lumpygreenpoo:
I’m 50, started on vans at 20 and I got my Class 1 at 22. It’s all I ever wanted to do. However, from the articles I’ve been reading recently, the demise of professional HGV Drivers is likely to continue with the introduction of driverless trucks.
I never thought it would happen but automated trucks are heavily utilised on mining operations in Australia. Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), for example, made a successful delivery of beer, driving autonomously on the highway between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, a distance of 120 miles.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/25/driverless-beer-run-bud-makes-shipment-with-self-driving-truck.html
Another article mentioned driverless trucks are likely to be introduced before driverless cars, we could see their introduction within 10 years time.
I’ll be 60, 10 years before retirement, and too old to retrain.
Drivers will be required to be present, to deal with the inevitable diversions/pile ups/ double parked cars/etc etc. How are you telling a driverless truck ‘you’re early, go away and come back in two hours/tomorrow’…
Apologies for this slight side track, but it does relate to my previous theme in some way.
I have just read in my local paper about the cost to the taxpayer of the local and National elections. Delivering election mailing material for candidates at the 2015 election and the wages for those who had to count the votes came to £122 million. The referendum last year came in at £58 Million. Now those elections were time scheduled by law so the cost can be grudgingly accepted.
But now we are doing it all over again.
That’s an awful lot of my money which is going to be wasted on pompous ego trips which could have been far better spent.
the nodding donkey:
lumpygreenpoo:
I’m 50, started on vans at 20 and I got my Class 1 at 22. It’s all I ever wanted to do. However, from the articles I’ve been reading recently, the demise of professional HGV Drivers is likely to continue with the introduction of driverless trucks.
I never thought it would happen but automated trucks are heavily utilised on mining operations in Australia. Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), for example, made a successful delivery of beer, driving autonomously on the highway between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, a distance of 120 miles.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/25/driverless-beer-run-bud-makes-shipment-with-self-driving-truck.html
Another article mentioned driverless trucks are likely to be introduced before driverless cars, we could see their introduction within 10 years time.
I’ll be 60, 10 years before retirement, and too old to retrain.
Drivers will be required to be present, to deal with the inevitable diversions/pile ups/ double parked cars/etc etc. How are you telling a driverless truck ‘you’re early, go away and come back in two hours/tomorrow’…
No they wont. Viz Southern Rail/ RMT guards dispute. Only an attendant will be required to be present.
So maybe not much difference then? 
cav551:
Apologies for this slight side track, but it does relate to my previous theme in some way.
I have just read in my local paper about the cost to the taxpayer of the local and National elections. Delivering election mailing material for candidates at the 2015 election and the wages for those who had to count the votes came to £122 million. The referendum last year came in at £58 Million. Now those elections were time scheduled by law so the cost can be grudgingly accepted.
But now we are doing it all over again.
That’s an awful lot of my money which is going to be wasted on pompous ego trips which could have been far better spent.
Quite so. Why are we having an election if not for party political reasons? For months we heard from May there would be no election, the polls show a strong showing for May and Voila!
Article 50 went through with a vote of 498 against 114.
The Eu negotiators wont care if the UK Gov has amajority of 1 or 100, they will negotiate with whoever is in charge. Seems to me that by saying the vote is about Brexit, May will have a mandate to increase taxes (no promises about that anymore notice) and change any number of laws that dont suit her own agenda.
By using the Eu as some sort of bogey man we are invited to stand behind our own “bloody difficult woman” and support her. HOORAY ! And by the way we`ll get rid of promises about hospital waiting times, education spending (by syphoning money from needyinner city schools to her pet Grammer schools), etc etc, employment rights, etc
By focusing on one topic we the electorate are in danger of ignoring all the other measures that may be brought in on the back of it.
eagerbeaver:
Problem is though J, which bunch of liars do you vote for?
Corbyn is unelectable. Farron is a balloon. UKIP rather sadly in my opinion are becoming obsolete.
Slim pickings mate unfortunately. Many years of underhand behaviour have brought us to this point 
UKIP didn’t become obsolete.It was more like firstly the contradiction in its own ideological position of both Federalist UK v anti Federalist EU.With a leadership torn between Tories on steroids on one side v a natural working class vote looking for a Nationalist Labour stance on the other.Then last but not least an electoral system that gives 56 seats to the SNP for around 1.5 million votes but effectively nothing to UKIP for almost 4 million votes.
Then the gullible electorate thinks the way to fix all that is to vote for May. 
Although having said that if it looks and sounds like an establishment imposed duck in the form of Farage,Trump and now Le Pen all being warned off and the electoral system being manipulated to deliver whatever foregone conclusion the establishment wants,then it’s probably a duck.
In this case we’re meant to believe that May has stalled Brexit and then nuked a functioning government and that UKIP’s mostly natural working class vote will now vote for remainer May,based on supposedly trusting her to deliver the Brexit that she’s so far chosen to put on hold.As opposed to her being just another establishment figure like Thatcher.Working for the interests of a regime,that’s based on the idea that the way to create a good economy,is to minimise wage levels by whatever means,especially the import of labour to over supply the labour market.
The non existent driver shortage just being used by employers as insurance,in the ( extremely ) unlikely event that May will actually deliver on the issue of stopping free movement of low wage expectation East Euro labour in the form of so called hard Brexit.Ironically in large part to compensate for punitive anti road transport policies like silly levels of fuel taxation and productivety being held back by unrealistic vehicle weights and dimension limits.All as part of a deliberate policy to shift freight from road to the big business private rail interests.The question for the OP in that environment being why would any new driver choose to enter the road transport industry rather than the rail transport industry for just one example ?.Or even just look for an easy customer service job driving cars for the local main dealership if not driving a bus for 40 hours per week on an out of town route ?.
Juddian:
Bloody Hell Cav, thats a depressing post, and as right on the mark as i’ve seen for some time, sadly.
When we’ve got a population of 100 million, will they still need to import another half a million a year to produce enough new workers (if only half of them were workers ) to keep the whole unsustainable ponzi scheme afloat? citing old people as the culprits as usual.
Those still capable if independent thought can see the doomsday scenarios developing, whats coming in relatively short order isn’t going to be pretty, but as Cav rightly says, our electorate are blindly going to vote without fail for more of the same, and then amazingly they will seem baffled that they’ve ended up with exactly what they voted for, sheer lunacy doesn’t come any more plain than our voting public.
The solution is very simple, in my mind anyway, you euthenase the poor. Why do you think austerity has such popularity with the wealthy? It’s the tool of choice for the spiteful B’stards who change pension rules, always to favour the fund managers. The heartless who cut benefits by using private companies with a perfomance related inducement devoid of joined up thinking.
Thier mantra- You’re not worthy if you’re not wealthy.
cav551:
the nodding donkey:
lumpygreenpoo:
I’m 50, started on vans at 20 and I got my Class 1 at 22. It’s all I ever wanted to do. However, from the articles I’ve been reading recently, the demise of professional HGV Drivers is likely to continue with the introduction of driverless trucks.
I never thought it would happen but automated trucks are heavily utilised on mining operations in Australia. Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), for example, made a successful delivery of beer, driving autonomously on the highway between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, a distance of 120 miles.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/25/driverless-beer-run-bud-makes-shipment-with-self-driving-truck.html
Another article mentioned driverless trucks are likely to be introduced before driverless cars, we could see their introduction within 10 years time.
I’ll be 60, 10 years before retirement, and too old to retrain.
Drivers will be required to be present, to deal with the inevitable diversions/pile ups/ double parked cars/etc etc. How are you telling a driverless truck ‘you’re early, go away and come back in two hours/tomorrow’…
No they wont. Viz Southern Rail/ RMT guards dispute. Only an attendant will be required to be present.
So maybe not much difference then?
Plenty of the European countries already call Truckers “Conducteurs” or something similar… Be careful what you wish for!
Winseer:
Plenty of the European countries already call Truckers “Conducteurs” or something similar… Be careful what you wish for!
Youre correct, and those may well be the countries that provide free parking, both on motorways, and on the edge of towns, have good restaurants, and treat their drivers with some degree of respect. All these side effects of a name that doesnt translate too well into English, be careful !
None of these look like drivers to me when it comes to “Conductors”…
We should resist efforts to change Britishness for anything foreign then. 
unlike this guy “Conducting” a doorstep walkabout, that doesn’t seem to connect.
Is that first image one of your last “Summer Holiday”? 
Jumping ship is the only option, this one is sinking, faster than you would have thought 
att:
Jumping ship is the only option, this one is sinking, faster than you would have thought
but but, vote for me, the new Iron Maiden, i mean what i say what i say when i promise a real Brexit…look at how my word is my bond, i told you there would be no early election and when i was home secretary i told you i would bring immigration levels down to the tens of thousands, my leader slippery dave said so too.
Your right though, but its finding somewhere that will accept us now that isn’t going to be bankrupt and overrun with all sorts in a few years, New Zealand will probably be the rich persons bolt hole, the more mundane of us might have to beg for sanctuary in Hungary Czech Republic Poland or Russia when what’s coming is over and we’ve lost
cav551:
the nodding donkey:
lumpygreenpoo:
I’m 50, started on vans at 20 and I got my Class 1 at 22. It’s all I ever wanted to do. However, from the articles I’ve been reading recently, the demise of professional HGV Drivers is likely to continue with the introduction of driverless trucks.
I never thought it would happen but automated trucks are heavily utilised on mining operations in Australia. Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), for example, made a successful delivery of beer, driving autonomously on the highway between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, a distance of 120 miles.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/25/driverless-beer-run-bud-makes-shipment-with-self-driving-truck.html
Another article mentioned driverless trucks are likely to be introduced before driverless cars, we could see their introduction within 10 years time.
I’ll be 60, 10 years before retirement, and too old to retrain.
Drivers will be required to be present, to deal with the inevitable diversions/pile ups/ double parked cars/etc etc. How are you telling a driverless truck ‘you’re early, go away and come back in two hours/tomorrow’…
No they wont. Viz Southern Rail/ RMT guards dispute. Only an attendant will be required to be present.
So maybe not much difference then?
Last time I drove a truck, it could go anywhere it liked. Left. Right. Do a jolly u turn if it fancied…
Please bring a brain, and a sensible argument, if you wish to contribute.
Or, to use your line of arguing, why do aeroplanes have a pilot, a co-pilot, and a flight engineer?
When they have an auto pilot??
Well? Well clever clogs? Answer that…
You must not fotget who if truck drived by agency driver and job done but by statistik anyway this is vacancy .So if they found this thousand drivers that thousand agency drivers will be out of job.
I think being a newbie reading all this is on one hand with all the automated talk I see were people are coming from but we are plenty of year away any of them on uk roads. T&cs are ■■■■■ in every job, so are working conditions and wages and hours. Everyone is in the same boat. It’s each to there own in what they want to do.
Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
Where this undelivered load,empty store,stopped factory.If every day 50000 vacancy and one truck care 26 pallets .So at least 1 million pallets not delivered everyday or near half billion per years.Where this load?
TiredAndEmotional:
Andrejs:
Where this undelivered load,empty store,stopped factory.If every day 50000 vacancy thay in one truck care 26 pallets .So at least 1 million pallets not delivered everyday or near half billion per years.Where this load?
Exactly.
And how many posts have there been of drivers signing on with an agency offering work, to then sit on their bums waiting for the phone to ring? If there is a real shortage why are these drivers doing nowt?
If Goverment granted RHA,FTA some million quid for drivers trainingeducation or…And they give training for 1000 man and will report who all done,no vacancy but bosses get good bonuses.
