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EweBent work on the bins
Page 66
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Driver Hire Agency driver
Dave Wells has been moved from a comfy, powerful Foden
to a bin wagon. The company's
good; the traction isn't...
I've been going to work on an egg this week I'm 'on the bins', driving a refuse wagon for Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. It's certainly different. For a start. I don't get out of first gear very often, but it has unexpected bonuses like being given half a dozen freshly laid eggs when we collected the bins from a local farm!
The loaders I'm working with. Gordon and Alan,are good guys and I enjoy the banter when they're taking a ride in the cab. On the first day we're going through the usual 'getting to know you' routine so I asked Gordon, the older of the two, if he was married, "Fifty years. mate,was his response. I was dumbstruck .This guy must have got married when he was still at school! He was a titlooking bloke doing a physical job and l'd reckoned he was in his early sixties. In fact he's 74.
Keeping trim
All of which got me thinking about the benefits of exercise and a healthy diet. I started going to the gym five years ago after I saw a picture of myself at a Millennium Eve party. Shock horror... at the age of 28 I was turning into my dad! He enjoyed his food and was always overweight, suffered two strokes and, at 72, is now in a residential nursing home. I think be renewing my membership and keeping off the pies.
Back to the bins. Having completed our collections we head off to the landfill site to tip. As we get nearer the tipping point the blacktop runs out and were on some seriously boggy mud. I engage the Iveco's diff-lock and press on. All's going well until we hit a slight incline:Me wheels start spinningwe're going nowhere.
The Nee° has a third axle, but the wheels are sensor operated and are only there for extra stability so they don't give us any help at all. My crew reassure me this happens every time they go to tip.
We have to be pulled free by the site's earthmover.What makes it doubly embarrassing is that other trucks with a 'proper' third axle sailed up the incline without any difficulty at all. You know what I reckon? Somebody at the council read my last Logistically Speaking and decided I needed taking down a peg or two! in