How can a truck compete with a train unless each truck pulls 50 trailers however where the truck will always win is flexibility.
kr79:
No offence Carryfast but reading your posts about interveiws and feedback etc I think you may have been looking in the wrong place. I think you may have been looking at the nice firms with shiney depots and new lorrys and good work.
Most of the firms who give newbies a start were even when I started driving much later than you were more bomb site yard where it was hard to distinguish the shunter from the best motor an Alsatian running round and some wideboy in a sheepskin coat in the caravan/office that suddenly caught fire when the ministry or vat man wanted to look at records.
I think that describes the job which I did for a while on general haulage.In addition to all that I’m sure that there wasn’t an O licence disc or tax disc in the window and the diesel in the tank always looked to me a funny red colour which was usually filled from the tank in yard which is probably why he didn’t want the thing to run very far if he could help it.In other words a typical 1980’s job found in any job centre because that’s all that was left after the more ‘experienced’ (lucky) ones had taken all the best jobs.Look on the bright side though I was often given the ‘newer’ late 1970’s F 10 instead of the absolute heap of a Marathon to drive. 
Carryfast:
Even the new F 16,let alone an old F10,would be nothing special v a KW with DD 16 motor and an 18 speed Fuller in it.
Because of course you have a great deal of experience driving both to base that opinion on, don’t you?
Carryfast:
all that was left after the more ‘experienced’ (lucky) ones had taken all the best jobs.
So were they experienced or lucky then? You keep changing your mind.
Job centre says it all realy. Who has ever found a decent job there.
kr79:
How can a truck compete with a train unless each truck pulls 50 trailers however where the truck will always win is flexibility.
Blimey have you actually read the history of the road transport industry and how it got where it is,or at least was before everyone started listening to the ‘environmentalists’.It didn’t get there by just staying with the four wheelers which were the basis of the industry in it’s infancy. 
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
all that was left after the more ‘experienced’ (lucky) ones had taken all the best jobs.So were they experienced or lucky then? You keep changing your mind.
Both because it took the ‘luck’ to get the ‘experience’ assuming the experience was the real thing and not just bs.
kr79:
Job centre says it all realy. Who has ever found a decent job there.
If you’d have been here in the 1980’s it was often the job centre or nothing if you needed a job to get some money coming in.As you’ve said you’d have been cutting your options by just going for those impossible ‘decent’ jobs with the shiny motors. 
Carryfast:
kr79:
How can a truck compete with a train unless each truck pulls 50 trailers however where the truck will always win is flexibility.Blimey have you actually read the history of the road transport industry and how it got where it is,or at least was before everyone started listening to the ‘environmentalists’.It didn’t get there by just staying with the four wheelers which were the basis of the industry in it’s infancy.
Yeah but there comes a point where you can only get so big unless you join the circus.
I suspect you have answered a lot of questions with your opening paragraph you have spent a lot of time reading about transport not enough on the practical.
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
all that was left after the more ‘experienced’ (lucky) ones had taken all the best jobs.So were they experienced or lucky then? You keep changing your mind.
Both because it took the ‘luck’ to get the ‘experience’ assuming the experience was the real thing and not just bs.
Well we’ve already covered the fact that for a lot of us it was hard work not luck
Carryfast:
kr79:
Job centre says it all realy. Who has ever found a decent job there.If you’d have been here in the 1980’s it was often the job centre or nothing if you needed a job to get some money coming in.As you’ve said you’d have been cutting your options by just going for those impossible ‘decent’ jobs with the shiny motors.
As I always say when the question about job hunting comes up on the main forum don’t just sit there firing off applications get in the car and head down to the local industrial areas. I know if you turn up at Stobarts or asda you ain’t going to have any joy but the smaller firms you have a fair chance of talking to the right person. That’s and personal recommendations are how I’ve got every job I’ve had. Some have had decent motors others old dogs.
As I said a few pages back my dad done his first euro trip in 83 at 24 years old and his european experince was a fortnight in tenerefe not in a shiney new truck it was a rather tired scania 110. How did he get that job by walking in the yard and asking.
If he’d put half as much effort in to finding a job in the 80s as he is doing arguing about it now, he could have worked for Astrans doing the middle east, Fransens doing Russia and John Mann doing Morocco. But no, they weren’t advertised in truck and driver or down the jobcentre, therefore it was impossible…Yawn.
Carryfast:
kr79:
Job centre says it all realy. Who has ever found a decent job there.If you’d have been here in the 1980’s it was often the job centre or nothing if you needed a job to get some money coming in.As you’ve said you’d have been cutting your options by just going for those impossible ‘decent’ jobs with the shiny motors.
Well some of us were and you’re talking ■■■■■■■■.
kr79:
Carryfast:
kr79:
How can a truck compete with a train unless each truck pulls 50 trailers however where the truck will always win is flexibility.Blimey have you actually read the history of the road transport industry and how it got where it is,or at least was before everyone started listening to the ‘environmentalists’.It didn’t get there by just staying with the four wheelers which were the basis of the industry in it’s infancy.
Yeah but there comes a point where you can only get so big unless you join the circus.
I suspect you have answered a lot of questions with your opening paragraph you have spent a lot of time reading about transport not enough on the practical.
I was actually making the suggestion that some study of the history behind the ‘practical’ might be helpful in your case not mine because I obviously already knew the history of it all as handed down to me by those who knew it all by living through it at the time from horse and cart to steam trucks to tank transporters.
Carryfast:
I’d say that in the case of intermodal operations road is in direct competition with rail in that there’s no way of getting round the fact that it’s payload weight and the distance that you can haul it that pays the wages and there’s more wages being lost to mile long freight trains hauling piggyback trailers and containers from road transport than there are,or would be, wages being lost from 36-44 tonners to LHV’sThe only ones who’d argue that point are the enviromentalists and the rail freight interests who usually try to get round the issue by saying that road and rail can and should work together in which road does all the local zb work and rail does all the distance work.The fact is all of the main population centres that are linked by rail freight services have sufficient rail heads to cater for intermodal piggyback and/or container traffic even in the uk let alone North America.
Therefore it’s my case that road transport needs to continue to evolve along the lines that it’s always done of ever increasing weight handling capability over long distances if it’s going to survive in the long term at least as a credible form of long distance trasport.
I’d say that for every small four wheeler Bedford type job that was lost there’s been more jobs gained in the progression to those eight wheeler drawbar outfits which then progressed to 32 tonner artics and then 40-44 tonner artics etc etc and in every sector where LHV’s have been used,such as Scandinavia,they seem to have improved growth and efficiency not removed it.However,as I’ve said,it’s only by making that jump to full weight combined with long distances where that potential can be realised.
I think we’re really arguing about the already proven progression of the road transport industry over the years and it’s the point where these types of outfits are seen as nothing unusual,in just the same way as the average four wheeler Bedford driver of the late 1940’s would probably have shaken his head in disbelief at that AEC eight wheeler drawbar outfit of the 1950’s,let alone a current generation 6-8 axle 44-65 tonner Artic or Scandinavian drawbar outfit,but now it’s seen as nothing unusual,that will be the next step.‘Unless’ that is the road transport industry is now finally,after all these years,going to listen to all the rail freight industry bs and give up it’s dominance by letting rail freight effectively take over the long distance sector.
Now that has to be, even by your standards the single most inaccurate load of testicles ever written.
Carryfast:
I was actually making the suggestion that some study of the history behind the ‘practical’ might be helpful in your case not mine because I obviously already knew the history of it all as handed down to me by those who knew it all by living through it at the time from horse and cart to steam trucks to tank transporters.
You know nothing but what you’ve read, misinterpreted and imagined.
robinhood_1984:
If he’d put half as much effort in to finding a job in the 80s as he is doing arguing about it now, he could have worked for Astrans doing the middle east, Fransens doing Russia and John Mann doing Morocco. But no, they weren’t advertised in truck and driver or down the jobcentre, therefore it was impossible…Yawn.
Spot on there
billybigrig:
Carryfast:
kr79:
Job centre says it all realy. Who has ever found a decent job there.If you’d have been here in the 1980’s it was often the job centre or nothing if you needed a job to get some money coming in.As you’ve said you’d have been cutting your options by just going for those impossible ‘decent’ jobs with the shiny motors.
Well some of us were and you’re talking ■■■■■■■■.
For anyone who can make any sense of a world in which 19 year olds with car licences were sent out with artics to do runs to Italy and someone of 24 could just get an international job by just telling the guvnor that their only experience of doing international was going on holiday to Tenerife I’m not surprised.
No one seems to have got the bit though where I’ve said that one of my favourite wagons that I ever drove was an old 1970’s DAF 2800 amongst plenty of others over a career which were (a lot) older than that.It was just that where I could have been driving the thing to Italy and back I was driving it up to Yorkshire etc instead.No big deal really it earn’t me a living and there were plenty of other worse jobs out there. 
billybigrig:
Carryfast:
I’d say that in the case of intermodal operations road is in direct competition with rail in that there’s no way of getting round the fact that it’s payload weight and the distance that you can haul it that pays the wages and there’s more wages being lost to mile long freight trains hauling piggyback trailers and containers from road transport than there are,or would be, wages being lost from 36-44 tonners to LHV’sThe only ones who’d argue that point are the enviromentalists and the rail freight interests who usually try to get round the issue by saying that road and rail can and should work together in which road does all the local zb work and rail does all the distance work.The fact is all of the main population centres that are linked by rail freight services have sufficient rail heads to cater for intermodal piggyback and/or container traffic even in the uk let alone North America.
Therefore it’s my case that road transport needs to continue to evolve along the lines that it’s always done of ever increasing weight handling capability over long distances if it’s going to survive in the long term at least as a credible form of long distance trasport.
I’d say that for every small four wheeler Bedford type job that was lost there’s been more jobs gained in the progression to those eight wheeler drawbar outfits which then progressed to 32 tonner artics and then 40-44 tonner artics etc etc and in every sector where LHV’s have been used,such as Scandinavia,they seem to have improved growth and efficiency not removed it.However,as I’ve said,it’s only by making that jump to full weight combined with long distances where that potential can be realised.
I think we’re really arguing about the already proven progression of the road transport industry over the years and it’s the point where these types of outfits are seen as nothing unusual,in just the same way as the average four wheeler Bedford driver of the late 1940’s would probably have shaken his head in disbelief at that AEC eight wheeler drawbar outfit of the 1950’s,let alone a current generation 6-8 axle 44-65 tonner Artic or Scandinavian drawbar outfit,but now it’s seen as nothing unusual,that will be the next step.‘Unless’ that is the road transport industry is now finally,after all these years,going to listen to all the rail freight industry bs and give up it’s dominance by letting rail freight effectively take over the long distance sector.
Now that has to be, even by your standards the single most inaccurate load of testicles ever written.
Maybe you can provide a more ‘accurate’ version of how the industry arrived at the point where it is then. 
I was actually making the suggestion that some study of the history behind the ‘practical’ might be helpful in your case not mine because I obviously already knew the history of it all as handed down to me by those who knew it all by living through it at the time from horse and cart to steam trucks to tank transporters.
[/quote]
I don’t pretend to know everything about transport unlike your good self but I’ve been round trucks since I was a small child as I spent far to many days skiving off school to go out with my dad who had done the same before me. My uncle was a driver then owner driver for many years and went well behind the iron curtain on his travels there’s lots of pictures of him and his trucks on the Irish rigs forum if you want to look.
So I have a grounding in trucks going back a few years.