Driver CPC

Nineteen men and our companys answer to Anne Widdecombe, also known as the tacho guru are stuffed into a room for the next 7 hours with only the drivers hours regs for company.

Were all learning that we have been driving ilegally for most of our driving lives. Silly things like center field mistakes and WTD infringements make us all technically ilegal.

There are drivers in this room that have driven for over thirty years and it seems that this course or these rules will do little more than teach them to suck eggs. This job is like 2nd nature to them and by now nothing can surprise them.

It seems a shame that this course has been designed to waste so much of these drivers time and money.

Our transport manager is looking a little uncomfortable as the drivers tell our instuctor our daily driving duties and our workshop staff are finding out that they should be using charts with every vehicle movement they do to and from our four yards.

But most things we are hearing we already know and the things we didn't are not really worth knowing.

We are also learning that answering our work phone on our rest period resets that period and means we have to start it again. That made the TM sweat again.

This company will grind to a halt on Monday as all the drivers suddenly realise it's break time when the phone rings.

But seriously all we had to do was sit still in a room for a few hours and we passed module 1 of the driver CPC. If we sit still in the room again next year we pass module 2. It goes on like this until 2014 and then we get another coloured card , this time blue, to sit next to our cream driver card and our pink driving licence. All of which it's compulsory to carry at all times and all enforceable by large fines.

I can understand trying to educate an ageing workforce, it's a great time to weed out dead wood and bad habits but every body in this room with me today has at least 20 years left on the road especially the way our pensions are going, and whoever has dreamt up this scam, sorry scheme has missed a trick to really educate us on things that matter.

More pain No gain

There are very few places where its ok for a painful abcess to burst but I think I was lucky today when mine burst in the consultants room, just as he was saying he couldn't see any thing wrong with me (despite my cheeks looking like I was smuggling golf balls)


After a few swabs for the lab I was allowed to spit the foul tasting fluid out.

With the pain at last easing I was sent down to the pharmacy to collect some antibiotics.

It was only when I spoke to the nurse and heard my voice making a whistling noise that I realised that I hadn't just spat the poisen out of my mouth I had spat my front tooth out with it as well.

It all started yesterday when I was driving up in Lancashire on my deliverys.

My operation wound was playing up and seemed like it was becoming infected.

Throughout the day it grew worse and was begginging to cause me a lot of pain.

I had started out at five am and was on the home straight when the office called in a load and go job from Toyota in deeside to their other factory in Derby.

We were collecting a few training machines and they were proving hard to track down. It was made harder by the famous unhelpful security men who live at every blue chip gate and who's sole purpose in life is to annoy,hinder and generally upset every poor sole who finds themselves at these horrible individuals mercy.

I eventually found the person I needed and he took me to the machines.











As we walked through the factory I was surprised to see a human train walking towards us.

It was made up of three very confident looking Japanese men and 15 or so very nervous looking English business men following behind with clipboards.

My guide was beside himself and took great pride in telling me that those three men were numbers two, three and four in the whole Toyota Corp.


They were checking out the UK aspect of the business and seemed very serious.

When I was loaded and at the derby plant I was met by the same awkward security gate ettiqete but was eventually asked to go and park by this door.






Every two minutes this happened.







From this






To this







Or this







Every two minutes. Amazing.


I found their new energy efficent, zero co2 product parked up at the back of the factory.






At least it won't have a problem with the accelerator pedals.


The job finally finished at 7 pm and by that time I was in no mood for anything other than strong painkillers and bed.

My wife had used the good sense to ring the hospital and they told me to come in the next day.
And here we are, a few more days off work and minus a front crown ( made loose by the first surgery ) lying somewhere at the bottom of a hospital hazardous waste bin no doubt.

Snow Joke

I started out today with the perfect idea for a post , Adverts on the radio.

They have been driving me mad these past few days.

Its not just  the commercial ones either, The BBC insit on throwing these special effect ridden jingles and announcements into their shows on Five Live every few minutes  all throughout the day. They often interupt a guest or cut off a caller  to say they are out time and then play a 30 second jingle. Madness.

That was going to be my post and it will be, another day.

Then it was going to be famous people I have seen while driving because I saw this.

 

  

Was it him , Ill never know but he didnt have any money at the Dartford Toll because I never saw him come past me again.

Then it was going to about the tiny vilages I was driving around in Kent until I saw these...

 

  

  

A farm full of Llama's is always a good blog topic but my day got even better..........

 

 Crazy roadsigns ...... (kidding) but what a sign it took me to here

 

  

  

 

I had a delivery at the Chatcham Maratime Docks and was full of interesting things to see. The place I needed was a Craftsmans workshop that specialised in carvings.

 No, what eventually made my blog was me, with over 4 hours left to get back to Leicester from London, going  25 minutes over a 10  hour drive.

The M1 was pretty useless all day  so I avoided it on the way back up.

I travelled back up North via the M11 and was doing great until disaster struck. Snow. It  dropped  instantly  out of the sky and stopped everything dead. The Road was covered in minutes and lorrys and cars were getting stuck as soon as they came to a standstill.

There I was, driving along and the next minute what looked like a sea of brake lights appeared  in front of  me. Crawling along for mile after mile, every little forward movement the lorry made  added  a couple more minutes onto the digi tacho.

 

 

This was the last picture of the day , Complete standtill on the A5. 

I thought of another blog topic, Dicks that use fog lights when it snows or gets misty ,  it just makes you think their braking and causes congestion. 

How about that? a blog about what I was going to blog about but didnt!

A slow start

Cambridge and Norwich are as good a place as any to get back into the swing of things after some time off.

I went back to work last week but this was my first full week and it was nice to get in to some nice scenery and enjoy the driving.
 

  

This wasnt one of my drops in Norwich but I wouldnt be surprised if it was one day, My lot will deliver anywhere.

  

  

This is Norwich Catherderal

  And this is a smelly old farm with loads off lovely roadside wrecks buried at the back of it.

This was a delivery on a bank called 16 foot bank It was a nightmare to get to because of the water and the tiny roads.

 

When I got there I had to reverse into here, this primary school was on half term luckily.

 

This is Boots in Nottingham , a notorious time trap, Its like  a tardis inside only time stops still.

 

The security gaurd gives you a pager and a map and tells you where to drive to depending on the amount of beeps the pager makes, fine if it only beeps a certain number of times but mine kept beeping like a bloody alarm clock until I pressed a button on it. That changed the beeper tone, and then it went onto silent and buzzed instead.

  

I decided to drive around to the bays anyway and dropped onto bay 14.

I handed in my keys and told the lady , "Bay 14 love" and whipped back into the cab.

 A few minutes later a DHL artic pulled up next to me and said , "they just beeped me 14 drive , you gonna be long! " ha ha ha , I just styled it out and said "Bloody Goods In, useless!"

  

After Nottingham I was due in Newcastle and knew in the back of my mind I wouldnt be home that night. 

I kept that thought pushed to the back though because I didnt want to dwell on the fact that I would be in the tin can again.

  

  

 I had a delivery here in the Retail park in Gateshead and then a really freindly Fenwicks in Newcastle later.

  

 

  

Instead of rolling in late after my night out I was told to get set off at 4 am to be loaded back at ours for 6. I was off to Birmingham , 9 delivery's and two collections.

  

 I was parked opposite this very expensive trailer waiting to be tipped this morning .

  

  

 I didnt know that Birmingham had a +2 lane system and look who's allowed in it as well.

  

watched this going back on while I unloaded some concrete at this groundworks site.

 
 

  

This is just what the pubs look like in Birmingham !! (only kidding)

My collection was here , for Algeria then coventy anf home but my appetite for pictures was being out fought by my appetite for food so I stopped clicking and concentrated on getting back.

Thursday sees me in Ashton so Im off to bed as usual to sleep for a few hours.

I need to find a spellchecker for the blogspot as well !

A slow recovery

I called the post a slow recovery not because Gordon Browns financial stimulus is taking a long time to turn around  the British economy but because my mouth is still bloody killing me, a week and a half after having surgery its still virtually imposible to talk without wincing or swallow without wishing I hadn't .

That feeling of self pity  has filtered down into my blog sadly because I have seen nothing on my travels since I went back to work on Wednesday worthy of writing about but Ill try.

I was in Wales for the first day back at the Wilkinson depot in Magor. After that was a trip to Argos

A few cardif drops at Asda and then I had to make my way up to the West Midlands to collect various pallets for export.

      I was in Cambridge on Thursday and one of my delivery's was to an old World War bunker that was being used as a site office for a building site on the University campus.

 

Thursday was the same and Friday was a monster day delivering wood to hard to find joinery workshops and timber dealers all over Essex.

  Bishop Stortford and Colchester, back to London and then up past Stevenagewhere some of the places I went.

 One place where this slice of tree went was on an old airfield. It came off by hand, along with its five brothers!

 

 

The Air port also doubled as a BMW graveyard and a sprinter van commune. there were dozens of red 08 reg sprinters lined up in rows just parked , who knows why.

I ran out of hours on the A 14 but I didnt know until I got back and took the card out Whoops.!!

 

  

Car of the week is a beauty.

but boat of the week isn't finished yet

I am feeling better now and maybe I went back to work a little bit to soon but I am looking forward to rediscovering my mojo this week, it must be around here somewhere.