My first driving job which I got after many months of searching was to deliver chilled and frozen food to commercial kitchens on a semi fixed delivery round. The places I could be delivering to varied wildly in location, style and quality. On the same day I could be visiting a military base, multiple schools, care homes and pubs/restaurants. The branch of the business I was working for mostly dealt with independent establishments, but they had a sister company within the group which delivered to a lot of well known chain restaurants.

While this was an interesting and varied job, and it taught me a lot of useful skills, the long hours and hard work took a massive toll on my physical and mental health. Many days were over 12 hours long, and I was expected to unload the vehicle, take the food to the store and unload the roll cages myself. Often this included taking the products up multiple flights of stairs by myself (The customers always claimed to be too busy to help).

I spent about six months at this company. It didn’t put me off driving, but there were signs starting to form even then that maybe in the long term it wasn’t the right career path for me.

My second (and possibly the best) driving job involved delivering fresh bread to supermarkets and local shops on fixed routes. The company I was working for was very big on professional appearance and demeanor as well as a strong understanding of rules, regulations and procedures. During my time with them I developed a lot of key attributes and personality traits that stick with me to this day. which include my strong attention to detail, ability to crack on and get the job done and done right first time, and professional demeanor.

As a company they were very supporting of me and my unique situation, often bending over backwards to ensure that I had all that I needed. They did this for everyone, and not just me. This is one of the reasons that they often featured on the times top 25 list of companies to work for.

I spent most of my time with them as a cover driver, which meant that I didn’t have a set route of my own, but would fill in for other drivers who were either off, or unavailable. By the time I left I regularly worked on more than half of the routes at the depot. I was also asked on occasion to train a couple of new drivers and show them around the company, and show them some of the routes.

When you’re going to over 30 deliveries in a 9 hour work day, it is important to know the best way to get around, and any shortcuts that the regular drivers take. Keep in mind, if you take an extra 5 minutes at each drop to work out where you need to go, across 30 deliveries, that’s an extra 2.5 hours on the day! When your customers are used to their delivery at the same time each day, they can get understandably upset when it’s late.

After a couple of years of 4AM starts, and a six on two off rota, I wanted something a little closer to home (I was commuting 45 minutes each way for a 9 hour driving shift) with a better work life balance. I might have considered returning but since I left, they relocated to a different town which is beyond the distance I would want to commute for a driving job (especially with that shift pattern).

We’re now in Summer 2019 and I’m working for a general haulier, mostly on a local pallet network contract, but occasionally doing a bit of long distance work here and there. This is when I really learned how to drive, and drive well. This was also the first and only driving job that I had where I had my own dedicated vehicle.

A pallet network operates in a very similar way to how a parcel carrier works. The driver goes out in the morning with a fully loaded vehicle and does a series of deliveries in a set area. Then after they’ve done their deliveries, they go back around that area and do collections. These then get returned to their depot, and overnight they get carried to a central hub where they are processed and sent to the depot near their destination where the cycle repeats.

General haulage is a fascinating job, where I got to see so many interesting and unusual places, drive some stunning roads, and really learn a lot about this country and our way of life. The sheer variety of products and goods that are transported was a real eye opener too. Every single item that a person touches spent some time in the transport system, and the last mile to the shop, or even to your home is invariably on a lorry.

In my case towards the end I was one of the companies top drivers. I had an exceptional knowledge of the local area, and knew all of our regular customers by name. I was even asked to train two drivers up who had only just passed their HGV tests.

The company I was with had some serious ups and downs, and never really stayed consistent throughout the 3 years I was working there (Covid was also an interesting time working for them). Most of the issues that I had with them (which in the end caused my departure) involved changes in management and management style. Unfortunately this came to loggerheads during summer 2022 and it was decided mutually that I should leave.

Following my departure from the general haulier I took some time to consider my options. I could roll the dice again and hope that in a world of cowboys I could find another decent company, or I could get out of the industry completely and start afresh. In the end I chose the latter, but this wasn’t the end of my driving career yet. I did some interviews for driving positions, and started with a couple of companies, but found that none of them suited me and that I wouldn’t have been a good fit with the business, so I joined an agency and did some ad-hoc work for a couple of months.

Agency work was even more interesting and varied than I could have imagined. I did days here and there with so many different companies including a supplier of building site fences and hoardings, the NHS blood donation service, a window manufacturer and a construction plant hire company.

Christmas 2022 was very quiet in the haulage industry. The cost of living crisis was starting to bite, and many new drivers were coming on stream from the government’s push to train new drivers. So my work just slowly dropped off and I didn’t really get very much. My final day driving professionally was spent in a furniture shop mostly chatting with the staff while waiting for something to happen. Then going out in a van to do an in home demonstration of a piece of furniture to a customer.