So it’s the last day of the year, what are you going to change, or do differently in 2025?
At this age, I can’t see me changing too much in how I do things, so it’ll be just keeping on top of all the things I’ve been trying to do for years now, most of which involves “living in the now” and not letting pointless rubbish distract me from what is truly important (family time).
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I had a bloody good teacher on dealing with life who aint here anymore, and of whom I will always be grateful to for the life coaching.
So as for resolutions?..just business as usual for me tbh.
I will keep prioritising on my lovely wife and family, and proper mates, getting my priorities right by not taking my job and work too seriously, and maintaining a decent lifestyle alongside it.
Just carry on ducking and diving through all the bull sh dished out by both the country and the company.
Playing them at their own game, beating them with their own stick and on average 8 to 9 times out of 10 succeeding and winning.
(But the clever bit is appearing to lose and making them think they have won…
)
Bosh everybody’s happy in bliss in their own way.
Maintain a good social life…life is too short not to, oh aye watch the Toon winning the League cup and qualifying for European football.
Genearally not act my age…(that is when ya know you’ve got old) take no sh off anybody, and always appear over confident and unpredictable to ward off the d/heads.
Stopping now, giving too many secrets away.
Basically having life ‘sorted’.
In fact just carrying on as normal.
I’ve just read that back it even sounds arrogant and big headed to ME🙄.sorry.
But that is just …‘things as they are’.
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Despite my lack of patience for fools, I’m going to try to ignore them. No guarantees though.
Apart from that, I’m pretty happy with the way things are ticking over, so no changes planned.
I’m going to get a p3nis extension, breast implants, 1000kg of industrial grade vaseline and a quiet Croft in the Highlands of Scotland.
Once I can get my own todger between my own fun pillows I’ll disappear from public life forever.
Failing that I’ll probably resolve to eat less white bread.
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Can I come and film it?
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Only if I can trust you not to come whilst filming it
You always manage to go that one step further
Dunno why I bother.
You win.
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Handing my notice in on Jan 2nd, and never driving HGVs full time again. Probably not even part time. I’ve had my fill.
You’ll be back before Easter.
I can say with 100% certainty I will not.
What went wrong like?
I don’t think there’s enough disc space on the servers to answer that 
Just everything about the job has got to me. Mostly though it’s the sheer number of clueless idiots driving these days - cars and lorries. Driving standards are worse than they’ve ever been, and it’s not getting better. Roads are way too congested too, and I don’t want to spend my life in the middle of it daily any more. All I feel is misery, and it only gets worse. That’s when you know it’s time to change your line of work. So when better than the start of a new year?
Got to agree with all of that.
I just try and raise above all the crap on the roads,.safe in the knowledge my licence is still clean year after year…because I don’t join in.
What do ya expect when policing and patrolling is replaced with revenue raising cameras…with the priority on that revenue rather than road safety.
When new drivers are just taught to pass a test on a set route rather than to actually drive to the conditions you mention.
If I had any notion of jacking it would be more about the way the job is ran, the ridiculous hours many are just expected to work as a routine.
The non job management types who’s goal is to make your working life a misery (if you let them) by mad assed schemes they come up with to justify said non jobs.
Drivers becoing insurance brokers, and firms spying on you in cabs…
Then they wonder why they end up employing a bunch of servile incompetent f.wits.
Then of course the eager to please brown nosers who will…always do it.
As I have said before mate, best just to sideswipe all the underlying b/s, keep yer head down, and look after YOU,.and f.everybody else working beside you making the job worse.
Robroy, yes mate, all of the above. It all gets to me. I started back in 2001, and since then I’ve seen massive changes, most for the worse.
Micro management and micro surveillance (Microlise, cameras, etc).
The constant background paranoia of the driver facing cameras. I never got used to them, and my firm have used them to get rid of people.
In fact, cameras everywhere. Being under so much ubiquitous surveillance in society generally is completely abnormal. It’s abhorrent. When I started on HGVs I never used to even think of all this. But now, the workplace, my cab, feels like some sort of open prison.
The ridiculous hours and relentless nightly workload
Road closures, roadworks, congestion, and accidents everywhere
Too many timid Timothys driving at 35 mph through roadworks, or the Dartford tunnel with their brake lights coming on every few seconds. Why can’t people maintain a steady 50mph? I know it only costs me a few seconds, but it’s frustrating day after day for years.
Idiot drivers everywhere, and the falling standard of HGV drivers too. Giving free class 1 licences to everyone and anyone a few years back, and dumbing down the test was taking 3 steps backwards. It shows out there.
The sheer responsibility is not properly compensated by wage imo
Chronic shortage of parking (it’s often difficult at night to find a space to take a tacho break) and generally terrible facilities.
Sitting in drivers waiting rooms for 2 or 3 hours on hard plastic chairs waiting for 20 pallets of Lemonade to get tipped with Heart FM on full blast. When I look around in those places, I can see the depression etched into all the drivers’ faces.
Where my tax money is spent - the workshy who get free housing and dentistry etc, immigrants, etc etc
The DCPC shenanigans.
Lazy drivers not reporting defects - bald tyres especially.
It’s all ground me down and it feels like groundhog day everyday. And the wage appears to be dropping. Many class one jobs are only a few quid above minimum wage now.
So my plans for 2025 are to rest for a few months, then ease back into part time forklift work around April, or local van driving for a car-parts place 9-5, earning just up to the tax threshold, and spending the rest of my time pottering about doing my things. I no longer need full time work. If I do go back full time, it will never be lorry driving.
Wow…it DOES sound like you have had a complete gut full of it all mate.
I go back a bit further than 2001 so you can imagine the changes I have witnessed, a lot for good, but far outweighed by the bad.
Maybe you are doing the right thing getting tf out of it all if you feel as bad as that.
It is just a shame that the type of f/wits who dish out all this crap are actually getting rid of good professional drivers, and even deterring young new blood.
Why can they not see that they have f.d up a job even more than it already was.
Still they continue with the b/s.
A mate of mine showed me an end of year letter from his firm, all self congratulatory telling the drivers which ‘managers’ had been promoted to some fictional job title or other, but no mention of an upcoming pay raise for their drivers…the backbone of the firm.
As I said mate, I just continue to keep my head down, give a 100% effort to a job I like doing, tramping around SW doing farms and small engineering firms, and quietly look upon all this type of crap with the contempt it deserves.
Got to say though if I was doing full time days on supermarket deliveries I would not last a week.
Good luck with whatever direction you gan down mate.
Cheers Robroy.
Though I’ve been driving for a living since 2001, the first time I rode in a lorry was 1983, with my dad in his old Ford Cargo. I was mad on lorries, and knew by the age of 6 (that’s 40 years ago!!!) I wanted to be an HGV driver. That’s all I wanted to do. School was to me a waste of time and effort, as I was dead set on my future career. I rode with my dad through all school holidays every year until he quit driving in the mid 90s, so remember those decades well. The week I left school I signed on with an agency and worked as a driver’s mate. Used to work for Booker Fitch (who became 3663) on multidrop and loved it. Did dray work, and collected bottles of Bud at most pubs, and the driver and I would drink one or two on the way back to base. With other firms we’d sell pallets and split the money. Occasionally I’d open the fuse box and pull the limiter fuse for the driver so we could crack on. No hi viz’s or hard hats. The job was great, and the freedoms we had would be unbelievable in today’s world of micro-surveillance. We’d stop at some great cafes and actually chat with other drivers. Most of this would be frowned upon, or simply wouldn’t happen these days. Are there many old style transport cafes left?
When I began driving HGVs myself, I used to take friends, relatives, and girlfriends with me on my nightshifts and have a great laugh. I took my retired ex-lorry driver dad with me! All impossible these days.
Anyway, rose tinted specs and all that.
I still love lorries. I think they’re great feats of engineering, and i’ll still go to shows, especially at Gaydon. But the reality of driving one for a living is now, for me at least, a nightmare. I can no longer adapt to all the changes, especially the loss of freedoms that came with the job.
Right, that’s all off my chest
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