Trucking Report From England Part 1

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