I drove down a street last Thursday and there where 3 DPD parcel vans(I think that’s what there called) parked at different intervals along the street delivering parcels at the same time there planners want the sack waste of time and fuel or what.
Funny how there’s always money for “fresh air runs” like this, and yet when the subject of pay rises comes up - it’s always “Times are 'ard - Perhaps I’ll lay you off!” 
Early '90’s when I worked for ‘The big green machine’, we had a regular run to Motherwell & more often than not reloaded in Beckton (London) 
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Last December, working for Yodel, took an empty trailer from Wednesbury to Dewsbury, UK Greetings, and collected 2 boxes, no bigger than A4 size!
I think in the 4 weeks i worked there, i only had a full trailer twice, and this is over the Xmas period! Most of the time it was half empty.
TNT had a contact with Lever Ind at Port Sunlight we’d night I was told in morning full load of soap powder for Asda near Rugby we did not start before 6am (company rule ) so I pull in at 10am told to late booked in at 8am so take it back which I did ,2days later same job reminded the office what had happened 2days before told to just do it I don’t get paid to think , went down and got sent back again 480 miles for nothing over the 2trips The guy who went to Hamburg and they unloaded2pallets ,retagged it and put it back on the van. The Germans would do that in the 70s with hanging beef they would take it off re stamp it and send it back. I kid you not
Used to do the “Hygena Air Run” which involved running empty from Howden to Runcorn then Runcorn to Stockton then Stockton back to Howden, swapping empty trailers at every point for no reason other than to do with annual budgets and accounting. No wonder the company went bust.
Also every night for 3 weeks I used to set off from Sara Lee in Bridlington to Iceland at Queensferry with a 6pm delivery. Not a problem except I started at 6pm. Turn up at gates “Am I rejected?”, “Yes” - then security would stamp the POD as rejected, I’d do a U turn at the gate and take it back.