Since my last post I have continued working for the same company I have been at since January.
They seem content to pay agency rates for me although I'm only getting the minimum wage. I had been promised to be taken on permanently after a trial period but seven months on and I am still an agency driver. I receive holiday pay and am enrolled in a pension plan but its on Bank holidays that you feel it because you don't get paid for them.
I have really gotten used to this job though and there isn't much in the way of problems that I encounter. I basically cover all of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire and often dip inside the M25 with trips to the east side of London. I leave the yard every morning with a van full to the brim of cleaning and medical products. Most of the drops are literally pull up at the door and put the stuff into the lobby but quite a few entail trips up flights of stairs or treks through a maze of corridors to some obscure cleaning cupboard at the far end of the building so I know for a fact my fitness levels have improved. I bought a Fitbit recently to track my steps and heart rate and regularly do 10,000 steps per day. The downside to this job is that I can pull up wherever I want and eat what I want so KFC, McD's and many other junk food outlets often have visits from me.
Although I try hard to avoid accidents they occasionally still happen. A few weeks ago I was delivering to a sports club in Cambridgeshire when I parked in front of a bollard. I did the delivery, jumped back in the van, forgot I was in front of a bollard and drove straight over it with a loud crunch!! I reversed back, saw that I had knocked the concrete bollard over causing the concrete lump to break the nice red tarmac and making a mess of the forecourt. I looked up and down for CCTV but saw none so made my escape. The van received minor damage to the front and would probably go un-noticed. I was pretty gutted for the next few days and worried in case I was reported by the club but as the days became weeks I realised I'd got away with it.
How ever hard you try to avoid these incidents they will still happen from time to time. I also received 3 penalty points on my licence after I was caught by a mobile police camera doing 43mph in a 30 zone bringing my points total to 6 now.
One thing I have noticed whilst driving the country lanes is the amount of roadkill out there. I've seen badgers,deer, foxes, hedgehogs and all manner of birds lying dead in the road. I have had birds fly into the path of the van many times and wonder that there's any left.
The guy that works out the routes is generally quite good at getting me finished anywhere between 3 and 5pm but occasionally he works it out wrong and I finish between six and seven but at least I get paid for every minute I work unlike the regular driver they have who's always moaning about finishing after his time and not getting paid.
Anyway, its all quite uneventful and probably makes for a dull blog so I'll only post when there's anything worth talking about.
Catch you all later.
TM
