He escaped with a £100 fine – £50 for the insecure load and £50 for failing to stop.
He received no separate penalty for failing to report the accident and was ordered to pay £105 in costs. Five penalty points were put on his licence
Magistrates said that he had learnt a hard lesson
Those 3 statements really don’t go
His first day, 17ton eh wood falls out and rips his curtain and he doesn’t notice that kind of event. A member of the public stops him to tell what has happened but then continues up the road with the rest of the load still unsecured but now with a bloody great hole in the curtain.
What is worrying, very worrying this guy gets to keep his vocational licence after it, that is scary as [zb]!
The TC may still want to have tea and biscuits with him yet…
That would be a hoot, he’d probably get lost on the way, spill his tea & drop the biscuits and not even notice.
We may laugh - but does anyone actually know of someone first hand who’s been sacked for crappy driving in some manner?
Over the years, those I’ve known who got sacked were for every reason BUT “bad driving”…
(1) Too much sick
(2) Arguing with the gaffer/customer (“insubordination”)
(3) Hand in the till (outright theft)
(4) Fraud (not turning up, and getting someone else to sign in for you)
(5) Assault (took six weeks to get rid of someone who’d actually punched the gaffer in the face!)
(6) Failed references (didn’t mention conviction, got job, but got found out later)
(7) Male driver Using female toilets (complaint made by muslim woman! - this is London for you these days…)
… and things no one seemingly ever got sacked for…
(8) Diesel theft (manager filling their own car at derv pumps…)
(9) Racist behavior (by a non-white Brit towards a White Brit as victim!)
(10) Indecent exposure & ■■■■■■ harrassment
In the “in between” category - I remember someone being sacked for turning up drunk YEARS ago - but I’ve not heard or seen any such based dismissal since then. Anyone else?
We may laugh - but does anyone actually know of someone first hand who’s been sacked for crappy driving in some manner?
Over the years, those I’ve known who got sacked were for every reason BUT “bad driving”…
(1) Too much sick
(2) Arguing with the gaffer/customer (“insubordination”)
(3) Hand in the till (outright theft)
(4) Fraud (not turning up, and getting someone else to sign in for you)
(5) Assault (took six weeks to get rid of someone who’d actually punched the gaffer in the face!)
(6) Failed references (didn’t mention conviction, got job, but got found out later)
(7) Male driver Using female toilets (complaint made by muslim woman! - this is London for you these days…)
… and things no one seemingly ever got sacked for…
(8) Diesel theft (manager filling their own car at derv pumps…)
(9) Racist behavior (by a non-white Brit towards a White Brit as victim!)
(10) Indecent exposure & ■■■■■■ harrassment
In the “in between” category - I remember someone being sacked for turning up drunk YEARS ago - but I’ve not heard or seen any such based dismissal since then. Anyone else?
Bloke at the place I used to work got a bit delayed on his run and stopped at a pub on his way back to the yard (as in, maybe 2 miles from base). They could see where he was (GPS tracker) and tried phoning him to check he was OK. When he finally arrived back at the yard he was breathalysed. Positive test so one of the managers took him home. He was dismissed the next day.
“Being crap at your job” is a difficult one to be sacked for these days - You have to be told that you are crap and be given the opportunity to improve (with support/training as needed). This is one of the reasons why most of the big companies have endless written procedures for everything from climbing into the cab to wiping your arse - If you don’t follow the stated procedure without good reason (and you will already have signed to acknowledge that you have been told it) it’s much easier to dismiss you.
Even H&S infringements don’t seem to be enforced at places where I’ve worked.
What tends to happen is “when there’s the H&S guy roaming about the yard” (ie. 9-5 office hours only!) then you’ll get told off for everything from cutting the corner and leaving the yellow-lined path to wearing the wrong colour hi-viz.
OUT of hours - you’ll see people roaming around shelving with no hard hat, driving forwards with a FL when their view is obscured, bringing food & drink onto the factory floor, steaming into the yard on a job & knock, and dumping gear all over the place just because some running late daybo is in a hurry to get away…
In the past, I’ve been told off for wearing the “wrong hi viz” and “cutting the path corners”. No one’s perfect.
One of the previous posts hit on the fact that despite his age he may not have dealt with this type of load before and I get that he has demonstrated a real poor grasp of his responsibilities regarding the other aspects of his general driving but training in this industry is pretty hit and miss.
All to often assumptions are made that drivers should just know but that is not always the case.
I see the company took the usual steps and fired the driver in typical knee jerk fashion. It would be interesting to see if any of the management team took a good long look at themselves to see if they could improve things as from what I can see there wasnt much evidence of a safe system of work.
amamdada:
One of the previous posts hit on the fact that despite his age he may not have dealt with this type of load before and I get that he has demonstrated a real poor grasp of his responsibilities regarding the other aspects of his general driving but training in this industry is pretty hit and miss.
All to often assumptions are made that drivers should just know but that is not always the case.
Whether he had dealt with that type of load before or not, and whether training is adequate or not, or if he is experienced or not it ain’t relevant. What level of intelligence do you need to grasp that it may not be a good idea to go out on the road with a high stacked load of board/wood/steel/blocks or whatever you can think of, without some degree of security.
If a driver can not suss that out for himself, he should only be allowed to deliver pizzas on a moped.
I am all for improvements in training over the years and rightly so, but it has got to the stage where drivers have to be trained to wipe their own arses nowadays, instead of using general common sense, and think for themselves like in the old days.
when we used to do the british gypsum boards they moved like hell. i was told to strap them but would have in any case, the issue is that he was stopped and still decided sod it.
Harry Monk:
I’m always the first to say that it’s nonsense to suggest that every load you can carry on an artic needs strapping, but I load at Kronospan myself and I can’t begin to imagine how anybody could drive out of the gates without the load being strapped to within an inch of its life.
Got to agree with you on that Harry. I used to deliver and load from there, I’m surprised he got up the hill to Wrexham/Oswestry round about.
They’ll probably do what Corus(or whatever their called now) do, and have a loading supervisor, checking you’ve done it right before you leave
robroy:
He’s around the same age as me, I just wonder how long he has been in the job, you could understand it being a 21 yr old newbie, but whether he is experienced or not, you would think at 55 he would have acquired enough common sense to at least look in the back of the trailer. It’s got to the stage where nothing surprises me about some ‘‘drivers’’ today.
He just sounds like an idiot mate. I used to load chipboard regularly in Menznau in Switzerland, also a Kronospan factory as it happens and take it back to England. It was a bugger of a load but 18 straps or so would usually keep it in place reasonably well but even then each individual sheet of wood within each pack would have slipped and slided a bit. I can’t imagine not comprehensively strapping down such a load with proper spansets and I was doing that job from the age of 22.
Yeh that’s right, I have even seen that stuff move on a particularly rough overnight ferry crossing, go back to your motor in a morning and it was poking in the curtain, even when fully strapped. Bloody horrible stuff especially if it is Formica coated.
amamdada:
One of the previous posts hit on the fact that despite his age he may not have dealt with this type of load before and I get that he has demonstrated a real poor grasp of his responsibilities regarding the other aspects of his general driving but training in this industry is pretty hit and miss.
All to often assumptions are made that drivers should just know but that is not always the case.
Whether he had dealt with that type of load before or not, and whether training is adequate or not, or if he is experienced or not it ain’t relevant. What level of intelligence do you need to grasp that it may not be a good idea to go out on the road with a high stacked load of board/wood/steel/blocks or whatever you can think of, without some degree of security.
If a driver can not suss that out for himself, he should only be allowed to deliver pizzas on a moped.
I am all for improvements in training over the years and rightly so, but it has got to the stage where drivers have to be trained to wipe their own arses nowadays, instead of using general common sense, and think for themselves like in the old days.
Robroy you have hit the nail on the head,it ain’t the old days anymore and common sense is in very short supply these days hence having to train people to wipe their own back side. The trouble is once you start along that route you have to keep going otherwise if you cut people loose you end up with whats happened here.
robroy:
Yeh that’s right, I have even seen that stuff move on a particularly rough overnight ferry crossing, go back to your motor in a morning and it was poking in the curtain, even when fully strapped. Bloody horrible stuff especially if it is Formica coated.
That, and greased steel bar of different sizes and lengths all dumped on the trailer in any old order have to be the worst loads I’ve ever carried. Oh the joys of the job sometimes!
robroy:
He’s around the same age as me, I just wonder how long he has been in the job, you could understand it being a 21 yr old newbie, but whether he is experienced or not, you would think at 55 he would have acquired enough common sense to at least look in the back of the trailer. It’s got to the stage where nothing surprises me about some ‘‘drivers’’ today.
On a similar theme I know a guy that was told to pick up an empty trailer and take it to load, via across the tops from Glasgow to ■■■■■■■■
He backed under did not check it, got to the destination and discovered it had 25 ton of concrete blocks on, and unstrapped .
Apart from it being insecure he evidently could not tell the difference between pulling a loaded and empty trailer
I live just down the road and have a few mates that work at kronospan. Rumour is that it was quite literally his first job driving commercially. You’d feel like a right plonker
robroy:
He’s around the same age as me, I just wonder how long he has been in the job, you could understand it being a 21 yr old newbie, but whether he is experienced or not, you would think at 55 he would have acquired enough common sense to at least look in the back of the trailer. It’s got to the stage where nothing surprises me about some ‘‘drivers’’ today.
On a similar theme I know a guy that was told to pick up an empty trailer and take it to load, via across the tops from Glasgow to ■■■■■■■■
He backed under did not check it, got to the destination and discovered it had 25 ton of concrete blocks on, and unstrapped .
Apart from it being insecure he evidently could not tell the difference between pulling a loaded and empty trailer
I live just down the road and have a few mates that work at kronospan. Rumour is that it was quite literally his first job driving commercially. You’d feel like a right plonker
If that’s the case you would expect the company to make double sure he knew about strapping the load correctly. When I worked at Ramage they collected from Egger in Hexham. They had you in before starting for them to show you how to use their ratchet & straps internally due to the movement of some of the chipboards. They even had the barrier technician check how many straps you had on when you returned to the yard.
I’ve been driving artics 3 years now and my first load from Kronospan shifted a bit despite 3 rachets on every stack and driving like a grandma’s grandma, put the willys up me.
My mate had a pillarless trailer in there and used a couple of internals to hold the roof down, before he’d got chance to strap it properly he had a h&s committee hassling him. Needless to say he told them to go forth, but I now understand why they might have thought he’d only be using internals.
It looks as if nothing much has changed at LE Jones then over the years. I bet the office assumed there would be somebody there to show the driver, and when there wasn’t he’s just picked up the trailer and gone with it. Kronospan loads always were notorious, we experimented with so many different ways of securing the loads and nothing ever worked 100%.
This will definitely end up in a cup of tea (probably no biscuits) with the commissioner, probably for the driver and the company. I thought that when the old man passed on, the management would take the opportunity to tighten the ship, but looks like it didn’t happen.
