The road transport industry needs to promote the positives it brings rather than hammer home the tired ‘without trucks you get nothing’ message that predict doom and gloom. Lorry drivers are on the frontline. They are the ones who deal with customers on a day-to-day basis.
They are ‘ambassadors’ for their employer. Not important enough to carry an endless supply of extravagantly wrapped crunchy hazelnut surrounded by a creamy hazelnut filling with a crisp wafer shell covered with chocolate and gently roasted pieces of hazelnut, but important enough not to act like an arse. Big Dave once found this out to his cost. He lambasted a forklift driver who put a stack of empty pallets on his trailer in a less-than-careful manner only to find the forklift driver was also the sole shareholder of the burgeoning wholesale business empire where Big Dave had just delivered. But it’s not just there where lorry drivers are front and central, it is also out on the road. An urban myth exists that a particular green-and-red-chip business missed out on a major contract because one of its drivers took verbal issue with the driving skills of the CEO of a renowned retail supplier. Of course, no one knows if that is really true but it serves as a warning. The more common tinderbox is the fleeting one with the general public out on the open road. Interaction with a tax-paying member of the community stuck behind a truck or has one right them behind only requires a small incident for it to serve as a permanent reminder as to why they loathe lorries and the people that drive them. I spent a period of my life ferrying the eldest offspring to the swimming pool. There, mingling with people from other walks of life, I had a ‘debate’ with another parent over ‘lorries’ and how she saw them as a ‘bloody nuisance’. She regularly battled trucks up and down a dual carriageway on her way to work. This often made her late, and irascible, every morning, she explained. I didn’t go down the ‘without trucks you’d have nothing’ route. Our conversation ended abruptly when I suggested she sets off earlier. Now outed as a lorry driver other parents would occasionally raise the topic of lorries-and-why-I-hate-them with me; one had witnessed a road rage incident with a lorry driver, another parent had been carved up by a truck and another had watched a lorry driver dump their rubbish out of the window including a bottle of what he thought was ‘cider’. It is difficult to defend these situations, and in fact I don’t recall that I did. Like all road users, lorry drivers make mistakes and poor decisions in equal measure. The difference is that they do it in something huge often with a name and a telephone number on it. And, of course, there are some truckers who don’t care what anyone thinks of them and no amount of peer pressure, training or sage advice will make them change their ways. I’ve known drivers spend the summer trying to wobble caravans by overtaking closely and then swerving to create a draft strong enough to cause untold mayhem, others enjoy brake-testing cars, while one wagon driver collected plastic bottles, fill them with mock-cider and lobbed them casually at people or passing cars. Yes, these people exist and drive lorries. And I have not been immune from upsetting other road users and no doubt have gone someway to form or entrench any harden views that lorry drivers and lorries are little more than a hindrance to society. If the road haulage is to change its perception, then it has to do more than merely tick a box for training or put a ‘without trucks you’d have no clothes’ sticker on the back of a trailer. Driver behaviour can be controlled, to a degree, with in-cab cameras; more operators are using this approach and seeing the benefits. Tired messages about ‘without trucks you’d be sitting on the floor’ have never resonated with the general public because they do not link (or care to link) the things they buy with how it arrives in the shop. Affiliate groups, trade bodies and associations that claim to represent our industry need to expand their horizons beyond the membership and the wider haulage bubble and be positive. Get out there, campaign to the general public, push the benefits of haulage and logistics as a career, explain how it shapes society, show how the just-in-time movement of goods work and how technology is used to help make the industry greener and more sustainable. I genuinely believe that those who continue to hammer out the ‘without trucks you’d die slowly because you’d starve as the shops would have no food in them’ message don’t have the capability or imagination to do anything else. They only focus on how institutions like government restrict practice and reduce profits, and suppliers like OEMs fleece operators. Road haulage is more than that. It is the lifeblood of this country. Sadly, Ford claimed the ‘Backbone of Britain’ for its Transit van but it would be better served for the wider freight sector. It’s time those in the industry sold transport to the general public based on its benefits not its necessity.
0 Comments
From delivery driver to fighter in the blink of an eye. My last drop was at the civic centre in town; a small arena used by the elected officials to host important events like the opening of an envelope or fundraising coffee mornings. I had a truck full of water bottles for a forthcoming British Brawling Association event taking place at the weekend; no water just bottles. No one was at the loading bay so I wandered around to the front to see if anyone was about. As I opened the door a dog bounded towards me, jumped up and took me down. I had the presence of mind to grab the pooch’s collar and attempt to restraint the canine as it began to lick my face. The dog’s breath was pungent, a hint of marrowbone and cheese. As the dog lost interest I was able to focus on the round silver tag. ‘My name is Buster’, was engraved on one side, on the other was embossed; ‘Buster belongs to The Boss’. An unruly crowd had formed around me shouting encouragement and insults in equal measure before a bald-headed guy stepped forward. He spoke with an American accent: ‘I want to thank you for catching Buster, say, what’s your name fella?’ I told him the first two words that popped into my head. He thanked me again and left with Buster. The facilities manager told me to go to the loading bay and someone would sort me out. The delivery went without a hitch. The following day I got a call from ‘Butch’, who described himself as an ‘agent to the fighting elite’. He informed me that I was now ranked 35th in the British Brawling Association’s heavyweight division on the strength of my performance against Buster. With an official ‘one and oh’ record I was to be matched with some Welsh guy a week Saturday. Apparently, Buster had taken this sap the full three rounds. I was a heavy favourite. I frantically called the British Brawling Association offices but only got an answer machine, so went online via twitter. I explained across several tweets that I was a lorry driver not a fighter, and I’d be on a reduced weekly rest next weekend so would find it difficult to get down to Croydon for Saturday’s contest, even if I wanted to do it, which I didn’t. The next day a British Brawling Association representative called to express his disappointment and talk me ‘round. ‘Let…me…tell…you,’ he said painfully slowly, ‘…you…can…be…a…uh…um…contender.’ ‘Let me tell you,’ I replied, ‘babies take candy from me.’ After a lengthy pause, came the reply: ‘We…could… ... ...match…you…with… ...a... …baby… ...holding… ...a… ...uh…um…lollipop...?’ Sky Sports started running adverts for the big British Brawling Association event in Croydon with me opening the bill against an opponent ‘yet to be confirmed’. So, with few options left, I held a hastily arranged press conference at the A1 truckstop at Colsterworth, once I’d filled out the paperwork and paid for parking, to announce my retirement ‘with immediate effect’ from the British Brawling Association. I thanked my family for their support and felt I was able to look back at my brief but hectic fighting career with pride. ‘I will,’ I said with surety, ‘remain undefeated.’ Subsequent ads on Sky Sports made no mention of my name or my retirement but did announce that Buster would be matched with a wet paper bag over three rounds. Ticket prices started at £70. New to Channel 6, Haulage Nightmares. Colin Pascoe is a hardnose, ruthless, award-winning boss of the biggest freight logistics business ever. He brings his win-at-all-costs mentality to small faltering family-run transport businesses across the UK. Desperate to keep the business afloat, Big Dave and Janice (centre) call for help. HAULAGE NIGHTMARESOn the edge of a sleepy town in the commuter belt is a small family run haulage business that has seen three generations at the helm. Now Big Dave, grandson of the founder Grandpa Dave, is in charge. And the business is failing. Big Dave: ‘When local businesses moved out of the area we had to try and carry on. We employ local people, we could not just let the fact that our long-established customers were no longer in business stop us doing what we do best – transport.’ Big Dave operates eight trucks and trailers. ‘Things have been tough, no doubt, but we are trying to make things work for our loyal employees, and our family because we want to see the next generation to take the company forward, this is their legacy.’ With fewer customers and the company losing money, Big Dave and his wife Janice have had to make the tough call to bring in the experts to try and save their business. Janice says: ‘It’s not easy asking for help; we are very proud. Usually it’s us solving other people’s problems; you got something that needs moving, we can move it. Now we are asking for help. If we don’t turn this company around, it’ll go under. We are haemorrhaging money faster than blood from a haemophiliac with a grazed knee.’ Colin Pascoe is no stranger to turmoil when it comes to road haulage; he grew up mired in blood, sweat and engine oil. He began driving trucks when he was nine. ‘I’ve got diesel in my veins. Once a wagon got a blowout on the motorway, my father wasn’t available, so I set out to recover the truck myself. ‘It had a twin-splitter, which I’d mastered over a bank holiday weekend. I hooked up the stricken truck and brought it back in. I fixed the propshaft, rebuilt the clutch and changed the pistons to get the driver on his way before my father even got out of bed. I was just 11-years-old.’ His mantra is work, work and work. He intends to bring that ethos to Big Dave’s ailing haulage company before it goes out of business. Day one Colin Pascoe arrives at the office and speaks to Big Dave at length about road haulage. ‘…so, I welded a second engine to the chassis and drove non-stop to Munich…’ With the pleasantries out of the way, Big Dave explains how the business operates. ‘The drivers are in at 5am, they fuel up, and we send them down the road. We then go home and come back in Friday when the trucks come back.’ After recounting how he rebuilt a Gardner five-cylinder engine on the side of the A1(M) on Christmas Eve in driving snow and sub-zero temperatures wearing a Santa Claus costume and armed with just a plastic knife and fork as a temporary toolkit, Colin Pascoe gets Big Dave to repeat what he’s told him some time before. Big Dave does so, begrudgingly: ‘The DRIVERS...are in at 5am...THEY fuel up and WE, the management team, send the drivers down the road. We then go home and come back in Friday when the trucks come back.’ ‘Where do the trucks go?’ Colin Pascoe asks after explaining how he invented the dolly. Big Dave toys with his coffee cup and eventually mumbles: ‘To a layby...’ Shocked, Colin Pascoe sits in mock silence for 20 minutes. ‘Smoking drum brakes!’ he exclaims. ‘I want to see this layby…’ Just over one mile away parked on the bypass are eight trucks. Drivers, who should be thundering down Britain’s roads are instead enjoying bacon sandwiches and tea supplied by Cath from the butty van. Colin Pascoe is almost speechless. He can barely muster the strength to recall the time he spent six weeks at the Turkish border trying to get into Bulgaria with only a jar of pickled eggs for company. After an hour, Colin Pascoe marches over and opens the back door of a trailer. ‘It is as I feared,’ he admits, ‘the trailers are…empty!’ Colin Pascoe turns to Big Dave: ‘What in the name of block gear-changing is going on here?’ Big Dave gazes down at the ground and twists his shoe in mild embarrassment. ‘Take me back to the depot!’ demands Colin Pascoe, who then speaks to Janice in private. ‘Did you know the trucks are going out empty and parking up in a layby around the corner?’ ‘No,’ she replies in mild shock. ‘My husband takes care of all of that, we only work Monday morning and Friday afternoons.’ Colin Pascoe confronts Big Dave. ‘How long have the trucks being going out empty?’ ‘Since 2009…’ Big Dave confesses. ‘By my Jacobs brake, 10 years without a single load?’ Big Dave’s eyes well up. ‘My father, Bigger Dave, sold me the business as a going concern and retired to Spain. Just at that time the last of the local businesses moved out, what with the recession and all. We were left with nothing, so I took the decision to carry on regardless because it’s all I know…I don’t really speak to my father anymore.’ ‘How much money have you lost?’ ‘A…lot…’ admits Big Dave. ‘Jesus Christ in a Foden Alpha! No wonder you’re struggling, an empty fleet of trucks parked in a layby all week. Un-bel-iev-able! You are beyond help, take my advice; close the doors, sell the trucks, and then sell the land. I suggest you make yourself useful by sitting in a pond and eating the bread pensioners throw at you during the afternoons!’ Several hours later and Colin Pascoe has instructed his business partner, auctioneer Big Baz from Hamerdown and Floggitt, to put a call in to see if Big Dave is willing to sell off his assets. Day two Big Dave calls Colin Pascoe to explain that he has agreed to sell the trucks but cannot sell the land as he continues to rent it off his father, who won’t let him break the lease agreement. Sat on the balcony of his penthouse flat in Monte Carlo overlooking the Mediterranean, Colin Pascoe tells Big Dave; ‘You made the right decision, I think you should be proud that you have left the road transport industry still wearing a shirt on your back.’ Colin Pascoe sums up: ‘Road haulage is a cutthroat business where the small fish get eaten by bigger fish until only the biggest fish is left, and I am afraid that Big Dave and Janice were only minnows. My biggest surprise is that they avoided the bigger fish for as long as they did…’ Next week: Colin Pascoe visits another failing small family run haulage business to see if he can help before it’s too late. Do anything often enough and there is a fair chance you’ll eventually get caught. Pete is a committed bachelor. He is a poster boy for unmarried men who have, in their eyes at least, avoided the plunge. He is unrepentant and unruly, free to act as he pleases. Not my words, they belong to Pete who regularly tells us the benefits of being ‘unattached’. A few brave enough to try have sought to pin him down. Some relationships have even lasted long enough to warrant Christmas presents, even marriage has been mooted before both the individual and the idea are quickly booted. In truth, no girl he has met and/or dated has ever matched up to his mum. That, however, is another story, which I won’t embellish on here. Nevertheless, for all is distaste of the holy sanctity of marriage Pete is a father. His son, for the sake of this tale we’ll call Paul, is now in his late 20s and is the result of a one-night stand. Yes, Pete slept with Paul’s mother once. Only a paternity test clarified that Pete was the father because he genuinely had no memory of her. Judging by the subsequent fireworks, she clearly wished she’d no memory of him either but, again, that is a story for another time. Pete was no stranger to one-night stands. His track record is, if he is to be believed, enviable. Phone calls from Hugh Hefner asking Pete to make a special guest appearance at the Playboy Mansion only stopped after a court injunction. Big Dave likened Pete’s conquests to smoking, and once coined the phrase: ‘If he had a fag for every slag, he’d be on 20 a day!’ Ignoring the non-politically correct element to that sentence, and the gross exaggeration, it was fairly accurate. Pete still drives, and no doubt still rolls his cigarettes while on the move. It is an acquired skill born out of practice and patience for anyone who enjoys a choke on the cheap. And it was Pete I thought of when I saw that Her Majesty’s Constabulary had, at great expense to the tax payer, caught a ‘lorry driver’ rolling a cigarette while on the move. Using an unmarked tractor unit borrowed from Highways England, law enforcement recorded incidents with a camera. Quoted in the Hartlepool Mail, Inspector Darren Breslin, from the Cleveland and Durham Specialist Operations Unit, said: ‘In cases where we see drivers putting lives at risk to roll a cigarette, it is exceptionally worrying. Vehicles such as heavy goods vehicles are significantly heavier and larger which mean that collisions could be more serious.’ He is, of course, right. Anyone who has witnessed the aftermath of a road traffic collision involving a truck will tell you it is horrific. Rolling a cigarette while driving is done countless times across the country by car, tractor, van and truck drivers. It is a momentary lack of concentration by the driver, often someone with decades of experience, that will go without incident, in most cases. It is no different to looking at your phone, using a CB, fiddling with the radio and/or CD, eating or drinking when you are driving. And there are plenty of cases where drivers have been caught in the aftermath of a major and fatal road traffic collision doing things they shouldn’t have been doing when they should have been concentrating. However, there is an increasing culture led by insurance companies that the driver be established as blameless. More cameras are being fitted into the cab and trained on the driver to try and influence their behaviour. Yes, its Big Brother. Yes, it’s constant supervision. And yes, it’s frustrating. But drivers need to be responsible. Even if it is something people have done since smoking and driving became inextricably linked at the finger tips it is still a loss of concentration when the eyes are on the paper and baccy and not on the road. Like the individual caught by the Police on the A19, Pete was also unlucky. His one-night stand led to 18 years’ worth of financial support to raise Paul. Pete, as he likes to tell us, subsequently got the snip so there would be no future ‘errors of judgement’ as he likes to call his son from time to time. And as Big Dave pointed out, the best way to avoid getting caught rolling cigarettes when driving is to quit smoking. Sometimes it takes a break from the hurly-burly of lorry driving to put things back on an even keel. Last year proved difficult. A job with a blue-chip company proved challenging with mismanagement and no accountability that led to my departure to a subsequent pre-Christmas stint on the agency. By New Year I’d had enough and sought something else, anything, to break what had been a downward spiral. I called it gardening leave, with an emphasis on landscaping. A friend runs a small landscaping business and was kind enough to employ me as a labourer. Moving the earth wasn’t something I was ever known for, just ask the first wife. Armed with a spade and wheelbarrow, plus a sack truck (the nearest I got to a truck in five months) my job was to move plants, turf, compost or mud to-and-from wherever the professionals were working. Stately homes, parks, council properties, retail sites… I got to see parts of the county I’ve lived in for more than 10 years I didn’t know existed. I got to go home every night, enjoy the benefits of hot water, eat a cooked meal every day, watch the telly, go out, relax with family and friends and recharge the batteries. I took up sudoku, reading, walking and cooking. My newfound world would be occasionally punctured by Big Dave phoning from a layby near Nantwich to complain about waiting time, or a text from Baz filled with expletives about traffic, and even Fossil called one Wednesday by accident (it was good to catch up). With former colleagues continuing their daily grind I asked myself why I would ever want to re-join the rat race? In truth I am too old for a career change and carrying plants to people half my age three times a week isn’t going to pay enough to keep me in pints and pies. No, it was back to the open road. I landed a job at a timber merchants driving a 26 tonner. It’ll do, for now. And let’s face it, it is a sellers’ market. Where once a driver left another would be waiting to take their seat has slowly evaporated. During my time at the coalface a whole generation of people have not chosen road haulage. The lack of career development, inadequate working conditions, meagre wages, the need to attain the illusive “two years’ experience” behind the wheel and an intimidating workplace bereft of proper management or supervision will, surprisingly, put people off. This so-called ‘driver shortage’ has been growing instead, a useful phrase uttered by management to paper over the cracks of their own inept complicity. Lorry driving is a job, like teaching, nursing, plumbing or landscaping. A job that requires training and a qualification, and that carries responsibility. For lorry drivers it is to look after and operate expensive pieces of machinery and the freight it carries, to know and adhere to complex rules, to drive safely, ensuring the safety of other road users. It is a skilled job that requires suitable recompense to differentiate them from the unskilled, with satisfactory terms and conditions from their employer and to be treated with fairness, consistency and respect. I have long argued that there is no ‘driver shortage’ but a shortage of decent employers. There is little sign that will change; where I work now, there are three trucks and eight qualified drivers, four of which work in the yard or behind the counter, with one now the depot manager. That is four qualified drivers who do not drive. I haven’t asked why, but they don’t seem to be in any hurry to pick up the keys again, not even for the wagon in the yard. My new employer seems fair enough, they make all the right noises and with an ex-wagon driver in charge of the depot, what can possibly go wrong? |
AuthorAging proletariat with face, teeth and body to prove it. Archives
August 2021
|