Lucy Radley stopped being a full-time driver relatively recently, but the changes in the industry since have surprised her. Some things remain the same though – the drivers.
For those of you who don’t know, I spent 15 years as a tramper before becoming a full-time writer. My husband came off the road some nine or 10 years before I did, and one of my greatest cruel pleasures was to regularly point out how out of touch he was with the job. As he pulled abnormal loads for the vast majority of his career he never experienced the pressures of ‘Just In Time’ work, for example, and his knowledge of the workings of a digital tacho was gleaned entirely from what he heard on the grapevine. Oh how I laughed at his daft estimates on how long it would take to get to a particular job.
That’s just joyriding
It’s now three and a half years since I last drove commercially. I still get out in wagons regularly as I do a bit of press testing as part of my new role, but to all intents and purposes that’s just joyriding.
This story is from the September 2018 edition of Truck & Driver.
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This story is from the September 2018 edition of Truck & Driver.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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