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by kgf1980
782 days ago
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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) |
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