If it ain’t the truth you can bet that UNITE ( TGWU ) would be quick enough to defend themselves.As I said from that experience I wouldn’t trust any road transport unions to negotiate and act on my behalf.
Just to clarify, you were offered a job at a company who did international work and turned it down because they might have been expecting that you start on the UK side of things first … and you can’t see where you went wrong? 
As I said, I have worked with plenty of guys who had no experience of driving abroad and they didn’t seem to struggle.
Some did not even want to do it but as mentioned in my post above they begrudgingly accepted it as a condition of the job. Not sure why you found it so hard? Actually that was a rhetorical question as I know the answer.
When it comes to something you want, there are generally 2 types of people.
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Those who will go out and do everything they can to make that thing happen.
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Those who make excuses, do nothing and expect that thing to fall into their lap, then make excuses and blame everyone and everything but themselves for not achieving that thing.
From reading your stuff on this forum you definitely fall into the latter of those 2.
What you don’t or can’t recognise doesn’t alter the reality for lots of people like me, who had no trouble entering the continental driving market. I noticed that the people who were most likely to get their slot were those who were prepared to walk before they could run. That meant not quibbling about ‘channel hopping’ when you had your sights on Italy, or grumbling about your knackered MAN when you wanted a Mack Aerodyne. Any honest, hard-working driver with a bit of nous and some sound UK experience could end up going abroad. Perhaps it was different in Kent from Surrey!
PS I did my first ‘over the water’ trip in a day-cabbed Bedford TL artic 28-tonner, Tours in France. Horrible, but I gritted my teeth and got the CV. Next off I was in a proper lorry (ERF) with a proper firm doing easy frigo work in France and Belgian. It paid off then!
Totally accurate, but not what he wants to hear. He wouldn’t know the truth if it came and bit him on the arse, it was always, unfairly someone else’s fault.
All of us when reaching our chosen pinnacle, did so incrementally, regularly touching new boundaries. On the way we persevered with unpleasant jobs and hard work, two factors to which Carryfast had an extreme aversion. He expected the cream work to be handed to him on a plate, despite his history of failure to complete and gross exaggeration.
I imagine prospective employers would be visualising Carryfast wanting to go home, before he got to Italy.
Indeed. I should add that those two first continental jobs were temporary, so I had sacrificed permanent UK work to get on that ladder. It paid off. A few years later I was doing the Gulf.
I fully expect his response will be an excuse filled load of BS as usual. Sometimes I do wonder if he’s on one big wind up? Surely someone cannot be that oblivious to where it all went wrong.
As a true story, I know of one employer who was asked to give a job to an experienced UK driver as he wanted to go Euro, and really wanted to do the Italy runs which were fairly ordinary at that company. Only one hitch: he was in a darts team, and needed to be home every Thursday evening.
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Simple denial, look at his history. Lack of any commitment, failing to complete anything; gross exaggeration of roles and minor achievements; victim claiming and conspiracy theorists.
The entire rest of the army is out of step, not him.
That reminds me of the delusion that many drivers fell for: the home by Friday evening to be out with the lads for a pint. Sods law had it that if you ever bust a gut and sullied a tacho to get back in time to attend your local on a Friday night, the chances were high that they’d all gone elsewhere or were having a night in with the missus. I learnt that lesson early and enjoyed the jolly evenings with the foreign lads in les routiers instead!
How far is it from London to Rome?
At least get it right.
I was offered a job on the SEPERATE international work DIVISION of a firm that also had a SEPERATE UK work DIVISION.
Just like my own employers did after the merger of the old Seabourne and Carryfast operations within UPS.Both obviously working under different terms and conditions including our degraded job title, obviously also with the blessing of Danny Bryan, v their’s.
The job offer referred to changed from the former to the latter between the offer and the start date.Make of that what you will.
The point for the topic is that in my experience unions can’t be trusted.
Not the predictable vagaries of the industry’s career progression regime, in an inherently road transport unfriendly country.
Most of the work we were doing was to the North of Italy, so it was do-able inside 7days (more or less) legally.
Ship out Sunday night, Near the Blanc or Frejus tunnels Mon eve. Clear and tip Weds. Load and clear Thu and run thorough the tunnel. Port Friday night, and to yard Sat morn.
However it was common to get a load of groupage on a Friday evening so everything is recalculated from there.
We did lots of work to the industrial Northern plains of Italy: Milan, Turin, Bologna.
French Channel port to Rome was about two and a half or three days, and the South such as Sicilia even longer. Going to Sicilia it was worth looking at ferries out of Genoa. 24hrs on boat saving driving time, fuel and tolls. And you could get groupage out of Turin etc Friday night and start running north.
Loads from the south often paid no more than loads from the north.
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Thanks Franglias, Google says 1840 km, so about the same distance as Melbourne, Cairns or Mt. Isa from Brisbane, all of which could be done return comfortably in five days.
A note of caution. We need always to factor in the feasible journey times for the period under discussion: ie Channel ferry crossing queues / times, driving hours regs contemporary with the period, whether pre or post speed-limiters, whether motorways had been built or national routes closed etc. All those factors, for eg, will be different now from say, 1984.
True enough.
But then again 10hrs driving on a disc is a more/less 10hrs, as opposed to the 10hrs and not a minute more of today. And an old 310 F10 took it’s time dragging a (heavy) 40 tons up to the tunnels.
I did get it right.
You were offered a job at a company that did the sort of work you were after. Whether or not the company was split into 2 divisions (UK and Euro) or not is irrelevant. You failed to realise that this was “potentially” an opportunity to get a foot in the door at this company, even if you had to start on UK work first. You also don’t seem to understand how progession often works. That is on you I’m afraid.
Those that can “do” and those that can’t “make excuses”
Depending on when we are discussing, there might also be a half day or more clearing customs on the way into Italy and on the exit too.
It did lead to some peculiar and inventive use of the driving hours regulations.
Much easier when the EU did away with T-forms in 199?.
The UK division of a firm in Northampton with an International division in Dover isn’t a job or a foot in the door with the latter.
Just as a UK Feeder job at Feltham wasn’t a ‘foot in the door’ to an international Linehaul job at Barking with UPS.
Which is why the revised offer wasn’t even described as such which if it was might have just made me think.What I actually got was sincere apology from the interviewer along the lines doubt if you’ll want it and relief when I told him no problem I didn’t hand in my notice it sounded too good to be true unless I was given a unit fleet/fleet reg number and destination for the first run out on the start date given to me.
More ironically than that I was also offered a job with former Seabourne shortly after the UPS takeover.Again I was suspicious of a transport office wall with an obvious emphasis on freight aircraft photos not trucks.A suspicion which turned out well founded with its international trunkers finding themselves running UK trunks instead and moaning to us profusely in our depot canteens.
Although they obviously had the last laugh in that regard when wanchor Danny Bryan took us away from our coffee and biscuits and portable cab TV and handballing previously palletised freight.Leaving them to moan among themselves.
There’s some real trucking and more importantly union, history here, contradicting accepted tired old cliches, if you want to give it a fair hearing.