Posts Tagged ‘england’

Hi all.

So whats it like to be a British Trucker? To be honest, it’s a thoroughly thankless task. Crowded roads, impatient drivers, inconsiderate employers and draconian legislation all add up to stress, tiredness and misery.

British road are very busy. Rush hours are, as you’d imagine the worst time to travel – but they seem to be getting longer. Morning rush is between 6.30 and 9.30, and the afternoon peak seems to be from 3 to 6. There are no roads over here that you can just get on and drive for hours and hours. The longest single road in the UK is a little under 400 miles, but to travel the length of it would be considered a full days work. Along the way you’re sure to encounter road works, road hogs and road rage.

One thing you won’t find is good food or places to park for the night. The days of the family owned truckstop are long gone, so now all you’ll find are service areas that cater for all road users, and are owned by large “hospitality” companies. As a result, they are totally focused on separating you from your hard earned cash, and giving as little as possible in return. Most contain some sort of fast food franchise, usually one of the big US burger chains, as well as a “family” restaurant, in which you’ll find grossly over-priced, poor quality food, that’s been sitting for hours under heat lamps – the only thing that isn’t as tough as shoe leather are the limp, soggy french fries. Other facilities in these service areas include one filthy shower that will give you an occasional dribble of tepid water, a shop selling rubbish at a 50% mark up and a game arcade. For the pleasure of parking here, we are charged about $35!

So more often than not, you’ll find trucks parked up in lay-bys (which are little areas at the side of the road for motorists to stop for a few minutes), or on industrial areas. Naturally, there are no facilities here – no toilets, washrooms, or food.

On the plus side, we don’t have to stop at every scales we come to. Most scales over here are also check points, where Police and Government Inspectors will examine you and your vehicle. These only operate part-time, and you only stop if instructed. Most of the officers know what they’re looking for, so if you drive for a well known and respected operator, you get left alone. I’ve only been stopped once in the last 5 years.

We face the same issues as you regarding the people we work for too. Planners and dispatchers that make promises to customers that the driver can’t possibly acheive, delivery and collection locations that think you have nothing better to do than sit and wait for hours on end, and people generally blaming the driver for everything that goes wrong.

Life tends to be easier if you travel out of the UK and into Europe, but not always. Most of the European bound traffic travels from here to France, and the bulk of that travels by ferry or tunnel from Dover in south-west England to Calais in north-east France. As this is a very busy route, it has become a focal point for French strikers, so whenever the French farmers or truck drivers have some sort of grievance, the first course of action is to block the roads approaching Calais. Similarly, the French fishermen have no hesitation in using the thier boats to blockade the entrance to the port. However, if you’re lucky enough to get over unscathed, Driving in Europe is a much more relaxed and pleasurable experience, and drivers seem to be treated with a lot more respect.

So your deliveries in Europe are done, and you’ve got your collection and you’re heading home – but your problems aren’t over yet! Believe it or not, there is a massive movement of people out of Africa, and they all think that England is the promised land. They pay all their savings to people traffickers and make epic journeys up through the Sahara desert to Libya,  across the Mediterranean sea to Italy, then up through Italy into France where they all converge on Calias. Here, at the final hurdle, they’re looking for an England bound truck on which to stowaway. You must check your vehicle VERY carefully, as there is an automatic fine of £2,000 for every illegal immigrant that comes in to the country in your vehicle, even if you can prove you didn’t know they were there. Drivers used to report any stowaways
they found, but now are more likely to let them go free to avoid the fines.

As with everything in life, there are good and bad things in a truckers life over here, so I’ll talk about the good stuff next time.

Take care.

Hello All!
Yesterday (12 April 2009) a truck driver from England, Ian Sayer posted a comment in response to my post on Top Ten List. I liked what he had to say and how he said it, so promptly invited him to post some articles describing
trucking in his part of the world.

He quickly complied and here is part one. By the way, please take a few seconds to vote in our poll on the right of this screen. I would like to invite other drivers around the world to contribute to this blog but will
leave it up to the majority of my readers to decide how often this happens.

Hello everyone, and greetings from England.

Recently I made a comment on this site, and Grumpy very kindly asked me to submit a few articles on the differences in truck driving over there and over here.

Many European drivers have made the great leap across the Atlantic, and most love it. Yet, sadly, some simply can’t handle it, and the main reason is the MASSIVE culture shock they encounter when faced with the realities of what they’ve committed themselves to.

The most obvious difference is, of course, the vehicles. The American makes are rarely seen on our roads, although some are used as wreckers or show vehicles. Common over here are Volvo and Scania from Sweden, MAN and Mercedes-Benz from Germany, Renault from France and Iveco from Italy.

Because of the small, crowded nature of the British Isles, our trucks haveto be more compact than yours. Standard sized semi-trucks (or artics, as we call them) are about 55 feet long, and maximum weight is around 97,000 lbs running on 6 axles.

Because of the overall length restriction, we use “cab over” type vehicles, as this allows us longer trailers. Driving cabs are wider, but sleeper berths are much smaller than yours – generally a 24 – 30 inch wide bunk, directly behind the seats.

Engine sizes are broadly similar to yours, but our emission and noise limits are much tighter, and fuel is much more expensive, so we pay greater attention to economy. Aerodynamics and streamlining are important. We stopped using constant mesh transmissions long ago, and names like Eaton and Fuller are consigned to the history books now. The majority are syncro-mesh, and automatics are growing in number all the time.

We also have the Tachograph. All commercial vehicles, including vans, light trucks and buses are fitted with tachographs, which records all the informationyou would write in your log books, plus information about your speed. Since 2006 we’ve had digital tachos that record all the information onto a small plastic card, similar to a credit card, with a memory chip on it. We simply insert it into a small unit in the truck (same size as a radio) at the start of the shift, and remove it at the end. Once every couple of weeks, we take the card into the office, and download it into the computer, which stores all the information for 2 years.

The main purpose of the tachograph is to record our hours of service. Police officers and government inspectors carry card readers, so you can be checked at the roadside, and the penalties for infringements can be severe – up to £2000 fine or 2 years imprisonment, so we take it very seriously!

The big disadvantage of this system is there is no ability to “run over” by 10 minutes or so, say, to get to the truck stop or reach a customer. If you calculate the time you need, you’re screwed, and the details are stored for 2 years, so there’s a good chance you’ll be found out.

Oh, I nearly forgot – speed limiters. It seems that more and more of you are getting them, but we’ve had them since 1988 and it took a lot of getting used to. 56 mph is as good as it gets for us. The worst thing is trying to overtake a truck who’s limiter is set 1 mph lower than yours – it takes ages!

That’s all for now. I’ll write again soon and tell you about life on the road over here, and the day-to-day problems we face.
Take care

Ian