30th October - 3rd November 2006

Monday 30th October 2007

Today was another agency day, the third so far all of which from the first agency that I registered with. I was asked to start at 0800 at D&P Metals in Witham, which was one of the places that I had dropped a card into last week but was a couple of days too late as they had enlisted an agency to help after one of their drivers sadly died. Ironically I was covering for the agency driver who needed to be elsewhere today. I’m at the site at 0745 and importantly I am pointed in the kitchen direction and told to get a cuppa. The boss man arrives about 0815 and tells me that I am off to Watford, but to hang on a while as the M25 is solid at J28. I am off about 0840 in todays wheels of choice an R reg Scania P220, it’s been a while since I’ve driven a Scania and although some don’t like them I find them OK. In particular they have got the right idea with the O/S mirror being low enough to see over it although it could use a blindspot mirror on the bottom, surely they could have taken the N/S one and mounted it upside down on the O/S? I pull out of the yard and get about 100 yards before realising that the clock is wrong and stop to wind it back 1 hour and write a new tacho. Overall it was a fairly decent motor the only awkward thing was 4th gear which was a bit stiff and a couple of times I nearly dropped back to 2nd. The traffic was standing at J28 but once at the top of the sliproad it cleared and I made good progress all the way to Watford where it was sticky up to the roundabout on the A41 / A412. My call was on a trading estate behind Asda on St.Albans Rd. which is where my previous employers (tossers) have their HQ. I have 10 empty scrap bins on, and these are forked off and replaced by 8 full ones, 2 drums, and several large bundles of metals. It’s a full load back and for once I have nothing to do whilst it is being loaded, makes a change from having to do it all solo. The straps on this motor have about 1m of tail beneath the handle, the edge of the body does not give a good purchase so I have to crawl under and attach them to the chassis members, this is OK until some money rolls out of my pocket and I can see £1.40 of mine in a drainage channel with no means of getting it back. This hurts.

Loaded at Watford. Still all loaded up, I hit the road and speed back to Witham, although it must be nearly fully laden the old Scanny pulls well and doesn’t struggle which is nice to see. I called in at Boreham services for a slash and some diesel and had to wiat until a horsebox cleared the pumps. When I pulled on the display was showing £30, why can’t these sort of people just use the normal pumps? Another pet hate about petrol stations is the amount of stuff they sell, this encourages people to do their weekly shopping there causing queues to pay and more queues to get on the pump. Rant Over. Back at the yard it is lunch time, so after a cuppa I set to and unstrap so that the blokes in the yard can unload it later. After a 2 minute lesson on the controls, I pull the tacho and swap to an ’03 MAN 18.224 Skip wagon. This time I change the clock first and head off up the road, this little dinky toy is quite nippy and is a bit weird to drive as it is such a short wheelbase, I imagine it cannot be a lot different in size to an artic unit. Unfortunately this motor has got a stupid 8 speed slap over? range change, I bloody hate these things but soon adapt anyway. It’s only a short hop over to another industrial estate and I pull round and back straight up to the skip and lift it on no bother at all.

Bin on, it’s back to the yard and tip the contents before returning it to the industrial estate. I manage to spin the truck round and lower the bin perfectly so that it is about 3” from the fence 1st time. Piece of piss. Back at the yard they have dug out another empty for me to take and do a drop and swap at IS&G steel at Stock where I was driving for last week. During my frequent flitting in and out of Witham I had been highly amused to see that some numb nuts had managed to park an FL6 tipper on a grass verge and sink it up to it’s axles, when I went out on the last run there was a 8 wheeler tipper there trying to pull it with a cable pulled across the road. It is only about a 20 minute run up to Stock where I was weighed in and told the bin was at the bottom of the yard. After 3 vehicles had been shifted I was able to sneak in and swap the bins over. Now the sensible thing would have been to drop the empty, nip in and pull the full one out, slot the empty in and nip back and pick up the full one. However I decided that it would be easier to plonk the fresh one alongside and pick up the full one, should be easy enough with this little motor. What should have took about 10 minutes, took over half hour and involved bins going on and off far more than necessary and far too much shunting. Still never mind, I sorted it in the end even if I did feel like a complete tit. Back to the yard and parked it in the shed. Finished by 1700. Distance 246km

Tuesday 31st October 2006

No work today so I take the boys to school and sort out some bits at home, it is handy to be able to do stuff but it’s hardly the same as working. I made a phone call as a follow up to one last Friday, and was asked to go to Colchester to see someone about a full time job. Things went well, and I was offered the job there and then starting in the morning to work through November and returning in January if I wanted to.

Wednesday 1st November 2006

0700 Start. My new base of operations is an industrial estate at Boreham near Chelmsford, working for a scrap metal dealer collecting and delivering skips of metal swarf, and scrap metal. OK it’s not very glam but it’s local, the pay is OK and I have now got a full time job again, not bad considering that I am away for all of December. Today I have got another driver with me, and we head out after a quick cuppa to our beast for the today. It’s a W reg Iveco 180E23 on the near side and a 75E15 on the Offside door and it’s seen a bit of action in it’s time, I have driven plenty of these before (albeit longer reefers) and this one has got the same crap 6 speed gearbox that is really notchy into 2nd gear.

Our first job is a 12yd skip exchange at Tottenham Underground depot (that’s the underground train depot, not a depot in Tottenham that is under the ground) No map needed for this one as I know where it is, just a quick search for the entrance will be all that’s needed. It’s A12 / M25 / M11 / A406 and we’re virtually there with only the usual hold up where the M11 drops to 2 lanes before splitting for the A406. We find the entrance to the tube depot and are escorted to the compound where the skip is. First job is to dump the empty in the car park, before squeezing into the compound and picking up the full one, drop that next to the empty and load the empty one back on. Squeeze back in to the compound drop the empty and back to the carpark to collect the full one. It’s pretty heavy and when we get it back on the weighbridge at Boreham we are just under 18t. We tip the bin, and weigh out before heading back towards London to another underground depot. We stop for ½ hour behind Brentwood High st. to get a break whilst nipping to the shop, although we have to make out that we are waiting for a car to be moved so we can drop the bin, as this is actually a loading area and the parky is keeping his eye on us. After a while we can wait no longer and leave without dropping the bin. This time we are going to Neasden depot, so we trundle round the M25 further and drop down the A1/A41 which is fairly slow today to the A406 and again we find our way to the depot gate. I press the intercom and the barrier slides open, so we are able to drive half way through up to the manually lifted one. We are stuck here for about 10 minutes trying to get some sense out of the security guard, he doesn’t seem to grasp that we just need to get to the wheel lathe shop and empty their bin. In the end I get given his phone and get told what’s what. The guard opens the barrier and we drive through and can now see the skip full of swarf about 200 yards away. Again we drop the empty 12yd out of the way and have to reverse across some sidings (that are boarded between the rails) to scoop up the 6yd bin full of scrap. This has to be tipped into the big bin, replaced under the hopper and then we reload the 12yd again. We take another ½ hour here in the sunshine and it really is warm in the sun away from the wind. Back on the move I cannot face the A41 again, so we take the M1 back to the M25 and pull back in at Boreham at 1430. The yard is now pretty busy with people coming in to tip off little bits and there are a couple of bulkers being loaded by the cranes. We cannot get in to tip the swarf so we drop the bin and collect an empty 6yd which we take out to do a quick exchange in Braintree. We are back just before 1630 and although it is dark now but I decide to tip the 6yd and return it to the heap, collect my 12yd from earlier and tip that as well so that I am ready for tomorrow. So my first day in full time employment has gone OK, it’s not the nicest of vehicles and lacks a few wheels to warrant my name but there is another beast to be unleashed that will restore me to full 8wheels status. There is also the rumour (well I have been told, but I shall treat it as a rumour until it happens as seeing is believing) that there are 2 new 6 wheelers due as replacements around Christmas time. Distance 363Km

Thursday 2nd November 2006
0700 Start. November has arrived with a bite, everything is cold, frosty and lethargic this morning. And then I arrive at the yard and the truck is not leaping into life straight away either, it does crank into life though so I leave it chugging away whilst getting myself up to temp. in the weighbridge office with a cuppa whilst sorting out today’s jobs. The first call in Harlow needs a decent skip as there is usually a fair bit of machine oil sloshing around the bottom of the swarf here, the bin on the 4 wheeler is like a lump of cheese so the plan is to swap it for the one on the 8 wheeler, which is a good un. For some reason the PTO pump has stopped working on the 4 wheeler and the bin won’t move so I have to shift all my gear into the cold Scania that obviously hasn’t been used since last week.

Back to 8 Wheels

That’s the 3rd tacho I’ve wound back this week. This old beast has been in the wars and is a bit of a shed inside, the outside is not much better but everything seems to work and I turn a large arc to get round to the exit via the weighbridge. Although this is the same length as my Volvo was, it is a longer wheelbase than the beavertail and has even less lock. Even less than some large ships come to that. Out on the road it’s not bad, its only got a piddly 310 engine whereas I had 420 before but it seems to go reasonable well and the 8 speed gearbox is working well enough too. Overall it seems mechanically fine for its 582000Kms but the trim has suffered, the air ride seat has given it’s last breath and you adopt the I’m driving Dad’s car look over the steering wheel, unfortunately this means a rock hard ride. There is a section of door seal rubber missing at the bottom of the door, so you can see the road and get an icy blast around the ankles. However there is a vertical stack just behind the drivers seat and it roars like a V8. Around the A12/M25/M11 to Harlow where I’m only a few roundabouts short of my old yard to exchange the first bin. There is a small bund in the corner of the car park and in it stands the skip for exchange.

Positioning this is a little more tricky as you are a long way from the business end.

Although I have to get a car moved to get the angle on the bin, everything seems to go well until I need to pull off the empty (now in place) and get the full one from where I had dropped it out of the way. As I go to get in the cab to shunt over, I grab the door handle and pull the door open. Well actually I pull the handle clean off and now cannot open the door, the passenger door is locked and the keys inside with the engine running. The drivers window is open about an inch so using a bit of metal rod that I found I managed to hang off the door and wiggle it enough to pull the door handle up to open the door. I wound the window down and phoned the TM who had a right good laugh about it. There was quite a bit of gear in the skip, all machine turnings so I decided to net up and be on the safe side, also I didn’t want to drive this old nail past the VOSA checkpoint at Hastingwood with any visible reason for further inspection. Unhindered I ran back the same way to Boreham where I tipped the bin, and headed out to Upminster to exchange another. The drop at Upminster was a 4 wheeler job, at a unit on a farm. This was quite a feat squeezing this beast in to pick up the skip and then replace it with the empty but I got it in without incident and parked up in the batching plant next to a couple of ’56 Axors for a 45.

Back at Boreham, the bin is half empty but the rest is refusing to budge despite best efforts to shake it loose. The good thing is there’s plenty of kit about to assist, so one of the cranes is summoned and he soon grabs out the offending panel.

One if these bad boys can be summoned to help unload if needed. I have got a bit of time to kill, so I get some cleaning stuff out of the car and make a small improvement to the interior. The other driver is taking this tomorrow to get it serviced and fitted with a new handle, and asks if I can load two enclosed bins for him to drop first. Being a twin bed, it can take one up front as well as the one on the back and the procedure for loading seems to be as follows. Reverse up grab bin 1, lift on and unchain. Get back in cab and charge across yard before applying brakes sharply to reposition bin at the front, reverse to bin 2 and load as normal. A quick check in the office to get tomorrows orders and I’m off by 1500. Distance 110Km

Friday 3rd November 2006

0630 Start. It’s back to the Iveco this morning, which seems like a decent motor after a say with the beast yesterday. First thing to do is to drop the bin full of cable that was collected yesterday and hook up the chains as I am going to do a collection rather than an exchange. I follow the 8 wheeler out and we go our different ways, I am headed for Vauxhall in S.London, him for Colchester. The run down to London is congested in the usual places on the A13 by the Ford plant and the Ship & Shovel and again through the Highway to the Tower but otherwise it’s uneventful. My collection is from one of the arches by Vauxhall station and the bin is in a large yard adjacent. I wonder about the weight as it is stuffed with lengths of RSJ but the lift gets it on OK so I net up and hope for the best. However it feels mega heavy and I fear for the worst come the weigh in. The route back is the same, albeit about 45 minutes quicker and my fears are unwarranted as the bridge shows 16620Kg. I tip the steel and drop the bin, before picking up a full one of car batteries. Now this is heavy and the old beast struggles up the ramp on to the weighbridge, it was 4t over so the bin got replaced where it came from and will have to be a job for the 8 wheeler when it returns. It was doubtful that it would be light enough to do, but there was nothing else so I was asked to try. As there was not much doing, I decided to give the inside a bit of elbow grease and tidy things up a bit. After a while one the Colchester 8 wheeler roll offs has arrived and the other driver Ted has caught a ride back with it. Ted’s main job is collecting car batteries and the like from the civic amenity sites using a dropsied FM7 with tail lift, he has got one to do in Saffron Waldron so I ride passenger as there is still no other work to be done. There are only 3 pallet bins to wheel on and we are quickly done, but we take a break here in the little hut and scrounge tea of the site workers. It seems like there might be more rubbish leaving the site for ‘recycling’ via the site workers than goes to landfill but that seems to me like everyone benefits. The site attendants are like magpies and are instructing the waste toting public to leave that there or put that here rather than actually throw it away. Eventually we leave and return to the yard at Boreham. There are a few bins to move when we get back, and this gives me some more practice at positioning myself and them, also the cable bin still needs tipping so I tip that and load another bin ready for Monday. I’m done by 1600 and off home to get a good scrub up. Distance driven 157Km Total distance 876Km