Been off work for couple of months on sick, and misses not well at home. Trying to get company to let me work 3 days instead of 5. Doubt they’ll make it easy.
Really had enough of long hours etc, and as i’m 60 yo, want to downsize a bit and have a life again. Life too short for 50-60 hrs a week driving. I understand there is a hit on wages but interested how people got on doing the same.
Wondered if anyone had done it through choice and how it went?
I’ve just given up a life of over work for 4 on 4 off and it’s amazing. Actually a fairly common shift pattern these days so if current employer won’t play ball is worth looking around. My Dad who works here too took job for exactly same reason, he was in his 60’s and wanted to slow down
It seems to me that agency work is the way to go here. I only work six months a year, another driver on the agency only works every other week, some just do weekends etc etc etc.
Cheers fellas for the suggestions. Never considered the ‘4on,4off’ shift thing. That would be great to get your work done in 4 days then have 4 full days off. Like the idea of that. 
Agency is an option if company don’t play ball. Pick and choose when I want to work sounds good.
Cheers
I went on three days a week, tue/wed/thur. just before I retired, money was less but heigh-ho.
geezer at our place does his 48 hours in 4 days,instead of our 5.long days,but he get’s fridays off.
Went on 4 on 4 off twelve months ago after 25 years of stupid hours and nights/weeks away, best thing I’ve ever done. Wish I’d done it a lot earlier.
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I went part-time (3 days a week) 3 years ago and haven’t looked back. Originally prompted because the company were planning to enforce changes in start times and my wife found out (through her union) that companies with more than a certain number of employees were obliged to consider allowing workers to go part-time. If your company has an HR department or if you are member of a union it might be worth asking what the possibilities are.
There is or can be a lot more to life than just working. Four on and off is good if you can lose weekends in your life style. Agencies will tell you that they have plenty of work for you to pick and choose from, this may not be the case . Going part time reduces your deductions so it may not be quite as big a financial hit as you first thought.
I worked 3 days a week from when i was 66 till i retired at 69 and a half and it was easier to tolerate. Only thing was it was for a supermarket and my days were Fri, Sat and Sun as the shops were open 7 days a week and they needed weekend coverage but they paid a higher rate for it. All i can say is it worked for me.
Same age and early retired on health grounds ( back issues ),living in the parental home and circumstances ( loss of my late mum’s pension incomes ) have resulted in me probably having to re enter the work environment.I’m looking for no more than 3 days per week,if not one week on one week off,and no weekends to cover the household running costs and minimise tax exposure.I won’t be going back to driving trucks only van/car/taxi.
But unsurprisingly there is a massive resistance out there to job sharing and part time work on the part of employers.More often requiring 6 days per week than 3 or 4 and more than a days worth of work done in a day and even more often more than one type of role often involving heavy manual handling.I’d guess part time HGV work will be even more difficult to find.As for agencies be prepared for all the usual bs and lies in them either trying to offload all the usual multi drop zb under the guise of something better.If not other totally different types of jobs which no one wants put under the flag of convenience of so called ‘driving’ work when it’s anything but.
The conclusion I get is that employers couldn’t care less about lessening the workload on older pushing retirement workers.Together with the lose lose situation of younger workers,also no longer wanting to work full time and competing with older ones for anything which can be even remotely perceived as an easy number with flexible work/life friendly hours,if the queue of young people,hoping to sign up with Uber is anything to go by.Which I walked away from a while ago because only TfL licenced vehicles and drivers get access to airport work,which counts out anything below Euro 6.
Harry Monk:
It seems to me that agency work is the way to go here. I only work six months a year, another driver on the agency only works every other week, some just do weekends etc etc etc.
Only work monday - thursday, long weekend every week and payday off, option of either sunday/friday to boost wages for up coming real life events
I had been tramping for a company for 5 years, usually nights out for 4 nights and sometimes 5, when I hit my 60th birthday i asked the boss if I could drop to 4 days a week and have Friday off, much to my surprise he was very happy with this as he had a casual driver that could do Friday’s only on local pallet work so as long as I had the truck in the yard for Friday mornings it worked like a dream…
You got to play ball though, so any appointments need to be on your day off…and not like one of my colleagues who wanted to go part-time which in his book is Monday to Thursday, no issues there as he wants to spend more time in his wobble-box in SkegVegas, and we have plenty of part-timers who want the work 
But now wants to book a day off to get his car MOTd and he is only in his 2nd week of this arrangement 
How ferking stupid can stupid get ■■?
I am semi retired and do 2 days a week. Plenty of agencies are happy to work with you to do this.
Said before on here, I’m on a 4 day 3 off, starting on a Wed, and finish Sat about teatime ish.
Should have done it years ago, too many lads burn themselves out maxing out and using 3×15s as a target rather than a limit, not eating and sleeping properly, parking in non facility ■■■■ holes and all the rest of it…Then they retire and die within 5 yrs, not ■■■■■■■■ either, I’ve seen it many times in the 30+ yrs I’ve done the job, so I’ve come to my senses at last. 
…so if you’re a regular teararse artist hero be warned or ignore me, not fussed. 
After saying that… I’m doing a 6 day Mon to Saturday this week, to recoup money I’ve spent on my 2 weeks hol off, so I reckon I’ll need another holiday after that (after a lie down by Sunday). .
Technically every agency worker is a part timer, due to the zero hours contract
I only work a couple of days a week driving now. I did sell off the transport side of my company though.
robroy:
Said before on here, I’m on a 4 day 3 off, starting on a Wed, and finish Sat about teatime ish.
Should have done it years ago, too many lads burn themselves out maxing out and using 3×15s as a target rather than a limit, not eating and sleeping properly, parking in non facility [zb] holes and all the rest of it…Then they retire and die within 5 yrs, not ■■■■■■■■ either, I’ve seen it many times in the 30+ yrs I’ve done the job, so I’ve come to my senses at last.After saying that… I’m doing a 6 day Mon to Saturday this week, to recoup money I’ve spent on my 2 weeks hol off, so I reckon I’ll need another holiday after that (after a lie down by Sunday). .
Could you not afford the holiday in the first place
Iv heard it all now take a holiday and come back and work all hours
And not forgetting go in on a bank holiday to check your truck for no pay
peirre:
Technically every agency worker is a part timer, due to the zero hours contract
Technically yes, although on a busy agency you can pretty much do as much or as little as you want, which was what the OP was asking about. Certainly I’d have no trouble doing 75 hour weeks with four or five nights out if that was what I asked for.
I don’t, at my age I prefer to leave that sort of thing to the much younger Romanians and Bulgarians and take on a lighter workload for less money, but the point is I could if I wanted to.