Whoopsadiddle

No worries and best of luck to you for however it pans out. It is almost universally a second career for everybody who comes into it (eg the youngest in my intake was 31), attitude and aptitude are valued over anything else. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a dm. Network Rail also have trainee signaller positions come up periodically, well worth checking if they have any in your neck of the woods.

Unfortunately it won’t make use of your masters but if you have full colour vision have you looked into train driving? I work with a couple of people who have made that change. I’m not in freight world but DB are doing a nationwide recruitment campaign at the moment.

I agree with the principle, but I am a die hard believer that Daddies should be the default brown sauce rather than HP.

It’s only £181 million. This is the sort of reason why lottery winners end up bankrupt.

There’s also a half decent discount if you’re on NASTC’s fuel card.

Where are you located? This has a very significant bearing. That said, often food service places will take you on fresh out of school and will get you home every night, or damn close to it. Physical work but usually once you have a bit of seniority at a place you’ll be able to get on the sweet runs, pays better than OTR and often with decent benefits. Sysco, US Foods etc.

DLR isn’t exactly driverless - the PSA on board every train is trained as a driver and whilst their main duties are door control and customer service, they are there to drive it in some capacity (they have varying levels of automation) in case of faults, trackside workers, certain busy times of day. Plus all of their depot driving is manual. They don’t make quite as much as mainline drivers but the gap isn’t that big. Door control sounds trivial, it really isn’t. A 12-car train will have 24 sets of doors that the driver is monitoring, trap and drag is one of the highest risks for injury or loss of life on the railway and there are instances of staff being prosecuted for failing to do this correctly, resulting in tragedy. In order to fully automate things, as well as the signaling and existing trains being completely ripped out and/or rebuilt (£many many billions) the stations and platforms would also have to all be rebuilt with minimal gaps, curves and platform edge doors everywhere (such as the Elizabeth Line’s central section or the Jubilee Line extension - £unfathomable billions). You also come back to the issue of ‘what if there is an emergency on a train’. Personal examples have been a passenger having a stroke on my train, a person falling on the tracks as I was coming into a station and smoke on a train. Things go wrong rarely but when they do, if somebody isn’t there who is able to act immediately the pipeline from being a report form for the driver to being an actual tragedy is extremely rapid. TL;DR: the cost would not pay for itself for many lifetimes and in many instances would just not be feasible at all, plus contingency for emergencies is a very real issue. Designing a system from the ground up would be much more realistic to do this, retrofitting existing infrastructure is so complicated as to essentially be impossible.

I’m a couple of years out of driving but the third bullet point was always based on the date of the engine manufacture, it’s interesting that their website now just says ‘vehicle’. I had a glider kit specifically for this reason, out of curiosity has this law changed?

*Trigger’s Plane

As well as a C172, it turns out it also applies to a [Handley Page Victor](https://youtu.be/Ez0Vf2bJ5RM?si=uMsJJu9N97-RIKZh)

I used to run NYC daily. What time are you getting into the city and from which direction? If you can be across the Verrazano before 5am your life will be MASSIVELY easier.

r/buyuk is a good source for British-based companies or British made goods. Generally overlaps with being more ethical as a lot of smaller companies get recommended on there.

Oh screw that then, PA Turnpike is silly expensive. Unless you’re extremely heavy that route is fine.

Whereabouts are you based and does it have to be OTR? Cabot in Montpelier, VT have an excellent reputation to work for but think they’re regional only. Bellavance Trucking in Barre, VT do a pretty wide mix and whenever I chatted with their drivers seemed really happy there for the most part. R F Chamberland had a pretty good reputation, they’re based way up in Maine. Northeast Transport is another Maine-based company that might be worth a shout.

Dysarts in Bangor, ME fuckin slaps. Get the blueberry pie. Whatley Diner in north MA. Old-school 24hr diner. Quicklee’s in Avon, NY. Place inside does amazing parm chicken sub.

Food service is slept on as a money maker and often has good benefits, too. I worked for a produce company, the majority of stores were just dropping a pallet with an e jack, the rest hand carting in but no stairs allowed so not even bad on your knees. Made absolutely stupid money because I didn’t mind doing city runs, genuinely good company to work for plus unless I volunteered for the very occasional overnight was in my own bed every night. Each to their own but it beats door swinging every day.

For what it’s worth an ex of mine had chronic pain issues and medical cannabis helped tremendously. Could definitely be worth digging into and seeing if it works for you to any extent.

Yeah that was the one that had me wincing. Everything else is optional or can be kicked down the road (drains possible exception), but failing to keep a car well-serviced is without fail setting you up for future issues. Obligatory ‘Avoid Halfords and Kwik Fit like the absolute plague, find a good local garage’ for anybody not in the know who thinks because they’re a big chain they would be trustworthy.

Oh no it isn’t!

This. I used to do food service and would tell my trainees, ultimately if a car didn’t see the 13 foot tall truck with flashing lights all over it then the hi-vis isn’t going to save you, but it will mean their lawyers can’t wriggle out of paying you because you weren’t wearing the safety equipment you were provided. When I heard other drivers complaining and refusing to wear them it always seemed like the most insane hill to die on.

A very large part of HS2 turning into such a clusterfluff stems from the NIMBYism though and much of the rest can be attributed to how infrequently we do these projects, that lack of ongoing investment meaning there isn’t the knowledge or skillset available to do them half as effectively as they could potentially be done. HS1 was built what, 20 years ago? I remember the construction further back than that. Crossrail was largely slated throughout the construction due to the cost and disruption but I think is the modern poster child for just how good we can do things.

Interesting. I have never tried it because every time I look at the queue at the one I go to, I decide it would be quicker to run out of fuel and call the AA.

Momentum is my go to, Costco aside it’s significantly cheaper than any other premium unleaded locally.

With Marmite. I used to have to get people to bring over obscene quantities when I lived there to avoid paying something like $7 for a tiny jar!

I would strongly advise to substitute mileage for service history, as a general rule of thumb a car on 200k that has been maintained exactly to schedule is going to be way less trouble than a car with 60k that has only been serviced sporadically.

I am still annoyed I missed out on a Town Car with something like 960k on it. Would have been awesome to get it over the million mark.

Honestly with most big cities it’s a case of IYKYK. Even NYC, I was comfortably able to run around there day in, day out but I also did it from day 1 of driving so it was just ‘normal’. Whereas I’m sure with LA I would be hopeless lol

You seem fun.

What makes this especially delicious is the likelihood that they have likely used a neighbour or relative’s address

Adding on to this - hire a LOCAL traffic attorney. The one ticket I got was in my personal vehicle when I rolled a stop sign. For context, it was a country road with 1/4 mile visibility in either direction and I rolled it at probably 30mph as everybody does except this one day at that specific moment, a local cop came over the crest of the hill. And he had his supervisor with him. Understandably I was not getting out of it. Hired a local lawyer whose leaflet came through my door within a few days. Court date booked. Lawyer and cop talked in the parking lot of court. All charges dropped. Worth every damn cent of the lawyer’s fees.

Not to ‘uhm akshully’ but there are definitely a few of them out there, relatively few and far between though. Local P&D for an LTL carrier is the first that springs to mind, although you may not get those bids straight away. Sometimes a small private fleet will have similar hours, too.

For what it’s worth, I have only heard good things about driving for them. They have high standards but high rewards. Hope it works out for you.

This has reminded me of something I had long forgotten about from very early YouTube that your husband might appreciate! - [Citroen Saxo Man by Chris Cohen](https://youtu.be/lA0xk_KhR10?si=NkXx0wSeeUThwFwi). Can’t find the original but this is still up!

Second this. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of bad apples, but there are also some genuinely good companies out there. My former company was fantastic, they paid fairly well but as long as you were a decent worker, they were absolutely phenomenal at looking after you when it came to family issues or illness etc. You can’t put a price on that - had I not left the area I could probably have happily ridden it out there until retirement.

I think it is very variable by area, some places have been decimated. Where we used to go out ~15 years ago is absolutely dead now, it’s gone from at least 10 clubs that I can think of to 2, maybe 3. The whole area was absolutely packed every Friday and Saturday, now it’s desolate. I know other places that have the same story, too.

I think this is the key, though - right tool for the job. When I was doing city work, the company had autos and I would not have given that up for anything. Regional and hilly areas, I much preferred having a manual.

I mean I’m a fine swimmer but if it’s strong enough to sweep a 40 ton semi, I’m not sure I’m going to risk it!

I cannot recommend this enough, if for no other reason than to have a decent shower. I posted this recently but it works really well to do a 2 hour split, quick workout (even if that is just half an hour on a treadmill or whatnot), nice shower, cook or grab food and then drive another hour or two to wherever you layover. Just phone ahead at the one you are planning on using that day to make sure they are okay with the truck in their parking lot.

That doesn’t really follow though, this policy change makes it more likely that somebody who will encroach on another seat will just roll the dice that the next seat is empty and book one. The policy change is that Southwest previously would allow these passengers to block the second one for no extra charge.

I hammered this point to my trainees, we were doing liftgate unloads too. If somebody is going to hit you, wearing your safety equipment makes sure you’re getting some money out of it!

I would have a hard time working for a company if they did that, the principle of it would infuriate me.

I highly recommend getting a Planet Fitness black card, been a few years but it was only 30-odd a month. I would check ahead when route planning and have a quick glance on Google satellite as to whether I thought I could get the truck into their parking lot and then call the branch I was eyeballing just to confirm it would be okay to have the truck in their parking lot for a bit. I had a few I would do my full 10 hours in but my preference was to do a 2 hour split somewhere towards the end of my shift, so rock up at PF, do a quick workout, have a shower in an actually-decent shower, cook food in my truck or grab something and then carry on for an hour or two to wherever I was going to do my 8. It meant I wasn’t eating then going straight to bed and whilst I have never particularly cared for the gym, just having some movement in the day outside of work was good. Plus the showers were generally good and clean, that was the main reason I started doing it - I would recommend it for that reason alone.

I’m sad I will never get to fly the BA all-business class A318 out of London City. That must have been a great flight.

This is a great explanation

This incident made me seriously consider that it might be worth trying to book seats close to emergency exits in the future. That post has confirmed it. Absolutely infuriating stuff.

I can never work out whether the posts claiming it’s all make believe or fudged numbers make me want to laugh or reach through the screen and shake them. It isn’t exactly top secret the segments where you can easily clear 100k+ as a company driver but a lot of people just don’t seem to want to believe it and just settle for so much less.

If you don’t want to be out for nights at a time, look into food service - a lot of companies will take on new drivers. It can be physically demanding but that’s not automatically a bad thing in a job that can be very sedentary otherwise. A lot of challenging backing so sharpens your skills but day cab makes that a lot easier, just GOAL. My first year in 2018, straight into working for a local produce company, home every day, no stairs for deliveries and I did around $90k and substantially more every year after.

No, it’s an abandoned White truck at a sawmill.

Completely different truck; those old 5700EXs were great but the 57X was the replacement and uses the Cascadia bodyshell.

If you know the name of the pub, it would be worth calling them to ask. It doesn’t sound like the usual sort of thing you would get so if it is something the chef has either made themselves or bought in locally they would more than likely be happy to hear the feedback and tell you!