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L Radley has noticed a change .•.°\ in attitude to
Page 9
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transport thanks to bc, Facebook. Is it time to take stock?
Facebook has taken a hold among drivers, not least because it can be easily accessed from a mobile phone. The downside is that the mindset of your average tramper is laid out moan-by-moan. I was talking to an owner-driver friend last week and he couldn't help but notice the rash of 'status updates appearing from Thursday evening onwards, proclaiming that the author had been "stitched-up again".
My friend wanted to know what was going on and whether he should be jealous that he never got to experience this himself. He did occasionally find himself unable to get home until Saturday morning, but it was never something that happened through malice on the part of those who dish out the work.
He had a good point, which made me think. What struck me was the change in attitudes.
When I was self-employed, five nights out a week was normal. And a Friday finish usually meant 10pm. It was considered normal to be loading at the other end of the country at 3pm on a Friday afternoon, and to pray you could split your shift to give you a 16-hour spreadover to run in on.
Now we think we're hard-done-by if we finish after 4pm, but that's changed in the five years I've been here — it's wasn't so long ago we'd be turned around on local jobs, sitting in the yard having a break and going through our cards to scrape up enough driving to get home.
In these days of employment legislation and government emphasis on work/life balance, is it simply that we're all getting spoilt? We seem to have forgotten the realities of transport, and the extent to which getting those last few deliveries done at the end of the week can make the difference between profit and loss for a particular vehicle.
As I said to a driver the other day, if you want set hours and predictable patterns, this ain't the job for you. Or, to put it another way, and to quote my aforementioned friend, maybe it's time we had a serious word with ourselves.