One Year On

One year ago to the day I wrote about the first months of Covid 19 and its effects on the world. Today its still with us and wreaking havoc in all aspects of life. We are currently at around 136,000 deaths but the last few months have seen a slowdown in infection rates and deaths. At its peak I was delivering supplies to Basildon, Queens and various other hospitals and the queue of private ambulances collecting dead bodies was unprecedented, a very sad sight to see. My own family didn’t escape it as my two sons tested positive and had to isolate for two weeks and worse still my daughter tested positive and was ill in bed when I bought her an oximeter for her finger to check her blood was getting enough oxygen. After several calls to 111 and a low oximeter reading of 84 (should be 99%) they told her to call an ambulance and she was hospitalized in St Marys, Paddington for a week with severe breathing difficulties. There was talk of putting her into a coma to assist the recovery but they eventually relented and let her body repair itself. It was a scary time as nobody could be there with her but thanks to mobile phones we were in touch daily. She was eventually discharged and after several weeks recouperation has now resumed working from home. For that I thank the NHS and the amazing staff that kept her alive.

So, since last April I have continued working, driving my van here there and everywhere delivering masks, gloves, aprons, face shields and all the other stuff my company have to sell. But it hasn’t been without incident as those of you who have followed my blogs since 2004 will probably know.

Firstly, soon after the last post, on April 27^th I was delivering to a farm outside Colchester. They had buzzed me in through an electric gate and after parking up and getting their goods from the back of the van I was wandering around the property looking for somebody to give it to. A couple of dogs came bounding towards me and circled me barking loudly. Not being afraid of dogs and not one to panic I remained calm. Someone appeared from a building and as I handed the item over with my left had one of the dogs, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, sank its teeth into my gloved right hand. It pulled the pinkie finger of the glove clean off and with it the tip of my finger. Pain shot through me as I let out a little yelp. As I looked at the damage my blood was pouring out. The guy who’d come out for the package had no idea how to control the dog who, incidentally, was squaring up to take another chunk out of me!! My language turned quite colourful as I told the guy, in no uncertain terms, to get a hold of his %$£&ing dog. With all the commotion a second guy appeared asking what was going on. I showed him my now blood-soaked hand, stating how it had happened. To his credit he sprang into action and went off to get disinfectant, bandages, and tape. He ran my hand under a tap which just made the water run red and then made quite a good job of patching me up with the other bits he’d brought out. I still had half a van of deliveries but decided I wouldn’t be continuing with them and instead I drove to Colchester Hospital where they did a fantastic job after first having me soak the wound in an iodine bath, which stung like crazy I might add. All this time the blood was pumping out of me and I reckon I probably lost about half a pint from the time of the bite to the time I was bandaged in Hospital. Oh well it would be a great story to tell the lads down the pub, if they ever opened again any time soon that is!! I did report the incident to the Police but only to get them to warn the people to control the dogs as It could have been a child and have had a very different outcome.

I took the rest of the week off to let my finger heal and no sooner was I back at work than the next incident happened to me. I was about 10 feet up a ladder in the warehouse getting something off the top shelf when I lost my balance and I came tumbling down, bouncing off another shelf and grazing my stomach before landing flat on my back and cracking my head off the floor. Although it sounds serious, I could feel that I was basically OK. My work colleague who had witnessed it all was concerned as he gave me instructions to just lie there a while. I eventually got myself up and everything felt ok so, although soreness had started setting in, I decided to soldier on and do my days work. I have suffered with shoulder problems since that day but mainly when I go to bed and lie on my right side. I have tried to get treatment but due to the pandemic It has been difficult to see anyone. In fact I’ve recently received an appointment to see some one this Thursday as things in this part of the country have eased off a bit Covid-wise so lets see what they can do for me.

So, onto the next incident on the 20^th of December just before Christmas. I deliver to a care home in Canvey Island and although it’s a huge order normally requiring up to fifteen trips from the van to the storage area with my trusty sack barrow, it normally goes off without a hitch. I try and get as much onto the barrow to reduce the amount of journeys back and forth so sometimes overload it and put odds and sods on the top which invariably fall off. On this day it was a five-litre bottle of dishwash liquid which fell off. I stooped down to pick it up and continued my journey to the storage area by holding the barrow with my right hand and the fallen bottle of dishwash liquid with my left. I felt my left trouser leg getting wet and also a stinging sensation growing. As I looked down at the bottle I was holding I could see the fall from the barrow had caused it to puncture and it was directing a jet of its contents onto my trousers which in turn was soaking through to my leg. In the few minutes it had taken me to get to the storage area the liquid had penetrated my trousers and burnt my leg. It was now smarting severely, and I was at a loss as to what to do next. With hindsight I should have whipped my trousers straight off and got my leg under a tap of water to wash it all off but what would that have looked like to onlookers? I completed my delivery and got back to the van where I was able to get to the injury with wet wipes and to bandage it up with some clean microfibre cloths I had in my work bag. By the end of the shift it was red raw and I went home, had a bath, and dressed my wound with cream and bandages. At work the next day my boss advised me to enter the incident into the accident book and to seek medical attention. He printed off a few pages describing the product which turned out to be highly corrosive and in a worst-case scenario could cause cancer. Lovely!! I duly got treated at my surgery and went back five or six times to get the dressings changed. Four months on and there is only a scar there. I’m still waiting for the cancer.

In February 2019 I was up in court facing a driving ban for multiple speeding offences. I managed to plead exceptional hardship and was allowed to continue to drive and keep my job. I was warned that if I appeared there again I wouldn’t be able to use the same excuse and would subsequently be banned from driving for 6 months. Since then I have seriously tried to watch my speed. My main weakness is maintaining 30mph in a 30 zone. My routes through Essex are 70% country roads which have 60mph limits then when you pass through a village it obviously drops to 30. This is where Essex Police set up their handheld speed traps often positioning themselves on a bend where its easier not to be seen until it’s too late. So inevitably I was caught on several occasions doing 35,36 &37 and eventually ended up at Southend Magistrates Court in March to face an all-women court who had not one bit of sympathy and were not prepared to cut me any slack. As a consequence, I was disqualified from driving for 6 months. At that point I was out of a job but after a discussion with my boss it was agreed he would keep me on to work in the warehouse to serve out my ban. What a nice chap. So, on Tuesday I begin the fourth week of my ban in the warehouse. It’s quite taxing on my almost 60-year-old body but I’m basically left to my own devices to unload pallets and get all the products onto the shelves. As the demand for our products has taken a dip during the pandemic I’m only required to work on the days the deliveries arrive so my boss is able to furlough me for the ones where I’m not required which also give my battered body a day or two to recover so it’s a win win situation for me at the moment.

So as the weather improves, and we go through the various stages to come out of this latest lockdown, I look to the future with a bit more optimism. I’ve had my first Covid jab (Pfizer) with the second due in May, I get my licence back in September, Leeds United are “safe” from relegation in our first season back in the Premier League, things are all going in the right direction. Just got to make sure I don’t fall off the ladder.

Keep Safe Everyone, and Happy Easter.

TM

 

 

 

The Coronavirus Post

Hi there,

It’s been a while.

Today is the fourth of April 2020 and I continue to work at the same company but am now a permanent employee. I was taken on last June after several years working for them via a driver’s agency so in total I have been here for three years and three months.

So, here’s a brief recap of who I am.

I used to blog as the London Cabby up until 2015 and posts should still be available for you to read at http://www.londoncabby.blogspot.com 

I met someone and got married and moved out to Suffolk. I tried to drive into London to work every day but found it tough so decided to try and find a job locally. I signed up with various driving agencies and secured work driving 7.5-ton trucks as far as Scotland delivering anything and everything. After several mishaps (some of which I’ve documented in previous posts here), I decided that van driving suited me better and after receiving an assignment for my present company I managed to make a good impression and here I’ve remained eventually being offered a permanent job.

 We deliver Cleaning, Hygiene, Medical and assorted other products pretty much all over the country but our small team of drivers tend to stick to Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex with the odd journey to the East side of London. The long-distance stuff gets sent out via carriers such as DPD and Royal Mail.

They used to rotate us whereby one day we’d be in Norfolk and Suffolk then the next we’d be off to Essex and London but for the last year and a bit it seems to be me doing Essex and London every day but I’ve now got used to it and am pretty familiar with all the customers which include Schools and Universities, hospitals, care homes, dentists, vets, large factories and smaller independent companies, pretty much anyone who needs our products, even private homes.

Since this Coronavirus Pandemic has been affecting the world, we have seen demand for our products soar. Gloves, masks and all other types of PPE (personal protection equipment) have been flying off the shelves. So much so that the re-supply cannot keep up with demand which in turn means our stocks are running dangerously low. The NHS obviously has priority for all PPE but places like care homes aren’t being afforded similar status so they are suffering shortages of all the same items required by the NHS to go about their daily jobs as safely as it is their right to do.

 I was at a care home in Braintree last week where they normally order 6x40 packs of toilet rolls, 10 x boxes of gloves and lots of different cleaning products on a weekly basis and I was only able to deliver a third of their requirement as we either didn’t have the stock or we were rationing stuff after being told that the NHS had priority. I don’t think that’s fair. 

It seems everyone’s been caught out and now were all scrambling about trying to keep ourselves stocked up.

This also applies to home life where just simply popping into Tesco isn’t an option at the moment. People are having to queue up for some time, keep a safe distance from other customers and then walk around shopping for everyday items which are no longer there such as toilet paper, pasta, eggs and even bread. To be fair that was the case a few weeks ago but I think all the major supermarkets have got their act together and some sort of order has now been restored.

As a priority worker I have managed to keep working whilst other people have been laid off or furloughed (my son included) with 80% pay, which I wouldn’t mind myself to be honest. Being diabetic I don’t think my body would take well to contracting Covid 19 and however many precautions we take it can still find its way into our bodies, so a few weeks of isolation would probably be beneficial to me. There have been some terrible news reports of recent deaths to the virus. People with no underlying health conditions have become victims to it, the youngest a 13-year-old boy, absolutely shocking.

All we can do is follow government advice and stay indoors and hopefully we’ll turn a corner and get back to our normal lives sooner rather than later.

So, on that note I’ll end this post and try and do another one soon.

Stay Safe.

TM

Rear view cams should be compulsory!

Since last posting anything on here I have continued working for the same company via my agency. They seem happy to pay agency rates for me.
They have kept me on the Essex run with brief ventures into Cambridgeshire. I’m glad I’m not doing the Norfolk run as there’s too much scope for things to go wrong down some of these country lanes.

My licence currently has nine points. Three more would see me out of work if I were to receive a ban. So, on that note I get a call the other day from the agency informing me I had been caught speeding on the A13 at Pitsea. The offence occurred on the 31st of July. They had sent the initial NIP (notice of impending prosecution) to the van owners who in turn sent it to the company I’m assigned to who then sent it to my agency who then sent it to me. All that to-ing and fro-ing took 2 months. As its now mid way through November its been rumbling on for four months and I’m yet to receive a court date where I hope to be able to plead my case and get  maybe a lesser ban than six months so that I don’t suffer exceptional hardship. Some might say "you do the crime you do the time". What I would say to that is I agree but if there’s a possibility of being shown leniency then why not try.
Just before I received the NIP the company I’m assigned to were going to take me on permanently but they are now awaiting the outcome of my court case. Fair enough!

There have been a couple of incidents in the past year.
A few months back whilst driving along the Burnham road in Essex a van coming the other way was well over the centre line and as we passed each other our door mirrors slapped. My lower mirror and my indicator lens fell out and the main mirror was left flapping in the breeze but I manage to grab it before it fell away. Neither of us stopped as it was a very fast road and would’ve caused  chaos. I pulled over when safe to do so but there was nothing I could do other than tape up what was left of the mirror then go on eBay to buy the bits needed to put it right. They arrived within a few days and all was well.

Friday just gone I was delivering to one of the regulars. I parked up outside and got into the back of the van to sort out the fourteen items. An18 tonne rigid truck was parked about 20 feet behind me and whilst I was in the back of the van I heard it start up and begin reversing. I assumed its driver knew I was behind him but as he got nearer I began to doubt whether he did. Within seconds it was too late to do anything as he had picked up a lot of speed and I had to brace myself as the lorry came crashing in to me. Once the driver realized he’d hit something he pulled forward allowing me to jump out of the van for a scream up. I started ranting something along the lines of " how the hell couldn’t you see me". He had by now jumped out of his cab and was apologising saying his regular truck had a reversing camera. The loud noise had by now alerted most of the workforce who were emerging out onto the street to see what all the commotion was about. Both my back doors had taken the full force of the collision and refused to close. A couple of the bosses were also there and made sure I was OK which was nice of them, and even offered me a cup of tea for the shock. They saw the state of the doors and produced a couple of club hammers and proceeded to bash the hinges to try and get the doors to close. They only managed to close them three quarters of the way so I tied them with a bungee and headed back to base. My governor and several of the employees came out for a look. The remaining deliveries I had in the van were transferred to our transit and off I went into Ipswich to finish off. So, tomorrow, Monday, I’ll be driving the transit until they either fix my Sprinter or hire something else.

I went to see my kids yesterday in London. They miss my cooking so asked me to make a couple of my specialities. We went to Sainsbury’s at Ladbroke Grove and bought ingredients for meatballs and rice and mince and dumplings. I duly cooked both meals and everyone pigged out till completely stuffed. Afterwards, I went to visit my mum and brother in the evening and stayed the night. My brother ordered a Chinese and only a few hours after pigging out with my kids I pigged out again. What a fat bastard! Actually I’ve been losing weight without even trying and am now a few pounds under fourteen stones for the first time in a few decades.
So I’ll end it for now and post again soon.
Take care out there.
TM

Country Roads and Roadkill

Since my last post I have continued working for the same company I have been at since January.
They seem content to pay agency rates for me although I'm only getting the minimum wage. I had been promised to be taken on permanently after a trial period but seven months on and I am still an agency driver. I receive holiday pay and am enrolled in a pension plan but its on Bank holidays that you feel it because you don't get paid for them.

I have really gotten used to this job though and there isn't much in the way of problems that I encounter. I basically cover all of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire and often dip inside the M25 with trips to the east side of London. I leave the yard every morning with a van full to the brim of cleaning and medical products. Most of the drops are literally pull up at the door and put the stuff into the lobby but quite a few entail trips up flights of stairs or treks through a maze of corridors to some obscure cleaning cupboard at the far end of the building so I know for a fact my fitness levels have improved. I bought a Fitbit recently to track my steps and heart rate and regularly do 10,000 steps per day. The downside to this job is that I can pull up wherever I want and eat what I want so KFC, McD's and many other junk food outlets often have visits from me.

Although I try hard to avoid accidents they occasionally still happen. A few weeks ago I was delivering to a sports club in Cambridgeshire when I parked in front of a bollard. I did the delivery, jumped back in the van, forgot I was in front of a bollard and drove straight over it with a loud crunch!! I reversed back, saw that I had knocked the concrete bollard over causing the concrete lump to break the nice red tarmac and making a mess of the forecourt. I looked up and down for CCTV but saw none so made my escape. The van received minor damage to the front and would probably go un-noticed. I was pretty gutted for the next few days and worried in case I was reported by the club but as the days became weeks I realised I'd got away with it.

 How ever hard you try to avoid these incidents they will still happen from time to time. I also received  3 penalty points on my licence after I was caught by a mobile police camera doing 43mph in a 30 zone bringing my points total to 6 now.

One thing I have noticed whilst driving the country lanes is the amount of roadkill out there. I've seen badgers,deer, foxes, hedgehogs and all manner of birds lying dead in the road. I have had birds fly into the path of the van many times and  wonder that there's any left.

The guy that works out the routes is generally quite good at getting me finished anywhere between 3 and 5pm but occasionally he works it out wrong and I finish between six and seven but at least I get paid for every minute I work unlike the regular driver they have who's always moaning about finishing after his time and not getting paid.

Anyway, its all quite uneventful and probably makes for a dull blog so I'll only post when there's anything worth talking about.
Catch you all later.
TM

Disastrous New Year

Hi Folks

A lot has happened since my last post.

Just after Christmas work was very thin on the ground. In fact I wasn’t offered anything till the 4th of January. 

I got a call from my agency at 7am on the Wednesday morning to see if I wanted to work at Canute in Great Blakenham. I accepted and got ready quickly and was parked up at their site within 40 minutes. The job was driving their 7.5 tonner around Suffolk and Essex delivering electrical supplies. I had quite a few drops to do and around 4.30pm completed the last one in the Sudbury area and headed back to base. I turned onto the A1071 in the pitch black. The conditions were cold and murky. The main beam on the truck left a lot to be desired so I was high beaming when possible and dipping when traffic approached me. It was during one of these dips that disaster struck. A hard right hand bend appeared without warning (all chevron markers were missing due to numerous earlier collisions) as I raised the high beam but it was too late to stop. The truck left the road, took off and landed nose first in a field several feet below road level. I didn't have my seat belt on at the time (silly boy) so my face whacked off the steering wheel with my nose taking the full force. Blood spurted everywhere as other cars stopped and the drivers raced over to see if I was ok. Essentially I knew I was OK. I was more concerned with how I was going to get the truck back to the depot, hopefully without having to declare I'd had a mishap. After people realised I was OK they all went on their way. But every so often another one would stop to see what had happened. I decided I had to contact my depot to inform them what had happened. As I was in a muddy field they were at a loss as to who to call to get me out. One of the motorists told me they knew a farmer nearby who had a great big tractor who could probably help me out. I agreed and had to wait about half an hour for him to arrive. I told the depot I had sorted some recovery and they asked if the truck was damaged but as it was pitch black I couldn't see. Before the tractor arrived I walked around the truck with my iPhone torch in one hand and a bloody tissue held to my nose in the other and gasped at the amount of damage that the fall from the road had caused. As far as getting any more work from my agency went I knew I was toast. Both the cabs steps had fallen off. The front grill was smashed to pieces and for all I knew the suspension was knackered so all in all it wasn't looking too good for me. The guy turned up with the tractor and started negotiating with me as to how much I would give him to pull me out of the field. The company I was working for should probably have paid but I think reality and shock were setting in by this time and I just wanted to get home so I said all I had on me was £30 so he agreed to do it. He attached a chain to the truck and literally had me out of the field and onto a side road in 2 minutes. I thanked him and started hobbling back towards Great Blakenham. There was definitely loads wrong with the truck. It was making funny noises and wasn’t driving so well. My face and nose were aching and now my ribs were hurting. I probably should have gone to A&E but that’s not my style. As I limped into the depot the guy I had spoken to in the morning was waiting in his car to assess the damage. He took one look at it and shook his head and drove off without a word to me. Haven't they heard of the phrase "Accidents happen"? I basically couldn't wait to get away from the place so I went into the office and handed the keys over. They wanted me to fill out all sorts of forms but I said I needed to go to hospital and it would have to wait and I turned round and went to my car. I sat there for a while and composed a long text explaining everything to my agency. I knew that would be my last assignment (they haven’t contacted me since!!) for them but luckily I was with several other agencies so I knew I'd be back at work soon enough. I got home and Jane fussed over me whilst I had a bath and got cleaned up. My nose was turning dark purple by now and I thought it was probably broken but still I knew I wouldn't go to hospital. 

I spent the whole next day in bed recovering and was debating whether to stay off till Monday but thought it was probably better to get straight back to work. I texted a different agency to say I was available and they promptly replied with a shift at a firm in Bury St Edmunds for the following morning. It was a different type of work to anything I had done. I was delivering large iron frames to companies and building sites in a drop sider 7.5 tonner. It also had an analogue tachograph, something I hadn't used since my bus driving days in the late 80's. The whole day was an absolute doddle and I was back home by 4pm to continue my recuperation over the weekend. Everyone I had come into contact with had asked me if I'd been in a fight due to the state of my nose I said yes to some adding "you should see the other bloke" and to others I just said I'd had a prang in my car.

The next week started with no work for three days followed by a phone call asking if I could do Thursday and Friday at an electrical firm called Newey & Eyre in Ipswich. It was van work but easy peasey. One little incident worth mentioning was when I was driving around the country roads north of Hadleigh in Suffolk I came upon a ford crossing a stream (I think possibly my first ford ever). I just assumed it was possible to cross as why would it be there? The water level did look high as there had been quite a bit of torrential rain the last few days but I started to cross anyway. The front of the van dipped towards the stream and the water level soon reached the bottom of the windscreen. This wasn't right thought I! It was a miracle the engine never cut out as that would have been one disaster too many in my recent driving history. I managed to whack the van into reverse and back away from the ford with steam arising from the bonnet. Crisis averted!! Nobody would be any the wiser. I made it back to the depot on that Friday and that completed my two days’ work with that particular firm.

During the day on the above shift my agency rang me to ask if I would be interested in doing van work delivering hygiene and cleaning supplies for a company just down the road from me with a possible view to a permanent job there. I agreed.

I started the job on Monday 16th of January at 7am. I was to deliver things like rubber gloves, toilet rolls, bleach, detergents, cleaning cloths and lots of other hygiene and cleaning supplies to care homes, doctor and dental surgeries, vets and assorted businesses throughout Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. I am still there after nine weeks but there has still been no indication that they want me there full time. I have found the work sufficiently strenuous to get me into better shape but not ridiculously strenuous such as when I worked at Tuffnells for four days then jacked it in!

I've already had a slight mishap at this place but not much was said about it. I had delivered to a care home in the Great Yarmouth area. The car park was full and manoeuvring space at a premium. Whilst trying to reverse I felt some resistance as if my wheel was up against the kerb so I pulled forward made some room for myself and drove away looking at the offending kerb and protruding coach light and wondering if it was that which was impeding me. I thought nothing more of it and continued my route. That was the same week as storm Doris where the van had been hit by many falling branches during the shift. On the Monday morning I turned up for work and one of the other drivers jokingly asked me what had I done to his van. He said there was a dent in the wing. I went out to the yard and looked at it and there was indeed a fair old dent in the nearside wing. I said I knew nothing about it and mentioned that during storm Doris a falling branch  or two may had caused it. Nothing more was said until the Wednesday when I turned up and one of the managers told me they'd had an email from the care home where I thought my wheel was up against the kerb with a CCTV film clip showing the van hitting the coach lamp and breaking the glass and also that they were putting in a claim for the damage. That really took the wind out of my sails as up until then I thought it was all going extremely well for me. I thought that more would come of it but three weeks on and no more has been said. 

I take extra care when I'm out and about now and apart from some near-misses on country roads with cars flying round blind bends I have managed to avoid any more dramas. I have a feeling they're waiting till after Easter to offer me a job, if at all! So, watch this space.

Take Care Out There

TM

Relief Brings Job To Abrupt End

Hi Folks

Since my last post I managed to get four weeks work from the plumbing supplies place. The trucks I was driving all had trackers on them and my speed was constantly monitored. I didn’t really believe it was real until I got pulled up by a manager during the second week to be told I was still speeding and causing lots of problems for him. That was the first I had heard of it and was then given a lecture by another manager with a blow by blow account of where I had been caught speeding. There were nine infringements in all and each one listed where I was at the time, the permitted speed and my actual speed. In most cases I was only a couple of mph over so 32 in a 30 zone triggered an infringement and so on.  Imagine bombing along a rural country road at 50mph and then you enter a village where the limit drops to 30, well in the time it’s took you to decelerate and reach 30mph you may have already broken the speed limit and incurred yet another infringement. I found the whole experience depressing and it took the enjoyment out of the job. By the end of the fourth week I was glad I’d be moving onto something new.

 My next job was delivering solid oak furniture with a drivers mate to homes around Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. It was a 6am start at a depot 42 miles away from my house so 84 miles there and back each day x 5 = 420 miles per week which worked out to approximately £70 in fuel so not an ideal job for me but it paid better than recent jobs and there was also the possibility of receiving tips.   During the first week I worked as both  driver and mate. We were on the same money so I actually preferred not to have the responsibility of being the driver. Most of the furniture was easily manageable between two of us but there were two or three items such as electric reclining settees and large wardrobes which posed a challenge.  We used to look at the run sheet, see what big items we were delivering and hope every house we delivered to was a bungalow but inevitably there were houses with two or three floors which the furniture needed to be taken to and I often came close to having a heart attack from the exertions we had to make. The job came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the second week. Let me explain. On the Friday of the first week we were delivering to a big house in Norfolk. We were an hour ahead of the allotted time but there was no one home so we had to wait. I decided I needed a toilet break but there was nowhere really discreet enough other than a corner of the front garden of the house we were waiting at so, as there was nobody home, I had a crafty wee there against a massive hedge. I got back in the truck to wait with the driver and he advised me to take care as a lot of these houses had CCTV. Nothing more was said. The home owner arrived and we delivered his items and went on our way. The shift ended at the depot and I went home. On the Monday I went to work, spoke to the boss and was sent to work with a different drivers mate.   Half way through the shift the truck phone rang and the depot boss asked to speak to me. He said there had been a complaint that I’d been seen weeing in a customer’s garden and wondered if there was any truth in it? I denied it totally and after pressing me further he seemed to accept my denial. My drivers mate asked me what all that was about and I told him the truth explaining that the house was empty and I couldn’t possibly have been spotted. He laughed it off saying it was a storm in a tea cup. We continued the shift and finished up at the depot. I saw the boss and he said no more about it. I said I’d see him in the morning and he acknowledged that. Five minutes after leaving the depot my phone rang. It was my agency asking me if I had wee’d in the garden last Friday. I denied it to them too but they said both drivers mates had grassed me up saying I had admitted it to them. Some mates huh? Anyway the upshot of it all was that they didn’t want me back. I look at it as a blessing in disguise. The heavy lifting would have taken its toll on me eventually and the mileage per week would have finished off my thirteen year old Astra so all in all I wasn’t overly bothered I just hope it never put a black mark against my name and it’s definitely taught me not to trust anyone. There’s nobody lower than a grass in my book.

I was worried I would find it hard to get any more work but as it turned out I was offered work with one of my other agencies almost immediately. I haven’t worked nights for years but I accepted a few weeks work driving for Parcelforce out of Ipswich depot starting at midnight and finishing at eight in the morning. My first run was a 7.5 tonne Man truck filled with Yorks (Royal Mail speak for cages!!) which were filled with parcels and mail. I had to take them to the Bury St Edmunds depot, unload them myself and return for further instructions to Ipswich. I would eventually load up again with up to 21 yorks and take them to the Foxtail Depot on Ransomes Europark. After unloading there I would bring yorks back to Ipswich depot and shuttle backwards and forward until my break at around 5am. The roads throughout the night were deserted and I was able to poodle along the empty streets admiring all the Christmas decorations many homes had on display. I did enjoy my few weeks work there but don’t know if I could do that permanently as the body clock switch around has played havoc with my sleeping habits.

So, the last shift ended on Friday morning and I have now been idle for four days with no clue as to when I will be working again. Hopefully it will be soon so watch this space.

I hope you’ve all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to an amazing New Year 2017

Take Care Out There.

TM                                                                                                                                                                     

Got Two Weeks Work!!

Hi Folks

So, the one day of agency work turned out to be a 7.5 tonne job for Bacton Transportation.

I've worked for them before and it is really enjoyable work. Basically you get a truck full of palletised goods and you get sent out to deliver them to homes and businesses alike. Most of the drops are relatively local...in and around Suffolk but I have been as far as Norfolk in the past.  Unloading the truck is either done by fork lift or in the case of private homes by myself with the use of the on board pump truck and tail lift.  The platform of the tail lift on this particular truck is slightly faulty in a way that instead of being level actually slopes downwards ever so slightly. This makes getting heavy pallets off the truck pretty hair raising as the load tends to run away from you. On one of my other assignments with this company I was delivering a pallet of coffee beans to a coffee shop in Woodbridge. As I was steering the pallet on to the tail lift it started rolling away from me and before I knew it it had fallen off the tail lift and into the road taking the pump truck with it. Luckily no one was walking behind the truck at the time otherwise it could have been catastrophic. A passer by sarcastically commented "well that's one way of getting it off!" Since that day I have always taken extra care and at the first sign of the pallet running away from me I press the lever on the pump truck which quickly lowers the pallet stopping it dead in its tracks.

Once all the deliveries are done I am then given collection jobs where the lorry is re-filled with pallets of goods at various locations to go back to the depot for onward transportation.

On my return to the yard one of the managers was asking me how I'd got on and I said I wouldn't mind doing this job full time permanently. He said that I would need to wait till after Christmas and then give him a call and he might be in a position to offer me a job. The only thing putting me off is the 30 miles there and 30 miles back every day...300 miles per week. Don't know if I fancy that.

So to this week. One of the other agencies I am registered with offered me two solid weeks work driving a 7.5 tonner for a plumbers merchant on Ransomes Europark.

I turned up at 7.30am on Monday morning and was shown the ropes by one of the old hands called Mal. The vehicle's compulsory safety check is done via a hand held device (ePod) and is quite comprehensive. As a lot of the deliveries are to building sites, I have to have a hard hat. There's one in the truck but they also gave me a baseball cap with company logo and a built in hard hat. Quite nifty actually and I don't mind wearing it all day even though I am having the mickey taken  by my so-called mates.

The work is delivering plumbing supplies all over Suffolk and part of Norfolk. Nine out of ten times it's to a house where a plumber is at work and the stuff I deliver is for that particular job. Complete heating systems including radiators, copper pipes and the boiler are a daily occurence as are toilets and sinks but I am yet to deliver a bath tub.

Today was the toughest day out of the three I've done so far as some of the orders got mixed up and I drove away from places not having delivered the full order because of my inexperience on the job. The last delivery I did to a building site in Haughley was a bit of a disaster. I missed the turning and automatically took the next one which was partially blocked by cars and vans. While squeezing through a gap with a van on one side and a tree on the other the tree lost the battle and lost several large branches.

As I arrived at the site there was no sign of the plumbers I needed to deliver to so I had to ring their company who in turn called them out to me. There were two fully loaded pallets of 500kg worth of plumbing kit each. The tail lift on this truck, an Iveco Eurocargo, is half as wide again as the Bacton truck and is also level so manoeuvering these oversized pallets onto it is not a problem at all. Once both pallets were off the plumbers started dismantling them in order to check all the goods were there and in good condition. They discovered two sinks were cracked and promptly put them back on the truck and also gave me a lot of other odds and ends that they said were not the right parts. I'm supposed to enter all these problems into the ePod but I haven't really been showed the finer points of working them so I just say that I'm an agency driver and don't know how they work...that generally gets me out of any pickles!

Tomorrow is day 4 at this job and I actually look forward to getting up at 6.30 every morning to see if I can do a better job than the day before.

Check back soon for more updates.

Take Care out there.

TM