As a lorry driver for many years, I have done, coal, steel, bricks, concrete blocks, grain, gaz, to mention a few, I did not like picking up grain in sacks or delivering them, bricks could be a pain in wet or freezing weather, steel you always had the feeling you may end up with it up your backside. but only one job I jacked it in, because I would not clear up this house of human excument, when working on a tipper. so lads what did you draw the line at, or tried to advoid. 
Hi Norman,
Like you I,ve carried all sorts but I was once given a job taking beer barrel hoops to Hereford galvanizing, after 3 trips coming out of there breathless and choking I told the forman no more! Only time I refused a job but I found out later I had mild asthma which may have been the reason I couldnât breathe in there !
after getting HGV pestered grampian chickens for a job until they gave in and gave me a start. i used to run effluent out of factory to sewage plant at niggg bay aberdeen. that job was okayâŚbut, once a week i had to go round all their farms picking up the dead birds which had been put into black bags. the stink was awful. the bags that were over a few days old were crawling with maggots and liquid ran out them. i had to wear a mask to do it. eventually they gave me 2 lads out of the factory 2 load the lorry! they wore trainers never wore masks and used to throw what was left of the birds at each other! used to make me feel sick. we went to knackers yard near kintore and they chucked the bags off. back at the factory the bed of wagon was moving with maggots. used to put chlorine on and wash it down. hated every minute of it
Tallow into Cussons Nottingham, Stapleford Abbotts or Recovered Veg Oil from Robbie Dwyers into Grannox in Widnes 
Fishmeal out of HFM Hull or carbon black from Avonmouth to Modena in a fridge and then cleaning it out before loading peaches. 
China clay out of St.Austell,carbon black out of Avonmouth,but the real job I hated was loading wet clay straight through the side of a euroliner from France to Italy.To unload,you had to open both sides and they pushed it off with a shovel-loader.It was a pig to clean out though!
Hay or straw in small bales.
I didnât mind the hard work,but by the nature of the job it was summertime and you wanted to strip off.
Whatever part of your skin was exposed when handballing would be cut to shreds.
I do a lot of UCO (used cooking oil) in my present job which isnât too bad.
Itâs the discarded animal fat we pick up that is the gut wrenching stuff.
The âdrippingsâ from the spit roasted chickens from supermarkets etc. donât make for a nice load in the height of the summer.
I think that the worst I used to do in my young days (early sixties) were the âcatchweightsâ of wheat.In those days everything was handball.Grain was bagged in "West of England " sacks which were supposed to contain two and a quarter hundredweight.However the farmers used to fill them full leaving just enough sack to tie up the âearsâ This made them three hundredweight.When they came up the elevator you had to catch them as high up on your neck as possible and run up the trailer and drop them in to position.Then run back down because another was comimg up.It makes me shudder now to think about it. 
Undefronted crude benzene out of some coking ovens - the hydrogen sulphide in it smelt like rotten eggs and isophorone out of BP Chem at Saltend Hull,smelt like cat p***,always took it to Fisons at Harston Cambridge and was once asked to shift the MK5 I had off a cafe park as it was putting drivers off their snap! 
Police once pulled me as they thought tank was leaking but it was just the fumes venting out of the tank.
Caustic Soda that you sometimes had to shovel out of the back of a tipper from I.C.I. Ellesmere Port.
Fibreglass Insulation from St Helens.
Carbon Black from anywhere.
Wheel Nut:
Tallow into Cussons Nottingham:
One of those jobs I had blanked from my memory⌠The grade 6 papered as grade 2 for the washout, the fat clinging to everything it touched, the cloy of the stink that seems to weld itself to your nostrils⌠NICE!!
jimmy m:
once a week i had to go round all their farms picking up the dead birds which had been put into black bags. the stink was awful. the bags that were over a few days old were crawling with maggots and liquid ran out them.
One of the worst stinks imaginable. There is a place in the Leicester area makes feathermeal and they have outdoor bays full of dead fowl. I hated going there as you always had to wait and breathing was near impossible. I eventually phoned the yard and said I was not staying there another minute and they gave the job up as I was the only clown to ever have got a load on from there. Everyone else had left before they ever loaded there.
But the one I really hated was sugar beet shreds. I used to load it from the plant when it was warm and malleable then have about 450 (so it seemed) drops to farms all over Devon and Cornwall. It was handball on/ handball off and you were always left to get on with it. The load would be floor to roof and would sweat so there was condensation on the roof which drip onto the top bags so they would swell and tear. You could guarantee the farms would be the silliest little holes wanting 20 bags in the barn loft and 5 left out for later. Climbing a ladder with 3/4 cwt bags about 4â long was not fun, and then the farmer would be telling you to shift the 3 bags from the last lot so he uses the old stuff first and you almost always found a family of rats under the old stuff.By the time you got to the farms the poxy bags would be rock solid and wedged together so you had to beat the snot out of them to get them out.
Funnily enough, the boss never used to get near me either before or after that particular job was given to me.
Hiya i forgot about the sugar beet. Bobthedog never mentioned that the dry beet shreads made you ich like mad when it got inside your shirt.
Then the rockwool pipe cladding. we used to do the oil refineries with that sâŚt.I wouldânt help to unload unless they gave me a paper suit and
garantee me a shower. which was classed as a luxury in a Shell or Esso. God iâve had a hard life. winge winge winge.
John
Some of you lads had lousey jobs, Jimmy m, hope you was a keen angler, at less the perk in your job, was free maggots 
, Charlie one, them bleeding sack were heavy, I detested the job, just kept doing it, until another job came along also that smell of sulphur or rotten eggs, used to turn my stomach.
On reading the postings on this thread I have come to the conclusion that we were all mad.Why did we do it.For me it was the fact that at 21 I was married with on child and one one the way.(every time I took my trousers off,she got pregnant) So I needed the cash and the only way to earn money was to work a lot of hours. Never really wanted to be a big wheel man but it followed on.I have suffered from the three lorry drivers complaints.Bad back.Piles and divorce.Not that I am a grumbler.Regards Charlie
Well Charlie, out of those three, I had the piles, but I must say I only done the rough jobs, as inbetween jobs, until I got on the good firms with good money.
I may have been a bit over the top Norman.Trying to whip up a bit of sympathy.Nearly worked eh? It was only in the very early days that I did the rough stuff.It got a lot better later on.Good to look back on.Regards Charlie
Norman Ingram:
Well Charlie, out of those three, I had the piles, but I must say I only done the rough jobs, as inbetween jobs, until I got on the good firms with good money.
Iâve had bloody piles since early 80s and still get 'em now.Suppositories useless,might as well stick 'em up me a***.Still get shunters shoulder now and again - red line fever
bobthedog:
Wheel Nut:
Tallow into Cussons Nottingham:One of those jobs I had blanked from my memory⌠The grade 6 papered as grade 2 for the washout, the fat clinging to everything it touched, the cloy of the stink that seems to weld itself to your nostrils⌠NICE!!
That Imperial Leather smells like Fatima Whitbreads Jockstrap 
Chris, I feel a joke comming on, A irishman went to the doctors with a sore bum, the doctor took a look and said you have haemorhoids, here are some capsuls, put them in your back passage, and come and see me in two weeks time. Irishman returned to the doctors two weeks later, well the doctor said is the problem better, no the irishman replied, did you put them in your back passage, Yes and I put them in the front room, the kitchen and the bedrooms, for what good that did, I might as well stuck them up my " ARSE"! 
Anything to do with furniture or home deliveries!
Worst job I ever copped for on agency was driving for a firm called BICC Cables in Nottingham; their yard was near Clearwayâs on Triumph Road IIRC.
Turned up, was directed towards an old Ford D710 flatbed, which had a Fergy tractor on the back equipped with a winch. Take that to Coventry colliery, they said. Easy job, I thought.
What they didnât tell me was that when i got there I was required to help put this bloody great big cable up the side of a coaling tower! Good job Iâm not bothered about heights! Took me a week to get the coal dust out of my kit.