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by klondike_klive 788 days ago
Interesting! Do you enjoy the lorry driving? I've thought about it but one of my concerns is having to manoeuvre around tiny village high streets (lived in a village where houses were regularly hit!) Is there much of that? Are you under a lot of pressure to deliver in super tight time frames? And how long did it take you to get your HGV licence? Cheers.
1 comments

It takes surprisingly little time to get used to the size - that said I’m more confident I the rigid vehicles than the artics in terms of tighter manoeuvring. Most of my work is trunking however so distribution centre to distribution centre, generally at most 5miles from a motorway, for customer deliveries I do have to take some smaller country roads, which are nerve-racking at first but now I’ll take much more confidently.

I enjoy being left alone with podcasts for the first 4-6hours of my shift and music for the rest, I tend to talk to the office 3 times a shift - once when I get my keys, once to find out what (if anything) is getting loaded for a second run and finally to hand my keys in - all in all 10mins interaction with “management” over a 10hr shift suits me fine.

Time wise, taking my Thursday shift - I’m booked at Heathrow airport to deliver at 7pm, if I’m 30-45mins late there’s no issues, but I generally leave to get there at 1840 so even if roads are bad I’m still “on-time” - after that I have a collection (anytime after 1900) which has to be at the customer (2hrs drive) by 0200 and I’m generally there by 2200 - I am lucky in the company I work for leave plenty of time for everything including breaks, I know other places run you around and try to get 10hrs work done in 8.

In terms of time for license, I had 4 days training for my rigid (anything over 7.5T with a trailer upto 750kg) with test on the last day which I passed first time, I then drove them for 6 months for my current employer and then again had 4 days training and test on the 5th for artics (anything over 7.5T with a trailer over 750kg) which I passed first time (thanks in part to driving rigids for 6months and being generally confident with the size etc of the vehicle)

Thanks for such a detailed response:)