The day starts with the usual banter in the driver's room. Those who smoke slope off to the smoking area for their last intake of nicotine before the day begins as all Tesco Lorries are now non smoking.
1 or 2 drivers can be very vocal in their descriptions of life in general which can leave you having a quiet chuckle to yourself as you drive along later on.
We are white boarded so from a start time of say 1600 in the afternoon, here is what may happen during the course of a typical day.
We are all allocated a running sheet for the night, which usually involves 2 runs and sometimes a backhaul from Scottish courage at Thatcham or collection of wine from Brackmills.
You get half an hour to check the vehicle over including the trailer and should everything be ok, start heading out to join the traffic queued up to get out of the estate. Sometimes it can take at least 40 minutes to get to the M25 and get away, but the whiteboard hasn't learnt this yet, so you have seemingly impossible running times to the first store.
The first delivery of the day is in West London round the back of Heathrow Airport. Hayes to be precise. The running time is around 35 minutes according to the white board, but it takes over 1 hour and 45 minutes due to someone having had a run in with a foreign registered truck. Everything looks ok apart from the sorry state of the car that has been hit. Everything is on the hard shoulder but everyone slows for a quick rubber neck.
Thanks Two Jags, or was it his mate Alistair, for all the extra lanes of solid traffic. The latest improvement to the M25, the widening, has created an even bigger car park!
Arrival at the store finds I have been beaten by the Didcot delivery. Oh well, settle down and read the paper.
Finally get on the bay and the Warehouse Manager is running round like a headless chicken banging on about turn around times and "Tip and Fill" It's as if it is his own money paying the wages.
By the time I get away, the traffic has cleared and it is a short run to the DC for a trailer change and set off for High Wycombe Loudwater. The arrival at Loudwater is greeted by the news that I shouldn't be there till 2200 and they are not going to tip the load under any circumstances until that time. A quick phone call to the DC produces the desired result. More Managers running around like headless chickens moaning about "Tip and Fill" There is some sort of agreement that this load must be tipped as soon as it arrives, so that the driver has half a chance to get to Brackmills at a sensible time. Must be getting close to 6 hours now.
Break Time.
Carry on to Brackmills to collect the wine trailer for onward distribution through the system.
Finally arrive at Brackmills DC sometime around 0030 in the morning. Have a quick chat with the shunter and hang onto the trailer just in case.
"Just in case" there is a 6 hour wait as one of my colleagues endured the other night and still came away empty. Something was muttered about computers messing things up. Collect the paperwork from Stobarts Transport Desk for the load to find the trailer has 9, yes just nine cages of wine loaded on it.
1 cage for a superstore, 2 cages each for 2 expresses, and 4 for an extra. A 13 metre trailer with 9 cages should make for an easy run home. I sometimes wonder at the amount of wasted space in the trailers, but not for too long as I am only a driver and not paid to think.
The run home is fairly easy as by this time of the morning the lorries outnumber the cars and everyone is running at a fairly even pace. Lost count of the number of Tesco wagons going the other way, even spotting a few stealth sets! (Must keep my spotters book up to date).
Into Weybridge DC, and hand over paperwork to the Satellite DC for them to sort the load out.
That's me done for the day (night), diesel up, wash down, fill in reams of paperwork that has already been entered into the isotrak, and hand in loads of bits of info.
Check tomorrow's start time, swipe out, rev up the car and head home.
