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No more fishy
Page 69
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loads for me...
THE ENEMY of the ownerdriver no matter what the cause is the unscheduled stoppage.
But by doing our homework properly, keeping up our maintenance schedules and making sure we leave virtually nothing to chance, we do have some remote possibility of avoiding the mechanical failure which upsets our best laid plans.
Then there is the fah-down of operating arrangements to take into account. No matter how particular we are and how much money we expend on phone calls there is always the failure of someone else's machinery, someone else's strike or illness that gums up the works and leaves the poor old driver out on a limb.
The new EEC regulations on drivers' hours and vehicle mileage are going to make this situation far more serious than it has been in the past and so I relate the following story to highlight just how short sighted one can be when faced with a fall-down of arrangements, and how easy it is to rush into an alternative plan and very shortly afterwards regret your decision bitterly.
Too much work
During my fleet engineering days the company for which I worked instilled "maximum utilization" into us as the one method of making a good living Out of transport. When I bought my own rig, my faithful old eight-wheeler, I started off down the same path and almost killed myself working' too hard and taking on more than I could cope with.
The circle, once started, is vicious and literally has no end and, in order to try and satisfy all of my customers I soon found myself chasing my tail, and getting nowhere fast. My repair costs soared as I kept putting off jobs I knew full well should be done and got left because "I did not have time." The stitch was not applied in time and the other nine parted. My bank balance dwindled.
It all came to a head when one day I tipped a load of scaffolding in Lowestoft. I had a second load for the same company to bring up from South London for delivery in two days' time. The rate was sufficiently good for me to run back south empty, spend a few hours on maintenance and reload in ample time to deliver back to Lowestoft as scheduled. The spectre of my old boss, however, haunted me worse than Marley did Scrooge. Maximum utilisation and greed blinded my common sense more than I cared to admit at the time, and I made what was to prove a very costly and moreover painful decision.
Blinded by the gold I would earn by squeezing in a load back south, I was touting around at about 2 pm and dropped on to a load of fish for Billingsgate. The firm doing the job ran a trunk service and had suffered a bit of a smash earlier that day and were stuck. The fish would not get loaded until about 10pm and had to be in Billingsgate at 5am the next day.
The rate was good and I rubbed my hands together as I
arranged for one of the trunk firm's shunters to put the load on for me. I went back to my digs and persuaded the landlady to let me put my head down for a few hours.
I could get my statutary 10hour rest in and easily be in Billingsgate by 5am. The run would take just about four hours, I could get tipped, pop over and pick up the load of scaffolding and return home and book off; smashing, I thought, as I dozed off to sleep.
I was up and off down the dock by 12.30am and I booked on at lam though I shot off at about 12.40. The load looked neat and tidy and I had instructions to report to the trunk firm's runner in the market at 5am. The only trouble was the smell, and then there was that horrible liquid dripping all over the
place. Oh well, "Where there's muck . .", I though and trundled off to the big city.
The Eastern counties roads at night in those times were dead. I passed two of Childs of Ipswich and one Kidner tanker en route and that was all. Money for old rope, I told myself, as I pulled into Billingsgate at 4.45am.
The market was already alive and I sorted out the runner, who directed me to my stand.
I was almost sick when I uncovered the load; it.was the very first time I'd ever carried fish. And then it happened: my greed was repaid with startling suddenness.
Scrambled and fell As I scrambled along the rave of the body — you can't walk on fish you see — rolling back the sheet, I must have slipped on that horrible liquid, because suddenly there I was hollering blue murder, and stretched out on the wet cobble stones awaiting a Daimler ambulance from Guy's Hospital just across London Bridge.
I lushed myself up with a taxi back home at around midday with my left hand in a plaster cast supporting four broken fingers and a broken thumb.
As early as 4pm that same day the phone started going mad. Where was I? Didn't I know that this load of scaffolding was urgent? Weil, of course I did, but what could I do? I'd suffered an unscheduled stoppage.
I managed to find a driver to punch the old girl around for me for four weeks. But, I lost a lot of money, upset a good proportion of my very hard won customers and never quite got ride of that awful fishy smell.
I've never touched fish traffic since then and these days I'd sooner schedule a lost day into my programme than try to squeeze in an extra day's work.
And, I earn a lot more money!