waynedl:
Walked out on a job today, got there, 6 drops around Yorkshire, around 20 pages of product for handball at these drops…
Delivery instructions consisted of, use the lift, up stairs through fire escape etc…
Keys in, tacho out, gone.
I had a pallet today, delivered to home.
It was a big letter saying “Dear driver, please call the customer when you will be one hour away. On the arrival please take the pallet up the drive, but only on small bricks, do not drive pallet truck on the tiles, as you might damage them, then please unpack it and handball it into the customer house, and then please take pallets and rubbish away. THIS HAS TO BE DONE THAT WAY and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RUBBISH SHOULD BE LEFT AT CUSTOMER PREMISES”.
Came to place, lady off course expected me to follow all the rules and to handball full palet of bloody heavy boxes into her living room. I told her “Pallet on your driveway, job done, I am sorry”. She said “But there is a letter saying what you should do”. “I am sorry, lady, but I know what I should do, and what I should do is what the company is paid for”. “But this letter says something different”. I took my pen and added on the letter “On arrival, customer should dance the full Swan Lake ballet for the driver” and then asked again “Would you sign, or you want me to take it back?” She started to laugh, then asked: “So it’s impossible to have it delivered my way?” asked she. “Off course is possible” - I answered - “but as everything else, such service has to be paid for”. “Well, I see” said she, smiling and signing the paper “Ok, then, I know it’s not your fault of bad will, thank you anyway”.
That’s what fun, but also nice one. I like it
One could be forgiven for thinking you’re FOS sometimes… You’re increasingly showing signs of the deadly MMTM disease.
gogzy:
i used to like multidrop, then i got a bit sick of it.
worked for most parcel companies
Home delivery network was probably the hardest one i did though, run up to xmas i was roughly doing 200 drops a day…but i was paid by the parcel so the more we did the better our wage., was commonplace to make 6/700 a week, anything 100 or below was classed as an easy day, 200 drops leave the depot at 10am, be back in the depot for 4pm. my record for the most deliveried in one hour was 95 drops…but thats the type of job where you dont know what a seatbelt is, and also brakes…
nowadays i find 40 drops hardgoing, never really done multi drop in an artic, i mean 4/5 drops with 3 collections on the way back is easy enough for me
Before my trucking days, my first driving job was for HDNL in a battered old transit for about 6 months. They put me in Luton with 200 drops for the first week or two, and that was depressing, half of the parcels didn’t get delivered. I then got transferred to the Aylesbury/Wendover/Princes Ris area, lots of rural stuff and beautiful scenery - best part of the job. It was a complete ■■■■■ at first, but once you got to know the way around your patch you would be alright and be back at reasonable times. Becuase it was rural I didn’t have so many drops. I was paid normally for the first 97 drops but at Christmas time you’d get more for the rest of them, and I was doing up to 160 sometimes. Tips at christmas, and some nice customers. Catalogue delivering on a saturday was a bit of a pain, but you got paid for each one done so the idea was you’d do as many as possible in a short period of time. This meant you’d transfer them to the front of the van near the handbrake and launch them at the property from the van as you drove by slowly! I left the job and immediately put on weight - it was great exercise!
You had good drops (pretty ladies) and bad ones (old peoples homes) and quite a few funny incidents every now and then. One particular lady came out of her house screaming at me not to turn around on her drive (I wouldn’t normally do this but people had parked in the turning area at the bottom of the cul de sac and hers was the safest one to use), so I reversed back on it and parked up and rang on her doorbell. I then proceeded to ask her quite politely what was her problem and gave her my side of the story, and she just yelled at me to stop giving her abuse and that she’d call the police, so off I went. Of course, the day came when she’d ordered something online just before Christmas. I sent it back at refused. A few days later I the same parcel came out but this time addressed to her neighbours house - she’d obviously worked out who’s delivering her goods . That went back refused too!
I look back on the job with fondness now. But I also remember why I left. It could be amazingly stressful as you’re put under a lot of pressure to get a lot of work done, and god help anyone who decided to drive 10mph below the speed limit whilst in front of me! Driving standards go straight out of the window and blood pressure can get very high, infact it can turn you into a bit of a animal. That wasn’t what I went into driving for. Since I’ve been a HGV driver I do things safely and in my own time (not always what the boss wants), much nicer way to work, but I miss all the country lane driving. I’d like to give heating fuel delivery a go one day, best of both worlds then I guess.
That’s the proof that doing multi drop can actually cause zb brain damage and most multi drop drivers are permanently affected by doing it for long periods of time.
I NEED to get out of this ■■■■■!
got 5 days at allied bakeries coming up, on the plus side though I get taught the route before I get let loose on it. I’ll take a sketch pad and draw a little map from the 1st drop to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, 3rd to 4th etc the bad part’s 02:00 starts for £6.50/hr
Rob K:
One could be forgiven for thinking you’re FOS sometimes… You’re increasingly showing signs of the deadly MMTM disease.
FOS? MMTM?
I am not sure what do you mean by these abbrevation… But we all know, that if I would handball all the stuff the customer wants me to, I would bring the half of the lorry back to the yard…
Only today I had, apart of these boxes:
Fridge-Freezer (93 kgs) “It has to go upstairs”
Pallet for small farmacy, 120 kgs, but no access for HGV to the back doors and front doors are like 50 metres up the pedestrian zone (physically no access as well)
two pallets of boxes to the Pakistani shop (“me alone here, I open the door down and you put it here on the top stairs”)
Huge oil tank “I need it there at the corner of the grass on the back of my garden”
If I would do everything they expect from me, I would be still doing that shift I started on previous Wednesday morning
gogzy:
i used to like multidrop, then i got a bit sick of it.
worked for most parcel companies
Home delivery network was probably the hardest one i did though, run up to xmas i was roughly doing 200 drops a day.
Don’t tell me I bet that job ended up on the job centre’s list of multi drop jobs waiting for the next mug who’d also get ‘a bit sick of it’ within a couple of days.
nah i was only there for 5 months, was only meant to be xmas cover but somehow got a few extra months there. i was one of the slow guys there aswell. some guys would leave start work at 8, have the van loaded with 200 drops by 8:15 and out the door by 8:17, then back in the depot by 12pm.
granted they got the same area every day, and had been at it for years, they know who they can leave parcels with, they know who wont be in and where parcels can be placed.
manowar it was great exercise for me aswell, im sure the van got parked up half the day, i had 25 drops in the same street one day…was laughing at that one lol. i was put in a ldv convoy/maxus. i was lucky in that i got areas that i knew and some areas i didnt but they soon worked out who to send where with me being what they cried a “senior driver”…i was only 20 at the time lol.
one day i did get a 50 dropper up in the highlands…was a long run, houses in the middle of nowhere but it was an amazing run, great scenery.
i remember they spent 20 mins trying to explain to me how the pay scheme worked for them, 65 quid a day minimum…over your target then its by the parcel. they eventually got it to me by saying if you do x amount your gonna get paid well…
most i made was £802 in one week after tax…not bad for a van lol. but i did do a saturday catalouge run, late friday night packing the van ready for saturday…and yea plenty of time was spent launching the catalouges at peoples houses. i rattled somebodys door once with one early on a sunday lol.
i had some really good drops. some people id be at their house everyday, they would always say *if im not in ust leave it here or there or the garage is left open so just leave it in their blah blah.
they were pretty strict on bringing parcels back that you couldnt get deliveried, above 10 parcels (yes that could be one drop) and they started getting ■■■■■ with you, i did get plenty of days where i cleared every drop and days where things went ■■■■■ up, i did xmas eve for them, under no circumstances were we to bring ANYTHING back and had to stay out till everything was gone which meant me sitting out somebodys house for 3 hours to give them their parcels.
i do miss the money and the exercise but christ it was headnipping doing that amount of work, dont know how i ever did it tbh.
i worked full time for brakes out of the boughton astley depot, when i first started isweated like a pig and thought i was going to die, anyway after several weeks i was able to secure a couple of regular runs which after a while got quicker and quicker to do, i dont think 15 drops is really multi drop not when you think some of these drivers on here are doing 100+ drops, the problem with brakes is it can take you upto 2 hours just to do one drop, a good clue as to where to park your wagon is look for the rubbish bins, nearly always by the kitchen, and ignore the comments from chefs like your late or i aint got time to check it of, just ask for a sarnie and a cup of tea, and leave them to it, it was a real ball ache of a job tho the pump trucks were next to useless and if it was caged then you could gurantee the wheels would be knackered on the heaviest cages,
Lol, that’s surprisingly accurate! I can see it’s doable once you get the hang of it but I don’t want to, I don’t mind a bit of graft but the pressure can be ridiculous and isn’t what I signed up for.
To be honest, I think my days with the agency in question are numbered, they dropped their wages by a third last year to get through the recession and came crawling to me when two thirds of their drivers went elsewhere, it now seems that pitiful rate is a flat rate- including Sundays and nights. Bye bye.
First, I’d best stress this is my own opinions, hearsay and findings. Maybe I just get the worst jobs and pay, and I can’t say for sure how they treat anyone other than me.
darkseeker:
First, I’d best stress this is my own opinions, hearsay and findings. Maybe I just get the worst jobs and pay, and I can’t say for sure how they treat anyone other than me.
You have p.m mate.
It’s not the only 1, a lot of agency’s are paying flat rate now, or very little extra at weekends and only the hours you work etc.
They blame it on the recession, but we all know it’s just to make more money, the greedy goits.
If every agency on the planet burnt down, the world would be a much better place…
darkseeker:
First, I’d best stress this is my own opinions, hearsay and findings. Maybe I just get the worst jobs and pay, and I can’t say for sure how they treat anyone other than me.
You have p.m mate.
It’s not the only 1, a lot of agency’s are paying flat rate now, or very little extra at weekends and only the hours you work etc.
They blame it on the recession, but we all know it’s just to make more money, the greedy goits.
If every agency on the planet burnt down, the world would be a much better place…
"oi… give me back my lighter "
I agree with all of that - you could argue I’d be out of work but I don’t think so; who covers all the sick days and holidays if there’s no agency drivers!?
I did originally say who it was but I’m pretty sure that’s against some rule or other.
