My pet hate about driving trucks in the UK is not knowing how long a journey is going to take due to the volume of traffic. Seems like only ten years ago you could look at the trip ahead of you and work out roughly to the quarter hour when you’d arrive - now with all the jams a journey from London to Birmingham could take around two hours, or it could be four hours.
school run mums/dads (dont want to be seen as sexist)
people that come on at one motorway junction get in middle lane straight away then come off at next junction (specifically farnborogh/aldershot southbound m3)
slip road slammers
endless traffic jams
persecution from the boys in blue
women who continue to wear underwear beneath their mini skirts in summer
truckstop whores (why wont they just [zb] off when you say no?)
cac food at msa’s (lets see if they leave in the first word it’s one i’ve not tried before)
prices at msa’s
in fact msa’s
being charged £2 for a shower
queues at the docks
queues for tolls
queues for food
in fact queues
jobsworth security guards
incompetant wharehouse staff
incompetant traffic planers
radio 1 (when thats all you can pick up apart from classic fm)
narrow layby’s
middle lane hogs
other than that the jobs a goodun
(if i think of anything else i’ll let you know)
Sorry, but I have a phobia about that word after the avalanche of e-mail when I stopped editing it out! L.
Craig 111:
My pet hate about driving trucks in the UK is not knowing how long a journey is going to take due to the volume of traffic. Seems like only ten years ago you could look at the trip ahead of you and work out roughly to the quarter hour when you’d arrive - now with all the jams a journey from London to Birmingham could take around two hours, or it could be four hours.
Craig
Its not always possible but I try and treat the traffic as a challenge… I listen to the traffic reports (hello Sally an co! - ooh could they read this??) and then get on the CB as i get closer to the problem (but less and less are getting on channel these days… drivers go buy a cb today!!)- or I avoid the area entirely and go a different way… it makes a boring drive more interesting and if you take the right way you can avoid the problem without too much of a fuel/time penalty - we might as well accept it cos it can only get worse… follow me i dont get lost (much) ha ha !!
A plus point: found some excellent places to have a 45 by straying off route a bit… and sometimes go that way anyway now!
I this might upset those weekend drivers in thier 7.5 ton horse things but they make milk floats look positivly supersonic, & as to the argument that they have valuble/delicate horses on board, I’v never been stuck behind a 20mph racing horse transporter.
Theres too many petty ones to list, and I shrug em off easy. But one thing I hate above all things, daft start times, theres only one 4 oclock I want to be awake, thats when the kids kick out of school!
No Alan you may never have been stuck behind a 20 mph racehorse transporter. Thats a) because they have all the money in the world to buy the latest kit and…
b) because they dont give a monkeys about how the horse feels. proven by the fact that most racehorses are so crackers by the time they come out of racing they are only fit for a bullet.
As most of us mere mortals can only afford old slow horseboxes (a clue is my 20 yr old bedford Tl has just sold for £8k) thats why you get stuck behind us on a Sunday.
Yes I do agree that some of the drivers are completely incompetant BUT I see worse examples of dangerous driving every day of the week by so called professional drivers.
The roundabout one REALLY gets me. Having to go regular to a Norwich print site i have to negotiate at least a million of the things and everyone of them i get an idiot up the inside, so i’ve got this to say…its your car but its not my truck so who’s gonna care more? And as for bus drivers…the passengers are your responsability not mine!!
And as for overtaking, last wednesday driving on the M11 past Stansted i was passing another Artic, pitch dark and [zb] with rain, after what seemed like an age getting past i didn’t even get a flash but no doubt i would have if i came in too close. Thanks very much.
Why oh why oh why can’t they standerdise the way suzies connct on a trailer. That’d save you having to muck about with bungee and test runs (to make sure they don['t tangle and tare) when you pick a trailer up in the dark with the rain going horizontal just as the bulb goes in your light on the bulkhead - the only bulb you havn’t got a spare for and you can’t find your torch 'cause it’s dark .
Not being thanked for flashing in. Its second neature to me now. I even do it in my car. I flash in and i thank. Also industrial estates marked 7.5 tonne at all time. not execpt for loading. folk lift drivers that use my trailer for a brake. i dont care about the box but my trailer is another matter. Car drivers leaving it late to exit a m-way. To name a FEW
My pet hate is lane discipline on roundabouts, this has to be the most annoying part of driving an artic, you can guarantee that seven times out of ten you'll get done on the inside when turning right on a roundabout. Usually impatient car drivers and ■■■■■■ van types.
What's your pet hate?
AAAAAAARRRGGGH!
Roundabout discapline ■■? Over here roundabouts are few and far between but when I do come across one I find that drivers here have no idea how to negotiate one, even stopping halfway round because another vehicle is aproaching from a side road, the same people are undoubtedly the same ones that stop dead at the bottom of interstate entry ramps instead of just accelerating and merging in.