London and a bloody long day.

London 5 days a week is a little bit like ground hog day without the fluffy little creature.

I usually get to my truck at 4.30 am and arrive at my load destination for 5.00 am.

After watching the shunters and loaders, loading empty lorries for a few hours they eventually  load me with 20 tonnes for central and southern london.
Twenty tonnes is about 24 pallets on my truck and that will all need fork lifting off at various London stores with varying degrees of access ranging from virtually none to very, very tight. Take into account pedestrians, motorcycles and the cyclists that insist of appearing at practically every corner of the truck whenever I find myself still enough to attempt to unload, and it makes for a very, very long day.

The Job would be easier if we were loaded at roughly the time we arrived but since we are at the bottom of the pecking order, ( a nice  bit of information handed to me by one of the loaders) we will have to make do with crossing our fingers and saying hail mary's when ever we pull into the company's yard.

I had a long run the other day and it set me back at least a day and resulted in an unscheduled night out at Toddington. 6 stores in London , starting at Forest Hill and ending at Enfield , via Highgate, Wapping, Vauxhall and Mile End. It was dark when I arrived at Enfield and he was shutting the store and I was just 4 minutes shy of a 9 hour drive. I arrived at Toddington with a minute to spare and £9 worth of meal vouchers to spend. The problem with having a £9 meal voucher at Toddington is that nothing is edible that can be purchased with one. The food in the cafe is awful and the staff just wander around ignoring any one that comes into eye contact with them, the food is all out of sight and everything you see on the menu boards that looks about half decent is not available. The burger king offers a HGV menu but only up to the value of £3.99 so you lose out on half of your voucher and are restricted to King meals with awful over cooked onion rings and fizzy drinks. 

I wasn't able to load back in Leicester until 7 am the next morning but to be honest , it didn't make much difference