A week of pictures

I was out every morning before 5 am this week and although it shows In my pay packet, It also shows in my eyes.

I'm shattered and after a week of sleeping and driving and driving and sleeping I have had no time for anything else.

I have taken pictures of my week on the road and I have tried to post some stuff but I had a software failure out on the road while using Explorer instead of my preferred browser Firefox!

When I arrive at home its a quick shower, dinner with the kids and then I'm in bed just after them so I have had no time to write the blog up.

Here is the week as I remember it in pictures.

A very pretty farm my first drop of the day

This was the M25 usually such a bleak place to be in the morning but this was the start of a great day( weather wise at least)



This is what it soon turned into .

I was wondering how this driver could see out of his windows.
Another early morning and sitting at the customer until 9 am waiting for them to turn up.
This was new when I arrived. The M25 again and this was 6.30 in the morning. messed up the rest of my day as well by making me late in .......
Chelsea.............

Earls Court............

White City..............And Wembley.I was just making up time and hoping for an early finish for Friday when I turned up at my last drop of the day at a place just off Wembley way called Europarts.

It should be called Europrats because they couldn't organise a car parts center at Wembley.

The customer car park is here.Exactly the same place as every single goods in wagons entrance and all of their own dispatch vans as well. Its like Piccadilly circus, nothings moving. except its noisier because everyone seemed to be leaning on their horns.Their own wagons were arriving and cutting in front of genuine car part customers and hurling abuse at them if they so much showed a raised eyebrow.

The store security were little more than useless and did nothing to help the mayhem.
I just parked up out the way until it sorted itself out and the coast was clear.


I was making good progress back home on the M1 until this car decided to say hello to the crash barrier and slow 18 miles of motorway down to a crawl.It was just before Toddington and because I had been practically crawling along since London I stopped for a 45 minute break and found the car of the day.

Its not this though and its not a car...............................



Its This ,I have asked the experts at the big lorry blog to explain what it is but it looked very sure of itself to me.






I'm back out in the Go Cart on Monday , switches for gears so Ill have more time to fire off my screen mounted camera .

Follow the sat nav game

On Monday I was given the same 7.5 t wagon that I had last week, sent to Wales and told to pack my sleeping bag.

I was due in Ross on Wye really early for a timed delivery at the plumb center for 7 am.

I had a sneaky feeling that the Plumb Centers open at 7.30 but I arrived at 7 anyway.

They opened as predicted at 7.30 and tipped me straight away.

I made my way to Cardif for my 2nd drop.

I was a little bored with the M5 and the M4 so I decided to play a game called
"follow the satnav"

Basically I typed the postcode in and then just followed exactly where it said to go, every tiny lane and farm track it threw at me, I went down.

It was brilliant and I saw some amazing countryside on my drive from Cardif to Henegoin, up to Hereford and back home.

Ill post some of the pictures I took along the way.

This must be the prettiest place I have ever taken a 45 minute tacho break.

The sound of the waterfall was fantastic, until two chavtastic fishermen (boys) turned up in a " souped up supernova" and spoilt the ambiance.
The truck was just behind me in this picture, but you wouldn't of thought there was even a road anywhere for miles , never mind an industrial estate.




Not a lot happened but I didnt need the sleeping bag, and it was nice to see some relaxing scenery for a change and not the roar and monotony of the motorway.

I am up Proper North tommorrow, Leeds , Manchester , Bury and Oldham , I bet its cold wet and windy.

I also bet I run out of fuel(nearly).

The new shop was swamped

I was delivering at a customer in Chelsea that I hadn't been to before and I was told as long as you get the wheels of the truck right next to the curb, you can pull off the pallets straight on to the pavement and it will be easy.

When I got to the shop I was met with nothing but roadworks , even the roadworks had roadworks in them. It was a nightmare.

Everywhere I looked was a sea of cones.

I had to open up the curtains on the truck and side tip the whole 5 pallets.

When I opened the curtains I was met with total carnage. It looked like they had opened the rood and just poured my load in.

The floor was covered in pipes and the pallets had been balanced on top of them.

Everything had slid off the pipes and met in the middle.

Some of the goods had completely left the pallets and others were just waiting for some movement to join in the mayhem.

As soon as I tried to pull the first pallet towards the back ,off the pipes, the other pallets just slid further into the mess.

It wasn't looking good because I was on Fulham high street , in the middle of the roadworks , outside a school ,at nine o-clock and I had a lorry full of mangled wood, pipe and tv's.

Luckily the customers load was still intact, if only a little bit inaccessible.

There was one shop worker, an Aussie, who fancied himself as a bit of a muscleman , stripped down to his vest to to reveal Atlas arms and jumped up into the back.

He started manhandling the pallets to the end of the truck, balanced them on the end of the tailift and over the bollards!

I was tipped in 25 minutes , a record for that store.

My next drop was a train engineering works in Selhurst park.


The tiniest pallet you have ever seen and my lot at work had decided to bury it under a load of 4 metre long pipes just to confuse me.

I dropped here at the inspection shed and made my way out.

This is the first time I had ever seen my low bridge warning on the tom tom from the trains perspective.

Look carefully at the tom tom and you will see the low bridge height warning and my blue triangle on the train line!

Creepy.

I have no other reason to publish the picture of a massive truck, other than I saw it on the way to my one of my other drops in Ruislip.I was going to make this the car of the day but I never really did like that shape Range Rover.

I had been in West London and I was struggling to find a car of the day, but while trying to make my way down to Croydon, which was a total nightmare, this caught my eye on the M1 home.

We were traveling at a few mile per hour because of an accident at Junction 15 and this kept going past. The pineapples alone had me in stitches.



When we got moving after the hold up, this Aston Martin made the sound of the day as it went roaring past.
I am in Wales on Monday so lets see what joys the Welsh have in store for me.

Round 3

This was my mode of transport today , a double sleeper !!

After checking for visitors and making sure I was traveling alone I was off down south again.


After passing the homeless I arrived at nerds ville
Head nerd had come in for the delivery on his day off and was in is "own clothes"

It was like an off duty policeman , the jeans the hoodie and the baseball cap !

But what made it funny was the Bow bells accent , he was all cockney geezer and lovely jubbly!.

But him being "OFF Duty " made the whole delivery a lot faster than usual and I was gone before Ten.

I was into the city today with lots of delivery's in SW1.

It wasn't long until I saw and heard the car of the day
It went off , weaving through the traffic and I kept slowly pulling up next to it over and over again.

!st drop in Sw1 was here in "The Mews"
Easy drops today but really difficult to get to through the traffic.


Past Fortman and Masons food store . I was 5 minutes too early to see the clock strike 11.

Two figures come out when it gets to the hour.
Tourists (and lorry drivers) point cameras at it, every hour on the hour!

Past Piccadilly Circus (twice)

Round Trafalgar square (twice)
Past this lady on the fourth plinth (yes Twice)This is what all us truckers will be driving in the future.

Even the JCB's look cool in Central London



These Old mods went past me followed by a film crew in a camera car.Past St James palace and down into this blind ally , where my delivery was.

This was my last London attraction on the way home although I did have another 7 drops while I was down there today, and a collection as well.

I arrived home at last , oooh arhhh its good to back up North !!!