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2 hours ago, denshaw said:

Hi Steve, I did some agency work for H &S mid seventies, bathroom supplies to West Midlands. Not much fun delivering a cast iron bath on your own, it took four of us to lift it.

 

The trick is to put it on your back and walk along like a turtle, whilst bent double. Takes a bit of practice to get the balance right though; I learned that one at Randalls. You need someone to guide you too cos you can't see owt but yer feet!

 

Can't imagine anyone letting you do that nowadays!

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HI CATZ / Nice of you to answer, I am now living in Swinton , Manchester, but still miss Nottingham, I will be 75 in March and I look back on my life , and were iv,e been , but I

They were still doing a little bit of that in 1987 when I started working there. There were no depots at the resorts by then but we still took a few cases; growing car ownership and package holidays k

My godfather, Derek Foster worked for Harris for many years; he ended up driving a road sweeper for Gedling council, said it was the best job you could wish for. He always told me to avoid road haulag

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cast iron baths boilers and radiators kitchen units all were hand ball nothing on pallets kept us fit haha ,did you do much work for them through the agency

i can remember most of the drivers names still and see a couple of them now and again when in notts

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Is that for everyone anywhere on rural roads/motorways?

 

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6 hours ago, renovo said:

i still do a bit of van driving for my mate round corner they run Europe all the time so i get a run out now and again get some good runs still enjoy the travel ,

are you still working or have you done now 

 

86 weeks and 2 days to go.

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6 hours ago, Ayupmeducks said:

Is that for everyone anywhere on rural roads/motorways?

 

 

Dual carriageways and motorways for trucks over 7.5 tonnes, single carriageways 50mph

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I had the vision of cars being restricted too. Varies over here, most states allow trucks to travel the same speed as cars, varies from 55mph, 60mph and 65mph on two and four lane rural highways, to 70mph and as high as 85mph in parts of Texas on freeways. California limits trucks to 55mph on freeways and cars at 65mph on freeways. There's been a lot of talk of limiting truckers to 55mph on all freeways because of the spate of tyre blow outs in summer due to tyres overheating. It appears truck tyres are rated at 70mph maximum, but sustained driving should keep speeds down to 60mph. Some trucking companies electronically govern their rigs to 55mph, with so many minutes of up to 65mph. Reason being safety, to allow a truck to pass a slower truck without upsetting the flow of higher speed traffic. Those haulage companies are of course losing drivers to other haulage companies. There's desperate shortage of experienced drivers over here, and will be with us a long time unless haulage companies start paying by the hour instead of by the mile. Although drivers can earn in excess of a $1000 a week driving legally, who the hell wants to virtually live on the road??? There's a medium sized trucking company not far from me, he's always advertising for skilled drivers, dry box trailers, no reefers, no east or west coast, he tries to get his drivers home every weekend, if not he pays them a bonus. He has mostly new well maintained tractors and fairly new trailers too. I watch scottied67 on Youtube, he drives reefers with his Freightliner Cascadia, nice looking truck. He covers most of the US and tries to get home every other weekend for a few days off.

 

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Back in the 70's some trucking companies had what they termed tramping arrangements with their drivers. A driver set of and found his next load from his contacts or a company sourced one for him. It could be a week or longer before he got home and again. In those days most tractor units were 'day cabs' i.e. no sleeping arrangements but many would still sleep in them to save money, Driving was limited to 14 hrs a day but in some quarters was universally ignored. It's all changed now days and I have to say for the better, back then long distance truck driving was not a good job.

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I used to run a transport fleet amongst my many other duties and had a ‘transport manager’s licence’. Back in the days of drivers’ log books there were all sorts of fiddles going on. The tachometers  put a stop to that but they still had to be read and interpreted. I would imagine the current electronic systems give a very detailed summary including driving styles so there is little scope for falsification.

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I think all the electronic logs are used for are hours of service/rest periods etc, I do know they are wired into the vehicles electronics, ie after a short warning your getting close to your maximum hours worked, they will disable your vehicle, then you are up for towing charges out of your own pocket, plus the haulage company you work for won't be happy their load hasn't been delivered on time. Cooled and frozen food loads are booked in at a set time, miss that time and the load has to be returned.

The drivers company dispatch department gives plent of time per load with foods.

Here's a video explaining the electronic log book.

 

 

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Thanks I've been reading up on the new systems. It would have made my right hand man's job so much easier. He used to examine the charts through a special magnifier. We did send some away once for in depth analysis and it told us a lot about driving styles. 

 

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There are no charts with the electronic logs. But from what I gather, DOT can download the data at an Inspection centre, probably one of two ways, direct or WiFi. Don't quote me on that.

Over here, DOT (state) have weigh bridges and Inspection centres at every freeway state line, they pull truckers in at random, about a 1/4 mile before the centre is a red/green light the truckers watch for, red, PULL IN, every so many truckers has a vehicle inspection in one of the workshops by a DOT mechanic, California is the worst, hence the reason in my earlier post, some transport companies advertise No West or East Coast runs. East coast has too many toll roads and time limitations heavy trucks can enter certain cities.

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On 11/6/2019 at 9:10 AM, Brew said:

Dual carriageways and motorways for trucks over 7.5 tonnes, single carriageways 50mph

The open road speed limit in OZ is 100kph, some roads in the NT have a 130kph limit

Imagine having one of these road trains coming at you a 100kph on a dirt road in the top end spraying dust and pebbles at you, Plays hell with the paintwork and windscreen. Quads can weigh in at 130 tons

 

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Interesting subject, Oztalgian. Australian Road Trains. I just read up on it all on Wikipedia and it seems with regulations, types of road permissions, driver training, qualifications etc it's a separate and unique culture. They seem to use mostly Kenworth prime movers, are these imported?

Here's a video I found to get a flavour of it all, not a full size train but gives me a good idea of what it's like behind a 1000hp turbo Cat V8!

 

(Sorry about the departure from Nottingham hauliers)

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We have "doubles" which are very common and "triples" which aren't allowed in all states, California being one, so the trucking companies have "drop off" points close to state lines that forbid them.

Backing trailers isn't one of my best projects, although a Trucker I used to live next door to, told me it's a lot easier to back a semi trailer than a car trailer combo, due to the King pin being over the rear tractor axles, but backing a double....That takes great skill.

I did learn, backing a trailer is much easier steering from the bottom of the steering wheel, clock wise for right steer, anti clock for left steer.

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Watch this trucker backing a double, man he's one hell of a driver!!

 

 

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PICT0017aab.jpg

After driving double decker daimlers and HGV group 1 artics, I'm  reduced to this ! No sarky comments thanks.

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11 hours ago, Willow wilson said:

They seem to use mostly Kenworth prime movers, are these imported?

Kenworth (Paccar), Volvo and Mack still make trucks in Australia even though  we have no high volume car makers here any more after having five local manufacturers. All gone and the skills and technical/engineering that went with vehicle manufacturing will never be replaced. Mainly due to the economists in Conservative governments that could not see that the subsidies provided were adding value to the skills and expertise of the nation.

When we can no longer build, manufacture or repair anything we will be stuffed.

We are currently spending gazzilions on diesel powered submarines, F35 Strike fighters and new land vehicles, what a joke, we only have six weeks supply of diesel and jet fuel in reserve and we would have to wait for the tyres to come from those we are likely to be in conflict with as we no longer make those in Australia too.

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Heanor Haulage.a few years ago bought several Scammell Antar chassis from Australia, fitted them with  a Volvo F88 cab, massive engines and gear boxes with up to 54 gears. They used them as heavy haulage moving plant machines.

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