrors?? you shouldn’t have to be doing the hokey cokey to see in the mirrors.

driving is tiring when i did my class 1 lessons i had been driving 7.5 and 18 tonners for 12 hour shifts for a couple of years 6 hours in an arctic on instruction and i slept for 13 hours straight.

lastly as your confidence grows you will relax more so you wont get so tired and you wont be watching every little thing in the mirror like a hawk you will get a feel for the dimensions and how the vehicle moves with in a given space so a quick glance to see if you have cleared an obstical is all that is needed

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