A week of wagons

I was in 5 wagons in 5 days last week.

I'm sick of swapping my gear from one to the other and living out of a rucksack on the road.

I can't settle into a routine because I am always moving in to a new vehicle.

Along with the new vehicle also comes a new type of work and a new Transport manager.
For instance Monday I was in a 7.5t (surprise) and I had a certain type of run.

Long and early.

I also have the the 7.5 t transport manager.

This means I know he will ring me after my drops to see if I am finished, and when I'm clear he'll give me some collections.

In the vans I get a new Transport manger and he will ring me all the time and give me garbled instructions to places I have never heard of and expect me to be a mind reader and know exactly what they want and where its going , even before they know themselves.

The work is all courier and its all delivery's that are needed yesterday.

Then there is the palletways network.
This is similar to the courier work, but in bigger vehicles.

I am back in a wagon a week next week and its the faithful 7.5 t MAN, on hire to us its a 58 reg, day cab.

Its a nice truck to drive and the gears are push buttons. Easy.



I was out in London early on Monday but luckily I wasn't in the city, just the suburbs.

This was blocking my way into a regular drop at the Airport.
I was off to my drop and was directed past the roundabout that was 1/2 mile away from the customer and sent on an 8 mile diversion because of this accident.I was then sent to Aylesbury to find a shopping centre , I finally found it, underground and into Superdrug.The next morning I was sent to this place
It was barely on a map and the roads were so small I was literally breathing in passing through some of the lanes .



I had to ring up the site and be directed past the jam shop sign , under the weeping willows, over the tiny bridge, down the track and you will come to the house.
and Wow ! what a house , it was a shame to churn up his lovely lawn and dump it on his driveway, but they ordered the stuff!.


I was at an air freight forwarder in the week and they even let the visiting drivers park in their yard overnight!

Now that's revolutionary!!!!.

This beast had more CCTV than an inner city housing estate.





I had to visit an Argos I had been to a few times before and I had nothing but bad experiences there the last times I had been so I wasn't looking forward to it much.

I hadn't been for a while so I typed the post code into the sat nav and this was the route it told me to take

I took another way just off the A38 and a massive industrial estate.

I has a similar experience to last time. I long, long weight and to make matters worse It was a 3.30 pm slot.

Then work rang and told me I was due into the NEC for a collection at 6 pm !! I had started at 6 am that morning.

I sat watching the containers being swapped around and they finally tipped me just after 5.30pm


On the way to the NEC I saw a whole compound of these.



I made the NEC for just after 6 .30 and found my way to hall two straight away.

The security directed me right inside and it was an easy twenty minute load with the tailift and homeward bound.

One slight problem getting home was this ignorant git.

I did the right thing and moved over to the middle lane to let him come in from the slip road and instead of letting me back in, he stayed out there. Even worse, he started to try and take me in the left lane.

He could just match me for speed on the flat and he passed me down hill, but going up,he was slipping behind me.

If he had of let me pass and then came around me from the middle I wouldn't of minded, but he decided to be an arse, an ignorant arse, so I played dumb and hung in the middle until my exit. M69. Naughty but nice.

My last day on swap shop was in the 18 tonne Scania , what a dog!
It had over 600,000 K on the clock and it drove like that was the 2nd time the speedometer had been there. It shaked and it rattled, but sadly it hardly rolled. It jerked.

I jerked into this wood yard and scared most of the customers to death including the owner of this sunbeam , who seemed very reluctant to get any closer.


The next delivery were more used to ugly , noisy , and shaky wagons turning up . It was British Gypsum near Loughborough.

After jumping and jerking though every provincial village in the north of Leicestshire , I was finally on my last delivery, It was an old farm under here.

They were building these .

They look rather nice on there own , but I don't know what a whole cul- de- sac of them will look like.

Excuse the rubbish photo but I was scared to let one hand off the steering wheel to fire off a shot on the windscreen cam when I saw this genuine antique van.

My delivery's were over and I was sent to collect all the delivery's for Monday. Palletways never sleep.

There is always more crap to deliver , more crap that simply has to get there, more puzzled brows to scratch and shoulders to shrug when that urgent delivery turns up on their pristine customer car park or their leafy suburban street and know one has the foggiest who ordered it.