Driver Dave Trucking in Canada: Shattered

Heyyy, I need to go back to bed and catch up on a lot of sleep.

I though my last trip out was busy. This time was just as busy in miles, like always, but in order to keep up the miles, I had to do long days every day, between fourteen and sixteen hour days, parking up after each day not before 1am and 4am each morning. It was all urgent short trips, which meant driving flat out for nine and eleven, even thirteen hours on the last day, then sit on two loading bays for hours (one for unloading and one for loading) before off to the next delivery point by the next day. I don’t mind short trips, as long as I get long ones in the mix too. Its because of the time it takes to unload and load that is the problem. If it only took 45mins each time, it would not be a problem, but that only happens one in ten times. Any longer than 45mins and im working for free. Normally it takes two hours or more for each load and off load, so then drive for nine hours on top of that makes your days thirteen plus hours. Having that every day soon catches up on you. Not only that, I usually get to my customers the night before, and sometimes, you may only be there a few hours before they are getting you up to back onto a bay so they can off load you. So your sleep gets broken up too. Its good if there are no red and green lights on the loading bays, as the only way you know they have finished is when they come and bash on the side of the cab to get you, so if you wanted to go back to sleep, you could, but if there are lights, you have to stay up and keep checking for the green light, then pull off the bay when they have done to go back to sleep, but that’s only if you still have any hours out of your ten you need to take off left. So this job can be really tiring most of the time, then other times it can be a breeze. The breeze loads are the ones where it takes three or four days to get there. The tiring ones only take one and two days.

Ayr Motor are what I would call and aggressive company. They don’t like it if you take your time, they expect you to be hard working, as we have that much work on all the time, they need you to get your deliveries off ASAP just so you can get onto the next. For every tractor we have on the road, including owner operators, we have two trailers, and most of them are full all the time. That’s over five hundred trailers. Not including the load of brand new ones we have just got. If drivers start slowing down and not getting deliveries off on time, it can cause a back log, which makes it hard for us to catch up. I work hard and fast anyway, as it makes my pay packets better, so in less I make a boob or something, they stay off my back, but this last month, I have felt a little like, the more I gave them, the more they expected from me, or maybe it was just the way the loads fell, you just never know, but at the end of the day, with the knowledge I have of some of the other trucking companies out there. Im so glad I work for Ayr, as it is much better having to bust a gut to get everywhere and having your reload waiting for you, than making your deliveries, then having to wait hours or even days for reloads like a lot of the other companies out there. One of the things some companies do to their drivers is make them reset their hours, (once they have reached 70hrs prematurely) by having 36hrs off, but they don’t get them home for that. They end up parked in a truck stop somewhere in North America instead of spending that time at home with their families. To me that is very wrong and im so glad Ayr Motor never do that. We have to send our hours in every day, so dispatch know what hours we have left, so they can give us loads we can cover and still get back for our home time within our hours. Don’t worry, he doesn’t do it for us, he just wants to make sure he can get another driver in the truck while we are off, so the truck is not sat about doing nothing.

but what works for him, works in our favour too.

the only times our trucks are allowed to stand is Christmas day and if we want to stay out more than fourteen days, Canadian driving laws require us to have a 24hr period off either before or immediately after the fourteenth day. So the way we fit it in is say we started that morning of the fourteenth day at 6am, maybe drive for eight hours till 2pm, then we would park up till 2pm the following day and set off again driving till when ever, therefore fitting in the 24hrs but not having a day off. Trust me though, if we are near Woodstock at the time, Joe would kick you out the truck for the 24hr just so he could get another driver in to do a quick load to somewhere and back in that time.

I may have covered over 161,000 miles last year, but including all the miles other drivers did while I was off, my truck covered 250,000 miles, but Joe really only runs the trucks like most of the companies in the UK do. Like when I worked for Woolworth. I would use my truck in the day to do store deliveries, then the night shift would come in and use my truck to do the trunking runs, so again the trucks where always on the go. I do go on a bit don’t I?

but what set me off, besides been tired

was the other day when I was on my way back to Woodstock with a load. After ten hours driving I decided to stop at a truckstop three hours west of Woodstock, where when I pulled in, I noticed a truck from a company that one of my fellow bloggers work for. I usually take note just in case it is one of my fellow bloggers and I get to meet them. Anyway I went to sleep then set off the next morning back to Woodstock noticing that truck was still there not thinking anything of it. At Woodstock I went home for a few hours to have a shower and lunch with the family while my truck was been serviced. Then I was suppose to take a US load, but Joe changed it at the last second giving me a Canadian load, which meant I had to pass the same truck stop I had left that morning, over ten hours earlier to find the same truck still parked up. So it looked like he was either taking the 36hr reset, or waiting for a reload. Personally I wouldn’t put up with that crap. I guess its ok working for those companies that make you do that if you are single and it doesn’t matter where you take your time off, but not if you have family here and are missing out on spending that time with them. Anyway rant over

now I can go relax ready for my next trip out on Sunday. The map is a little confusing this time as a lot of the time I had to go back the way I came so its best to follow the numbers to see where I went. So till next time, have a great day.