In the Fuel Crisis, why isn't Lawrie driving Lorries? 

WELL SAID

I have to say, I have never muttered that. Cyclists on the other hand, are an absolute menace.

@@Nbomber I agree the mushroom heads need banning ridding side by side ect

But I'll suffer too and I've literally never said or even thought that. In fact I go out of my way to be good to the kings of the road; they've got somewhere to be and not much time to get there.

@@sterogerson4177 Riding side by side in no way contravenes the law or the Highway Code. But I'll bet you drive too fast a lot of the time, which contravenes both.

HGV parking in motorway services costs over £30...

@@cbmsysmobile most companies will pay for the parking though

@@cbmsysmobile You Brits get charged for everything.

@@rich7447 Capitalism (in its current, chiselling to the nth degree form).

@@SubTroppo Here in the US and Canada you can almost always find a place to park a truck or RV overnight for free. Capitalists are usually smart enough to see an income opportunity. Walmart knows that an RV in their parking lot could mean a big sale when a family has to restock. Cracker Barrel knows that a vehicle parked overnight is a potential early customer.

Exactly, one container train could take 36+ containers off the road network until the last 30 or so miles depending upon where hubs would be placed.

Funnily enough I was thinking much the same thing - there's quite a few old marshalling yards around the country still available - Millerhill near Edinburgh is one of them, and with a bit of tinkering, they could work as a transshipment area. Trains hauling the goods, and then battery powered vans and lorries covering the last few miles - a good solution for everyone.

100% this. Because trains can be electrified without batteries they are by far the best system for long distance transport, environmentally speaking. There are plans to reopen an old rail freight yard in Sheffield so it seems some people are looking in this direction. If you had enough freight yards these could form bases for the lorry drivers and they could return there for their breaks and to pick up the next load. Mostly they wouldn't need to be away from home overnight at all. I think it would be great if we could do a similar thing for personal transport. If we could have trains like the channel tunnel shuttle that carry cars people could drive their electric car to the train station and drive on, then plug in and recharge their battery via the train power. Travel at high speed to somewhere near their destination then drive off at the other end. Reduces traffic and energy use on the roads. Eliminates range anxiety and recharging time. Batteries can be charged more gradually meaning less wear. The difficulty is that the shuttle is too big for the tunnels etc in the UK. So it might have to be limited to smaller cars like Smart cars. But since you wouldn't need such a large battery this might be OK.

Canada uses trains and trucks. Of course, much bigger, but my point is trains move much more goods than trucks. However, you need the infrastructure to load and unload. Does the UK have this?

@@adrianthoroughgood1191 yes you’re right Tinsley yard (Sheffield) re-opened a couple of months ago and seems to be running well at the moment.

You say that, I did the collage and uni thing... Waste of time. Now doing my class 2 because the lowest class two wage is £8,000 more than what I'm on currently. And I have a decent job in TV

I cant believe im going to try and say this. BUT. Trucking could easily become a decent industry again, they only have to roll the clocks back a bit and there there. Not to long ago, drivers were paid well, £15 to £18 an hour, ADR Drivers were looked upon as gods and got paid a bit more still. When they had to do a night out in the truck, they got paid for the night out, they got there parking paid for, and most employers told there drivers when getting parking pay for parking that includes a meal ticket and have yourself a nice meal. They in many cases were given a "Truck Float" that would cover a weeks worth of parking fees at £20 a night, back then drivers were valued by most employers, but then we as a nation entered into a period of demanding more for less. A driver shortage became critical, so thousands went to train, they qualified and displaced the expensive 40 year veterans, they accepted working for less and less, it became a race to the bottom, and here we are.. As for the costs of learning to drive a truck, well im retired already in my life (thank you bitcoin), i have looked into learning to drive a truck, given i only have a car licence, i don't even have 3.5 ton on my licence, well its profitable to do. There are now hundreds of company's out there who will have you trained on there dime, in return you have to drive for them for 2 years, or if you do leave youll need to refund a % of the costs outstanding on your training. DHL for example, will hire you TODAY, train you, get your licence, pay for you other training needs (and there are several) then slap you in a truck and send you out, same at Tesco, Asda, and as i said hundreds more. Would i actually drive a truck as a living, well no,but thats because id have no interest in UK driving, if i did it, i want to go out Monday, get back Friday and drive across Europe, given that id have less time constraints, and loads permitting i could leave a day early, and enjoy plenty of stops along the route, ive seen all of asia, and america, but inside the EU, well ive been to amsterdamn, DUH, and Germany (little racetrack they have there) thats it. SO there is an appeal to it FOR ME at least, but each to there own.

You get to shit in bushes?? Wow, now you’re romanticising the whole thing! Where do I sign up? ( 😏 )

@@portlyoldman Whats your obsession with shitting in a bush?

It isn't just truck driving. I wouldn't work on a ship again no matter how much pay I were offered. Same situation with poor conditions, race to the bottom crap pay, and being treated as sub human. Funnily enough the industry has the same problem with being unable to attract people, or retain them, while people are also retiring out of the industry in large numbers with no one to replace them due to massive cuts to training through the 80s and 90s.

It's a job for a single man in his 20s or a man in his 50s family raised, spot on,👍 I'm in my 30s with young children and it's causing me issues to say the least. I'm in Ireland, the average age of drivers here is 50 plus going by the cpc's ( a load of shit) I'm very often the youngest there.

@@mjmayo970 Don't let the job come between you and family. You work to live, not live to work. In the current climate it could well be worth looking for shorthaul work. There's plenty of choice out there right now just begging for drivers.

@@docthebiker exactly,👍 family is what's most important. A haulier near me lost 29 drivers the same day, they all went to england for work and probably trebled their weekly wage lol!! He was only paying peanuts anyway. Bad wages are a big problem in there s country along with bucket loads of red tape bollocks.

I presume the DfT will abandon the Driver CPC

@@highpath4776 They said when we left EU that they were not going to change any standards so we maintain compatibility with EU licences. Now there's a recruitment crisis they want to cut the amount of training in half and give drivers C+E (Artic) licences without bothering with C (rigid) first. So now your new UK C+E licence will be invalid in the rest of the EU

@@cbmsysmobile Well done UK !

Well said , much of it is true , there was a time running out of Portsmouth one could do Manchester drop , reload back to Pompey in a 9 hour driving/12 hour day , not anymore and Pompey to the smoke - 60-80 miles 1 drop back empty will take a full shift/8-9 hours driving during the day . Great fun in an old 'B' series ERF with a 9 speed fuller and a 40 fit trailer .

The CPC is why I gave up driving too. I already had an international CPC as a transport manager, but apparently it wasn’t enough so I decided that I wasn’t going to give the parasites any more and quit.

CPC was supposedly a requirement of EU membership. So why are we still forced by law to spend a week in a classroom on our own time being taught what we already know, often by someone who isn't even a licence holder?

CPC could be great but its so obvious it was just put together by lobbyists and the "schools" dont wanna complain about not having to do shit and get paid.

@@mikes5637 ... because we have not really left?

@@mikes5637 you missed out ,you can sit the same course 5 times and still get cpc licence,i quit driving hgvs 3 years ago,if they scrap the cpc i might go back.

@@leesaunders5357 no you cannot do the same course 5 times, since 2019 your course will be cancelled if it’s repeated.

It's not a matter of that it is a matter of employers not wanting to pay more.

Sort of yes, but more no. Look at how its changed in this country. Every government pushes that every one in school goes to uni. So no-one young does the manual jobs, like driving, butcher, baker, farm worker etc ert The EU is having the same problems, the young just dont want to do the manual jobs any more. Germany needs 150,000 drivers (according to Germany at end of September) Poland 80,000. Just where do they all come from?

@@BlutoandCo France is also short of 50,000 truck drivers, fact, that was in the french news papers several days ago, I know because read it as I live in France at the moment no doubt the BBC, The Independent and Guardian reported it.

Well said

@@BlutoandCo Plenty of drivers in russia, belarus, ukraine that works for peanuts. The EU is facing the same issues as UK, you lads are just further along the time line in this regard.

Here in the US a lot of the same issues exist. I've driven motorcoaches for 37 years and I can't tell you how many times companies have tried to get me to drive big rigs ( lorries for you Brits) , There's no way you could get me to drive until you drop. The rest areas stink, when they are open, the government seems to think it's ok to close rest areas to save money for months at a time. Everyone treats drivers like second class citizens, even us coach drivers.

I’m afraid it will never change , Boris and co don’t understand,and don’t really care from their fluffy little worlds!

Neat & complete.

One word: Brexit

@@theSammyM333 if you think this is only in Britain, worse, only in europe, then you are wrong and fully so.

I did not know that money breeds new adult people. Thanks for letting me know.

@@MmeHyraelle The problem is everywhere. But other countries have the possibility to be flexible and nimble by moving 10s of Thousands of Drivers from one country to another. THAT the UK can't do due to brexit. So @sammy333 isn't wrong. The driver shortage is a european problem. The effects the driver shortage has on the respective economies (in Mainland Europe + Ireland little issues, in Britain real issues) is due to brexit. As one Journalist said so perfectly: Brexit is not the root of the problem, but Brexit hinders the UK in handling the problem. So in what the consumer sees at the end of the day: That's a brexit issue.

@@theSammyM333 There's enough drivers in the country to cover the shortage, reality is however we don't want to do it. Europe also has a driver shortage

People who have held their hgv licences for more than 5 should be exempt, especially given the current situation. Some of us would maybe consider getting behind the wheel of an hgv again but don't have the time or money to sit through an entire 5 days of that nonsense. Keeping the dcpc but dropping the reverse exercise from the class1 test suggests that, yet again, the people in charge are idiots.

Spot on mate…the CPC need to go for existing drivers. I know loads who left because of this! Drivers are a funny breed of men, happy to shit in a carrier bag and sleep in a tin can and eat rubbish food all year but they pride themselves on knowing the job inside and out. Being told how to do a job they’ve done for years didn’t go down well with some drivers I know! One driver I worked with had been out to the China border from Clevedon in North Somerset in the 90s for Ralph Davies, there wasn’t much this guy didn’t know and now he has to sit in a classroom and be told how to do the job he’s been doing successfully for years.

I know. It’s crazy. I did the tacho course 5 times in a row. Sat and read a book through 4 of them. Lol. I should add, the company I work for was paying for it. In fact I was paid to be there.

They stopped the same course 5 times after the first batch of CPC courses ,waste of time anyway,.

@@PillSharks guilty as charged mush!! In the90’s I used to work for a Dutch firm and we’d regularly drive out of Europe and over the land bridge into Asia subbying fir a Swiss firm. Used to see a few Brits going through the Commie Bloc always. I makes better money farm fencing and processing timber on a small scale. Packed in after 25 years shipping out week in week out. Always said I’d never get back in one after 55. Sounds like nothings changed 😉

3) Don't forget all our British driver were told years ago they they wasn't needed anymore because we've got enough cheaper ones from the EU.

Good for you for not taking shit. The reason they do that is because too many people take that because they’re too afraid. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy unfortunately

Warehouse operator here. Maybe it's not your fault you're late, but it's not the fault of other drivers either, so why would they need to wait while I service your late ass? And even if there's no other cars currently present, there's usually some preparatory work going on, either in the form of gathering outbound delivery or sorting and shelving an inbound one to make room for the next. And of course there's all sorts of scheduled maintenance, cleaning, break time for the the workers, etc that goes on between trucks. And apparently you get angry and abusive when confronted with the fact that the world doesn't revolve around you. How... British :-).

I'm a truck driver in the US, I've been only driving for little over a year now, but I totally feel you about the PTSD. When you pretty much live on the road, you see more then your far share of shit.

@@mattb.4411. It doesn't take long before you might see more carnage than anyone should and its almost always meaningless losses which could have easily been avoided if people were more careful. I'm not a soldier, I'm not fighting to defend a country or save lives. I'm just hauling freight down the highway. There is no logical reason I should know what it looks like when a family is crushed in a vehicle or what a person's face looks like in the brief moment before they accept their fate. But I do.

You should start your YT channel.

@@tomjoad1363 . I had a video up for a while and I've debated trying to produce some content but my comments are so strictly sensored now because of my questionable behavior so I would likely need to make a new account and then I'm just going to mess that up too.... so...

@@huntsbychainsaw5986 Upload it to Odysee

For non french : aires de repos literally translate to rest area :)

same here in Switzerland, our ''Raststetten'' are every 20km or so on the motorway, and every second one has a petrol station a nd a cafe or diner while ALL of them have clean toilets

I have been a driver for 28 years I would never do it again if I could roll back time

@@alanadair7169 What would you do then?

@@Project1312 it’s 4 am I have just got up to to start my day the answer to your question anything anything where you don’t have to get up at this time

@@alanadair7169 Then with respect why don't you retrain and do something else?

@@Project1312 that’s me parked up unfortunately it’s not as sample as that I am too old for a start

2 years ago another truck driver posted a video on RU-vid on why he was leaving the HGV driving profession. He got fed up of what Lawrie mentioned and customers and bosses were too demanding as they relied on their computers guess work to schedules.

Will be more warehousing. In effect an extension of Ransomes Europark. Bought from the owners of Orwell Crossing by Maritime Transport I believe

Leamington truck park had a height restriction AND a weight limit!!@!

That is insane. No truck stops around ipswitch anymore...

It is shut

I used Orwell all the time it's a shame there are getting shut for housing,how are the new home going to get sofas,kitchen,tv's etc,govt was like an ostrich until there is a problem then they blame other,everybody has been telling the govt there is going to be a problem 5-10 yrs ago nobody took action,well f@@@ you all and this Ball breaking empty headed 2 faced govt I'm retired and living comfortably.i saw a tanker on the BBC with 2 people is that because the mod driving doesn't have an ADR ?? 2 people to do 1 job aye that would be right.

That's at least part of the problem in some urban areas-laid out in the days of the horse & cart doing a local delivery,not a 44t artic with a far from local driver trying his best to complete a delivery.

Pre pandemic, rail freight moved 17.2 billion net tonne kilometres. The peak rail freight was in mid 90’s at over 22 billion net tonne kilometres. Beeching prioritised freight at the expense of passenger services, so it had little impact. Another thing to consider for rail freight is at the time of the Beeching cuts, we mostly transported coal from mines and ports - this doesn’t happen anymore - similar to Milk, meat & veg i.e. because it became cheaper and delivered fresher product by road for over 40 years.

Now your getting into the Integrated Transport System argument of decades past: long distance stuff on the railways - local and short distance stuff on lorries. Probably very feasible pre Beeching when even every village had, or was near to, a railway station. No need to pave farmland with motorways etc. I remember the pre Beeching days very well and Oh! I do wish that we had given it good try, the basics of it were already in place.

@@CEng-ge6sw Pre Beeching the railway was unaffordable so something had to be done. There is always a healthy debate on what this should have been & even now some parts of the country have bitter memories of loss to local passenger services - they dont complain about loss of freight services mind. We also all have inside toilets these days, so there is that :) As we look at this from todays view, no country in the world delivers produce or essential everyday goods by rail unless to a small number of remote in country locations. There are also no countries in the EU that have fuel availability problems, nor the the same steep price increases to energy that we see. These are self inflicted issues (or opportunities & benefits, depending on your politics). The Yellowhammer paper advised the Government on these issues years ago, even John Major said HGV drivers would be a problem once we leave the Single Market - all dismissed and now all come home to roost.

All over Europe, rail freight has been in decline ever since the end of the war, and since the closing of the coal mines. So this isn't unique to Britain. It's simply not economical to load a couple of milk churns aboard a short freight train in the morning. Rail freight is alive and kicking, but unlike the USA, where there are no east-west waterways, there are plenty of waterways for both shipping containers and raw materials - exactly the sort of thing transported by train these days. On the continent, you can see this at the large harbours such as Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. A *lot* of freight coming into Rotterdam is loaded onto smaller ships and transported towards Germany. There's also a dedicated freight railway to Germany, but there's also a lot of freight transported via lorries, both towards Germany and France.

@SoLDMG The reason your mate carries on driving is probably because most of his driving is in Europe and not here in UK where he'd spend a good part of his drive day in heavy traffic on the motorways not to mention the misery of endless averages speed cam checks. Rest stop facilities in Europe are also way better than what we have here in UK. Prior to Brexit I spent years touring throughout Europe in a motorhome and the driving is far more relaxing and a totally different experience.

They probably know that if they stop the world will grind to a halt and there would be huge shortages of key items like food and medical supplies everywhere they're needed. They probably keep going as one of those people who 'do it because there's no one else'. It hopefully isn't, but it could be a completely miserable existence and they'd still stick at it because of that. Everyone does have their tipping point though and for many it has reached that resulting in the 'driver shortages' being constantly talked about now. The same thing is going to happen with UK farms. They're paying farmers to turn arable land into grassland or simply retire, meaning turning the ground that our food amongst other things is grown in into ground that we can't eat anything from, just look at and say 'ain't that a pretty shade of green' as we all starve to death, either from not producing enough food to sustain the growing population or not having the drivers to deliver the then essential imported food from the ports. That's a very pessimistic statement from me I admit so I'll recommend Harry's Farm as a channel that covers that information if you're interested in more accurate information from an actual farmer's perspective. In a recent video he mentioned how he's going to ignore the government's advice and grow more wheat instead of less, something he will forfeit government funding to do, the farmer equivalent of the truck driver I think.

It gets in your blood..

That’s shite money for tramping

3100 euros? compare that with the average UK monthly wage £1600 - £2000 for a 40Hr week, he's still doing it because you can't get that kind of wage in the UK.

You have to eat, sleep, pi** and sh** in the same place - surprised the driver's seat isn't a toilet by now.

@@cbmsysmobile Shhhhh, DONT say that around the road haulage association, otherwise every truck will have the drivers seat replaced with a commode 😂

Agreed. I did 19 years and 364 days driving buses in London. The company I worked for terminated my employment on the eve of my 20th anniversary of me joining for medical reasons caused by the job. On a personal level ultimately they didn't care about me, I was just a number to them as the drivers are expendable for the dividends of the shareholders. I work for myself now in a completely different field and looking back, it was the right decision. As said in the video the days of driving jobs are numbered so coupled with the poor way drivers are treated, I decided to take the redundancy money and run.

A few years back the Bus company Doctor told me 'Get out before it kills you'. Now it's please please come back! We will give you the sun the moon and be nice to you. The answer was two words, First starts with F second ends in F. I now work as a trainer , for a company that respects the work I put in to get my profffesional skills and qualifications.

It's a similar story for a lot of the skilled trades in the UK at the moment. I'm a forklift mechanic, we've been at labour crisis point for a decade now. There is more of this to come from all different trades.

Ah yes, the bus industry where you have to do split shifts... And the wages are even worse, £10.50 to £12 an hour

@@macjim the £10.50 is about right but so far we have been able to fend off split shifts.

Yes experts in an office

Experts are employees too. Who do you think benefits from they way things are? If you think everything is run by experts you've got another thing coming. Somebody's an MP and gets made Minister of Transport. What does he know about transport? Nothing but he's the guy at the top of the tree. Moreover, anyone who knows about British Transport History will know that the motorway network only exists because some tory donors wanted a contract. It was his lobbying that got the railway network reduced and more cargo went by road. Consequently, when most of our motorways were built there wasn't that much trucks on the road for long journeys, as a lot of cargo went by rail, and the population was smaller. So, dont blame experts. Blame the politicians that tell the experts what they want to happen and the expert complies because he's got to make a living too and will get fired if he doesn't. The roads in France are better because experts - technocrats - were actually able to do their job and strong unions in the industry. But this country runs differently. Look at HS2 - do you think any experts went near it before it was agreed? No. That's why the route is too short, and doesn't improve access from the North to the South East. All this money spent to gain 8 minutes. And you think any experts went near this plan? Lol.

@@BigHenFor I think that you missed the point that I was making. I put the word "experts " in quotes as these are the people who design all manner of things to order, regardless of whether or not something is actually suitable for its intended purpose. It might be cladding on a tower block, car park spaces and garages which modern vehicles will not fit, and all the experts on Covid who disagree with each other. So if they are putting their names to projects which are wrong, it is either corruption, incompetence, or cowardice, and employees or not, they are wrong. You can probably guess which category I would place Marples, the one time Minister of Transport.

@@MervynPartin "A nation [in general] gets the government it deserves." Chew down on that in quotation marks.

''I get paid double that of a lorry driver, work a relatively stress free job and technically only work 5 months of the year’’ - Fair play mate. What do you do for a living?

Please let me know where these 17 years old are getting paid £12 an hour

I knew someone that got that at 17 but that's for working nights and unsocial hours in a shop

They haven’t been removed yet. But the Department of Transport has proposed this move. It’s ridiculous.

My old man got grandfathered in on hgv, he did 55yrs before stopping, feels like I spent 1/2 my childhood sat in his cab. His first few cabs had no bunks, we just slept in the seats on the overnight trips. Offloading tonnes of bagged feed to multiple small farms with no forks by hand, tough physical job back then. All the southwest truck stops I remember as a kid are gone, they're all restaurants or housing estates these days.

full with dingy divers

@@secretsquirrel6124 No they set fire to part of one because they weren't in a hotel.

Nope, because they're sold off to developers, like any bit of land owned by the State. And there's an accommodation problem for army families too.

Go back and watch “Good Omens”

TOO LATE

The NHS is the reason we are having these issues, over 60% of our tax revenue goes to it, the NHS pays over £1 per latex glove. What a joke.

@@mememachine5244 Absolutely agree! I worked in the NHS for years and saw the daft prices paid for equipment that could be bought cheaply elsewhere. The top people in the NHS, who are paid £thousands do not get off their backsides to save the taxpayers money.

Only one's that don't are tipper's although they still try and sneak 15 in the quarry

I like your name :) Also Trains lolz

@@justcaino9176 hahah lol 😂

There is always a way to cheat the system if you want to!

@@The_New_IKB change gear box and also play with the main wheel in the back axle also 2 speed axle hide it in low then use high lots of different ways. my old seddon was so old it couldn't be fitted with a limiter come in handy on the motor ways they saw an old speed up no problem my old seddon would 72 if you could stand it so much fun.

I misread the end of this and for a second thought 'well that's an odd saying....' ;)

Similar to you I'm about to head cautiously into the hgv world. I took my class 2 almost 4yrs ago with the intention of doing that, but have for personal reasons been doing 3.5t work since. My company has now offered to put me through Class 1 (c+e) and upskill. I'm going for it. I know the pitfalls but it's something I've always wanted to try, and I'll be doing day work max of 3hrs away from depot so hopefully will dodge the nights out and poor condition to an extent. @Laurie thanks for the content and industry heads up.

Best of luck guys, hope your experience is pleasant

If you enjoy being behind the wheel and can find a decent company to work for, it's not all bad. Sadly the latter is too rare. With pay rates going up, at least its looking brighter. Best of luck with the test

@@cbmsysmobile here's the thing, I don't particularly enjoy my current job, looking at basic class 2 salarys I recon I could earn £6-8000 more per year, so what have I to loose, I already work long hours away from home as it is.

The best vehicle that was ideal for transferring rail freight to the road was the Scammel Scarab. Small enough and manoeuvrable enough to get through most towns and cities.

There absolutely should be more rail freight in the UK, rail's modal share for freight is absolutely pathetic. But there are basically no general freight facilities left (heck, we don't even have wagonload traffic any more - it's a whole train or nothing!). And then, even if you can get the traffic onto the railway, the network is so overloaded already that there's no just no capacity for extra freight in many places.

The problem if you swap everything to trains is that the freight trains will run on the same tracks as the passenger trains, so that will slow everything down for the passenger trains and add significant extra delays. View the ticket prices passengers pay that will never be accepted. On top of that. It takes hours to load and unload the trains and you end up needing more trucks as they are needed to get the goods to the train at one end and from the train at the other. The transport companies aren’t going to invest in lots more trucks as well as paying the train costs. The you have to take into account that the government would lose a fortune in taxes from less fuel being bought. Where do you think they will get the shortfall from ?? The only way trains make sense is if they are huge and travel enormous distances. Like in USA or Australia. The UK is too small for it to work

@@davidhemming9364 the rate the government are installing transport links like trams etc. It might not be too bad a problem. In places like Europe they still have freight trains with the old wagon style freight trains but to ease the rail network they tend to have a lot of Metro lines like trams, subway trains and light rail trains that ease the passenger travel for short distances. I know Birmingham City in the West Midlands is gradually expanding the tram network to allow people to travel as far as the NEC and international airport, plus they may even extend it to nearby towns

@@davidhemming9364 the distance argument doesn't hold that much water. Switzerland and Austria are smaller than the UK, yet rail there has a modal share many times higher than the UK (iirc, in Switzerland it's even higher than in the US!)

The roads in London on the old A1 through Finchley down through archway into Islington and round Gardners corner we the same in the 2000s as they were in the sixties but with bus only lanes and about a 300% increase in traffic, and dont even get me started on the bloody M25.

So true no slack on the system anymore , bean counters at their best , no spare trucks or drivers to cover sick or breakdowns , hand to mouth .

The UK doesn't have a factory making toilet paper anymore. Like HP Sauce, it went to the EU.

Just in time often means "just too late". My father works in logistics and the amount of extra order picking work, and mostly empty lorries driving to shops because "stock" is a dirty word for financial consultants make me wonder how much more expensive having a stock really is.

I would agree with that 100%.

Not "seems to" - it was

Yes

Yes and a significant portion of the liability has been down loaded on to their shoulders. So crap pay, never home, sea of terrible drivers, constantly being berated by the public, and if anything goes wrong your left holding the bag. Sound like a good job to you?

Well at least they are doing the right thing and voting with their feet. There needs to be a massive change not only in pay but attitudes and conditions. I do not see that happening until we get really harsh shortages. Bring it on we need fundamental change.

NOT affecting most (if any) european countries in the same way as the UK, by a long way. I am a brit living where France meets Italy and Switzerland. Localy trucks are hated, due to polution in the Alps . BUT there are still more facilities per km than ANYWHERE in the uk. in the first 20km from the Mont Blanc Tunnel there are 6 places that you can park up a HGV and 2 of them have resturants and showers, one of these is dedicated to work vehicles. A shower is €0.50 and a large 3 course dinner (steak is an one of the things on the menu) is €13. And this is the facilities on one of the bad parts of europe.....In the UK from the M56/M6 interchange where there is a HGV facicilty (but it is very crap) to Holyhead there are NO facilties!...at least none that reraly want a HGV

Yes it is Brexit

@@idrisddraig2 Yes, the lack of facilities and amenities for UK truck drivers is criminal. There's a truck stop on the M1 where the "showers" used to be in a disgusting portacabin out the back, and if it was raining you just had to stand in the toliet area for a free shower

@@pellejutterstrom NO. We are 75,000 drivers short and that has not been caused by 12,000 going back to other EU countries this year. 55,000 UK drivers have left the industry in the last two years and there has been no training for 18 months to shove unwitting young people into the job. There are half a million drivers (half of them under 45) with HGV licences in this country who aren't using them because of the bad pay, long hours, shitty facilities and lack of respect.

@@cbmsysmobile I'm 57 and I am not planning on driving beyond 60.

I agree the governments have forgotten how the country works this lock down has given them a good in site and let's hope things change

@@nicholaskelf5437 The government (misnomer) have been told for years about the need to overhaul infra structure not only by business & unions but by their own civil servants. The EU is working to raise standards but the UK government is working to drive them down. Brexit has given EU Sovereign states pause for thought so the EU is likely to go from strength to strength & standards in individual nation states within the EU will gradually rise. Brexit means that the UK is now in a steep downwards spiral on every count from human rights & education to economic decline. Three other nation states are currently hammering on the EU (Peace Project), EEC door & will qualify for acceptance long before the UK can hope to reapply. UK Fascism is the root cause. The UK has been asset stripped for decades & both land & utilities have been sold on to other Governments. I heard Van Man, A New Labour supporter, harking back to "the insane power of the unions" which as a 71 year old I remember as Right Wing Media Hype. Ergo The Tories & UKIP are not the only Fascists selling the electorate short. The whole electoral system needs to be overhauled but the education system has been watered down for decades & the apprentice system barely seems to operate at all. Local Authority Services & Charities have relied on the EU for funds which are no longer available. I could go on. Are we "doomed"? Will I live long enough to see an improvement? I hope so!

That's interesting to compare the similarities.

I stop at Loves even as just a long distance car driver. Lovely place, I hope they pay their workers well or else I may have to stop going (looks into Loves wages).

Truck stops in the USA seem to be more like a shopping mall with larger parking spaces

@@cbmsysmobile Depends on the truck stop, but I would argue usually not. And to be fair to the intent of the video, that would still be preferable to what a lot of UK truckers deal with.

So Love's wages don't seem to be great, but they're also not US national minimum wage. Though this could just be state minimum on average. Considering most Loves are rural, it's probably fine, but not great.

No, its to make the test shorter by moving the coupling and reversing assessments to your training company, thereby freeing up more HGV test slots.

Yes, how dare pedestrians and cyclists, who don’t and shouldn’t need any training to be on the roads, expect professional drivers driving vehicles that can kill them in a second to do so safely and responsibly so they can get where they need to without being terrified, and how dare vosa and the police enforce laws put in place to protect everyone. It’s probably best not to be a professional driver if you’re going to have an unprofessional entitled attitude like that, and a lack of appreciation for the realities of road safety and enforcing it.

@@cjeam9199 I’m talking about cyclists weaving in an out of lanes, into blind spots and running red lights and then pedestrians stepping into the roads without warning or looking both ways. I’m not acting entitled by stating that people should use the roads safely am I?

@@harrisonrawlinson5650 you’re acting entitled by complaining about drivers being fined for not using the roads safely, and by insisting that other road users, who are just as if not more entitled to be on the roads as a lorry driver, who have not been trained or paid to be a lorry driver, take responsibility for driving the lorry safely. You have to expect that cyclists (and motorcyclists) will split lanes, go into blind spots and that pedestrians will cross the road, because these are all legal ways to use the road and as a _professional road user_ it’s your job to deal with it. If people commit offences there’s not much you can do about it, but otherwise stop demanding that other people do the job for you.