23: The Battle To Get Back Behind The Wheel

0:01Hello and welcome to Mat's Trucking Group podcast. Mat Ireland host and once again and today I'm joined by young Billy Best. Billy, how are you? I'm good, thank you, Matt. How are you? I'm all right. I'm warm, but I'm all right. It is quite warm. It's turning a bit of a scorcher today. I did have a little bit of rain first thing this morning, but not a great deal. And the fields certainly need it, but I don't think there's any coming in the near future. No. It's a very British way of starting the podcast, talking about the weather. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, dear. Right then, Billy. So, for my listener, how on earth did you get involved in transport?

0:39The family connection or how did you...? It was a family connection due to my dad. Yeah. And... A driver? He was a driver. Yeah. He used to be a tradesman. And then he got into lorry driving, wanted a change of career. And he thought, I'm going to be a lorry driver to see how it goes. Fair enough. And he did that from when I was about three years old. Yeah. And ever since then, I fell in love with it. Oh, fair enough. so uh you absolutely loved it you would have been of an age where like myself you can't just leave school and drive a truck so what would you what would you do when you left school do you have a sort of plan we work in a transport related industry or my dad said to me i've got no problem being a lorry driver you do what you want but as long as you get a trade for backup wise so did me school did me very well because all i cared about was lorries and then i did bricklaying and got two diplomas in that and i turned 18 and got my hgb license fair enough did you enjoy the brick i did enjoy bricklaying i really did um it's just i just love driving even more fair enough yeah i see you got chase the dream haven't you absolutely well there's no point yeah exactly so so when did you actually get get driving then um did you so i used to do some holidays with my dad because he used to do removals around europe right and then um when i turned 18 i got my class two license um because when I did it you couldn't go straight through class one which now you can but I I got my class two and I went on tippers um for a couple of years in Cambridge here yeah it was nights out um but it was on tippers and I loved it really enjoyed it fell in love with it straight away and then I did that for a year got a bit of experience learned a lot a hell of a lot yeah and then I got my class one and that was past that when I was 20 just before lockdown.

2:25Right, okay. Then I went on walking floors and it was brilliant, amazing. Loved it. About the top of the world. So with the tippers, was that grain farm work or what kind of work was it? It was building site work but it had asbestos in it so it had to go to special places all over the country. Ah, right, okay. And then when lockdown came we started doing human waste, treated human waste to farms for fertiliser right because obviously all the building sites were shut we had to find work somewhere so we did that and I enjoyed that even more than the building sites because it was loading yourself with a digger and it was just a great experience yeah fair enough and it was just a lot of variety going to different farms and what not yeah trying to find a farm with no addresses is a great experience oh yes yeah welcome to Suffolk it's pretty good it's pretty good at that it's clear I can tell you so um yeah it's um I mean did that particularly smell?

3:24It did at first. It did. And you just get used to it. You just don't start to smell it after a while. When it's hot, I don't know if you remember lockdown, but we had quite some heat. Oh, yes. And yeah, it did start to smell after a little while, but you just get used to it. And then, yeah, it's just one less thing to mind about, really. Yeah, true. I mean, I've done quite a lot of chicken litter in my time. So, it's the same. You just get used to it. I think you just lose your sense of smell, to be fair. when you go into truck stops or services, you're not the most popular, but... No. It is what it is.

3:56That's it, yeah. Same with doing fish meal. Fish meal used to absolutely stink, and you'd get the smallest amount on you, and you just stunk of an old fish. It was horrible. But again, you just don't notice it's everyone around you that does. Dear, oh dear. So were you on the walking floors of the same company as the Tippers? No, so I did Tippers with a company called G-Webs, just based off the A14 at Bar Hill. Yeah. And then I was living down on the south coast, but I had to do the long trip up because it was the only place that would take me on because I was 18 years old and no one's insurance would take me.

4:31So I went to the company up here in Cambridgeshire and I fell in love with the area, farmland, the countryside. I loved it. So that was up here as well. And then I worked for Williams Transport up in Huntingdon. Now, my dad used to work for them. He was out based and he did help me get the job. and I tried to move up here. I was trying to save and then things happened and here we are. Right, okay. So what happened then? So I was driving me walking floor. I had a Scania. It was just a 450. It was nothing special but I loved it. It was my world. Blah, blah, blah. Rest is history. And then I was going between March and Chatteras and loaded with Black Bag West and I had a seizure behind the wheel.

5:15Oh. Broke my truck off into a field No one else was hurt. I wasn't hurt, which was amazing. And then I went to the hospital and they turned around and said, you have a brain tumour. That's why you had the seizure. Flippin' heck. Yeah. And how old were you at this point? I was 22. 22 and told you've got a brain tumour? Yeah. Flippin' heck. I mean, that must have just been, well, just shattering. My world fell apart. I'm not surprised. Trucks are my life. And I get some people think it's a tool to do a job. 100 % it is a tool to do a job you can have a shiny tool and people the older generation say oh well it's not what it used to be and I'm like yeah you're probably right but I don't know what that used to be like so I can't miss it yeah yeah yeah very true you know we live in a world of progress and you've got you've got a role that you know just because you haven't driven an Eaton twin split it doesn't make you less of a driver than somebody else it's as simple as that it's like the world of electric trucks at the moment I'm intrigued by them and the only one I've driven so far that was like a rocket man.

6:18And I do want to give a loaded electric truck a proper go at some point. It's going to be good fun. But I'm digressing somewhat here. So could they operate on the tumour? Has it been removed? It's been removed. And I had to... I had to see if I found the wheel. And then my doctor said to me, if you have another seizure, we'll operate. Right. Okay, great. We knew it was benign. No cancerous or nothing. but it was putting pressure on my brain which was making me have the seizures right so he said if you have a second seizure we'll operate at this point i was off work because i just had an accident and i was yeah yeah i was just off work and i couldn't deal with it mentally it was ruining me and then i had another seizure at home fell down the sentence backwards and yeah and then they said we're going to operate at this point we were doing research about hgb driving with epilepsy and stuff like that and the rule was currently if you have a seizure one seizure you it's five years and no medication so you can get your hgb license back because i had more than one seizure it's now 10 years anyway so they operated on it and it was all clear i'm still getting all plays nowadays i have yearly scans and they're all going back clear however i'm still having the epilepsy episodes because there is now a gap where that tumour was and it's now the fluid, which you can't do anything about the fluid.

7:46That's just how the body heals. Right, okay. And that pressure on my brain from the fluid is making me now have seizures again. So it's great that I no longer have a brain tumour, but I'm having the seizures from it. So they can't operate. And when I'm on the meds, I'm absolutely fine, which I'm currently on now. I'm absolutely fine, no seizures. as soon as I come off the meds because I have to have 10 years seizure and medication free so because I'm still on the meds now my 10 years hasn't even started so I have tried to come off the meds uh the last couple years to get the 10 years going and because I've come off them I've then had a seizure and then the 10 years start again and then you're back on meds and it's just a circle yeah and i can't can't do nothing about it but you just gotta try and work with it i've had some good things come like uh i was working down on the south coast where i lived and then my boss from williams the truck that i wrote off uh he ran me up and said i've got a three and a half ton van do you want to come and drive it because i know you said you was talking about moving up here i straight away i said i said yes i couldn't not his his loyalty is obviously very obvious i did write off his truck and some bosses would go i'm not i'm not letting you drive my vehicles no way but he understood and he gave me the job again and no fair enough it was just a little three and a half ton van and i i love it it's great absolutely love it yeah it's amazing so that's that's where we are you're currently driving that then still well so i'm currently off working because i had another seizure in february because I try coming off the meds again.

9:30And now you could argue, just stay on the meds. Yeah, I could just stay on the meds, but I need that HGV license back. And the only reason I'm having these seizures is because of the DVLA rules and breaks. If I didn't come off my meds, I probably wouldn't have these seizures. But I can't try to get the license back because that is my life. If I'm not fighting for it, in my opinion, there's no point. Yeah. So do you lose your car license after a seizure as well then for a certain amount of time? So from the day of the seizure, which is February the 16th, if I'm correct, I can get my car back on February the 16th next year, 2027, and stay on the meds.

10:08So you lose it for a year, basically. You lose it for a year, but you can stay on the meds. Right. And I'll have a medical license. So basically medical is what you do with trucks every two to three years, and then they will renew my license. Right. And that's where we are at the minute. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you know if it's the same in Europe? Because I remember, I don't know if the laws on diabetes have changed because I don't have diabetes, so I'm not too sure. I'm pretty sure up until, I don't know if it's changed or not, but I'm sure if you were type 1, you couldn't hold a class of C plus E.

10:48You couldn't hold an LGV license. But in Europe, you could. because a friend of mine was diabetic, but he was in Belgium, and it's not a problem out there at all. So do you know if that's the same in Europe? So we have this – so the rule at the minute is you have to be 10 years and 10 years medication and seizure free. So we have that law because it's an EU law. When we was in the EU, we had to take that rule on. Yeah. We are no longer in the EU. so yeah i my argument is with epilepsy it's looked as a blanket thing you have epilepsy you have a seizure you're out they don't look it on a one-to-one basis like things like ms and stuff like that i'm arguing why can't we look at the one-to-one basis because every seizure is different every person with epilepsy suffers a bit differently it's not the same yeah some people have seizures where they're constantly in it and they have to have like a medication to get out of it whereas some you'll have a fit and then you wake up and you're fine everything every person is different no person is the same so i was speaking to a medical professional and i because i am arguing about this this this law and it's not me saying let everyone with epilepsy run riot with hgb license it's me saying can we look at on a one-to-one basis for each person and i don't understand why we have to be off the meds you are safer on the meds while driving than you are off them with the read with the research and the medical professionals i've been speaking to he works for the dvla but he is also a professional in epilepsy with tumors and he said you can have you can go 10 years of medication free with no seizures but you can go back in a truck for a week and you're still just as likely to have a seizure after that 10 years yeah so he says you are safer on the meds i don't understand this rule of having to be off the meds you can drive a car yeah and yes three and a half ton and 44 ton are so different completely He understands that, but I just can't get it why it's a thing.

13:04Yeah, but if you're taking medication to prevent this happening, I guess their argument is, well, what if you forget to take it? Well, it's in your interest not to forget, isn't it? It's going to be like people who wear glasses. You put your glass on in the morning. Exactly. It's just part of your routine. When this rule came in, there was about 20 to 30 season medications available, and there's now 80 yes every single one has side effects on paper but not all of them actually affect the same person it's like the current meds i'm on now they say oh you can have tiredness you can be fatigued dizziness and all that i have not had any of them problems but because it's on that piece of paper it has to be as a side effect and this is what i'm saying it's different for everyone you can find medication there's 80 plus of them you can find them and you can see which ones affect you differently doctors can do the research doctors can test you and stuff like that the epilepsy everything around epilepsy has come so far in the last couple years that i think this rule of 10 years seizure and medication free is so out of date and i understand people's like if people are against it yes you are driving a 44 ton truck with epilepsy but you can have a heart attack behind the wheel just like that not even known go and be operated on and then be on meds for the rest of your life but you rely on because you can say if you don't have that you're likely to have another heart attack or another stuff like another pass out or something like that so you're relying on people to take their meds as well why can't epilepsy do the same yes i can do as much damage in my car if i'm going quick enough and I'm driving like an idiot whilst having a seizure than I can in a 44 ton truck trucks have trucks have come so far recently as well you've got you've got emergency braking you've got about 20 million cameras on it and the truck knows what it's going to do before you do most of the time and yes we moan about it yes they can be annoying the beeping the automatic braking the alarms on going into a different lane and it is it's there to cover your it's there to cover you you see these videos of like scanners doing the test the brake testing and that and the volvos with i don't know if you've seen the video with the little black car on the on the runway and it stops just before it yeah i've been in one when they launched it that was unnerving sitting there in the passenger seat and just approaching this car with no pedals to press and my feet were sort of tapping on the floor because I'm just wanting a break.

15:40And it just brought you to a stop. It was very impressive. When this all came out, we were still driving Scania 4 Series, Volvo F16s and Turbo Stars and stuff like that. They're so different nowadays. And I don't understand why you can have a heart tap behind the wheel. Don't feel your operation. Be on meds for the rest of your life. You can be back in HGB in six months to a year. With epilepsy, you're done for 10 years. And that's if you don't have any seizure within that 10 years and you're medication through. i just it's it's frustrating when when you have a seizure i was all right to ask this like are you are you aware of it such or it coming coming on or so this is this is what i'm saying when different people act differently so for my seizures my partner knows when they're coming i just get a bit confused and you i do black out and that's because i'm not on the mess i haven't had a seizure when i'm on the medication the only see i've had one seizure since being off the meds and that's because i wasn't on the meds and you're so much safer on them than you are off them and some people know when they're coming some people are still with it when they're coming they know all right okay i'm having a seizure just got to get through it and then some people they can be out for a large amount of time and then some last three seconds some can last five minutes some have some have to be seen by a doctor just to get them out of the seizure frankly i don't deal with them once but this is what i'm saying when why can't we look at on a one-to-one basis say if this does come out that they've changed the law it might not help me like i could be one of them people you're not safe enough to have a license hgb license with the kind of epilepsy that you have but it might help other people i'm not just doing this for me i'm doing this for everyone with epilepsy that drives a bus, a coach, a truck, an 18-tonne, everything.

17:30Any large vehicle. It's such a big thing that people don't realise. Because I didn't know whether – but I think if people are having a heart attack, you know that you're having it and you can potentially get yourself on a hard shoulder and to lay by or just something. So I didn't know whether that is an option with your seizures. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, it is. I've had seizures where I know they're coming and you've got to be prepared for it so if you're talking on that basis yeah I can pull over to the hard shoulder have a seizure but then I would have to call the police and the ambulance because some people when they come out of the seizures they don't really know where they are and you're so much more safer on the meds I haven't had any seizures when I've been on the meds every single one I've had obviously apart from one of the accidents has been because I've pushed myself off the meds to get this HIV license back and i just i just think it's it's wrong and i get it from people's on the other side of the argument you're driving a truck with epilepsy yes i am but i you could be it's like when you get to a certain age of trucks you get a medical every year i have mri scans every year at the minute they know i've got i've got a brain tumor before i do because of these scans that they're doing i don't but they know it before anything else and i think you could do a medical for epilepsy you can do uh medication tests so they say is your med still working they can do tests on that if you're having side effects they can change your meds there's so many to from nowadays and i i just i just think it's so outdated with the technology that tracks out with the medication that we have and the research that they've done on epilepsy the last couple years i I think it's so wrong to be looking on a blanket.

19:17Is this a hereditary thing? Does this sort of come from your parents at all? Sometimes it can be. Sometimes it can be, but from a personal, my experience, no. It's just unlucky. The reason I have the seizures is because of the brain tumour. If I didn't have the brain tumour, I'd be absolutely fine. And they can't drain the fluid from that? No, because you're, I spoke about this. obviously i'm an ecuador driver i know i'm not a doctor and i said can you not just drain the fluid and make it um make it like okay and i said no the fluid is there to protect your brain your body doesn't your brain doesn't heal like the rest of your body if you have a scar on your arm after a couple years that does go whereas i've now got a scar on my brain right it doesn't go it doesn't it doesn't go like it's a scar on your skin so it would always be a problem and the longer you go without seizures the less likely you are to have them however that's with the medication if you come off the meds you are prone to seizures just from tiredness fatigue alcohol right stuff like that whereas if you're on the meds it's so much more controlled yeah and it's just you can you can up the dosage you can lower the dosage you can change the medication for the side effects if you're tired you can call your doctor and say oh well i changed my meds because i'm very tired i'm very agitated and i can change it just like that the list they give you of medication is crazy and it's different for everyone as i keep saying and it's i just think we should not be looking at it as a blanket thing we should be looking at it as a one-to-one thing yeah i'll get you this episode of matt's truck and gret podcast is kindly brought to you by D.L.

21:05Mills Transport. D.L. Mills provide general haulage. They also buy and sell hay and straw, and they can also transport it with their own lorry and drags. They also move plant and machinery with low loaders, and they also have high-up-equipped trucks. For any haulage, please get in contact with D.L. Mills. So what are you doing for work at the moment, then? I'm off at the minute. I can't work because I'm less than a year from a seizure, so I'm off work at the minute. Could you go back to Brick Lane for a while, or...? No, because I wouldn't pass the medical. I wouldn't pass. I'm too high of a risk on a building site.

21:41Oh, right. Okay. I didn't realise that was such a thing. Yeah, I'm too high. I have thought about it and I've done my research on it. And because it's still within the year of the seizure, it's very hard to do so. I mean, I could go and work in Tesco second shelves, but I can't work in a place like that. And my lawyer is with Williams. He has taken me back after what I've done to his vehicles. and I don't want to get a job that I'm going to hate and ruin my mental health even more than just wait it out and wait for February to come back with my van back there because a very rare thing nowadays in this industry is loyalty and I have to be loyal to him I own pretty much everything he's the reason why I moved up to Cambridge he's the reason why I've still got work to come back to I go down the yard to visit him I went down last week and he asked about me how are you and he talks to me just like nothing happened and he treats me like nothing happened and for me that is a rarity and my loyalty is with my boss and yeah so yeah so once you've got your licence back how long do you think you'll leave it before you try and come off the meds again then like a year or less I'm going to leave it a couple months and after some research that I've done if I come off them slower so they you can come off them as quick as you like but you're more likely to have seizures again you come off them slower so you can go 100 milligrams 75 milligrams 50 milligrams 25 obviously that's different that's just basics so if you come off them slower so you do 75 milligrams for two months 50 milligrams for two months blah blah blah you're less likely to have problems when you're off them you come off them quicker you're more likely because your body's like whoa hang on where's where's where's me meds gone kind of thing whereas if you come off your body's like okay i can kind of deal with this i know it's kind of going on yeah wean yourself off rather than go cold turn yeah yeah essentially yeah yeah so my law is with my company at the minute i can't i can't do a job that i hate when i'm when all i've got to do is wait for february yeah and yeah it's just i can't i can't do it momentum i'm not i'm not asking for sympathy but my mental health has been shot to pieces i don't want to make it any worse and you just got to get through it i'm i'm happy now i've but I've got nice things going on, but I don't want to make it any worse.

24:05And you've got to keep busy while I'm off work. You've got to keep busy. And, you know, when you're off work for this long, you find a lot of things out about yourself. And you realise who your true friends are. That's for sure. Definitely. I think a lot of people, certainly from a non-truck driving world, during COVID found that out when they were basically stuck at home. Yeah. With nothing to do. and it's just, you know, because I couldn't really think of it. I could do it for perhaps a week, sitting back at home, but I couldn't, you know, that would drive me around the twist. Yeah. If I was to do it for a long time.

24:44This couple of months off I've had, it's made me look into seizures, look into epilepsy, learn so much about what I've got and how I want to try and improve it, improve the system and stuff like that. And I've got, I've got passion and got a lot of fight in me. I can't give up. And people have said, why don't you go and do something else? My doctors have said, why don't you go and do something else? I can't. Driving's me life. I was born to be on the road. I can't work in an office. I've tried that before. When just after the accident, I tried going on a Weybridge for a place down on the South Coast and I hated it.

25:19I absolutely hated it. Sitting in an office for 12 hours a day is not for me. But also seeing trucks coming in and out every day. Well, I thought that wasn't actually the problem that was a nice bit about it because i still felt like i was in the industry but it was just sitting in the office just clicking a button yeah you weigh this you weigh that goodbye yeah you come in green light red light barrier up blah blah blah and it was just so repetitive so boring whereas on the roads as many people listening to this know it is different every single day and you know even doing the same runs but you're your own boss you can put your music on you can have breaks when you want it when you need to you got you You don't have your boss pestering you.

25:58You're left to your own devices. And that's what I enjoy is the freedom. I found that out at a very young age that this is what I want to do. And I can't give up. And I can't stress it enough. I understand where people are coming from if they're concerned about what I'm doing. 100%. But you're safer on medication than you are often. So people that are against what I'm doing, I completely understand why. I completely get where you're coming from. but it's just hear me out kind of thing it is not me saying let everyone with epilepsy run right in a truck so i mean would you consider like doing a year on the van before you start trying to come off your list just i am i haven't not everything's set in stone yet i want to see how we feel at the time yes so yeah yeah people to say um just be happy in the van yeah i am happy in the van but i've got something to fight for and if i've got nothing to fight for there's no point i've got I'll keep going.

26:53Yeah. And I will probably give it a good amount of time before I come off the meds. Yeah. But I've got to come off them at some point unless the laws change. Because... I mean, how likely is it to get somebody listening to get the change started? From the research we've done, it's going quite in our favour. We've learnt that the law is very outdated. When the law came in, there was about 20 medications for epilepsy. now in 2026 as we speak there's over 80 they've done so much more research on it and like I said a minute ago the trucks have come a long way as well the safety features on them is insane sometimes you're more safer in a truck than you are in a car I'm currently doing a petition to get the law changed I'm sure Matt will leave a link to that somewhere on here yeah put that on the socials it's not a problem yeah it's just have you found many other professional drivers who are in the same sort of position as you there's bus drivers for instance my mum's a bus driver her boss has a brain tumour but his is inside his brain so they can't be operated on and he suffers with epilepsy he can't drive a bus ever again because he hasn't had the tumour removed and he's on the medication he doesn't come off them because he's older than me and he's got a family to worry about whereas his attitude is I'm earning a wage that's all I care about there's two young drivers that i also know one bloke he's just turned 18 he can't drive a truck he hasn't even got his hgv license because he's epileptic there's another driver that works for stage coaching canterbury he got his bus license when he was 18 at 19 he had a seizure and now he can't get his license for 10 years and that's without the meds as well and people going about this driver shortage i i agree there is a driver shortage not as not the way people normally look on it though i think there's a driver shortage in this future because i don't know if you noticed matt but there is a lot of older people in this in this uh industry and oh yeah at some point these people are going to retire and there is less youngsters coming in and the ones that do come in they think it's a game they think it's i'll see what we get out of it and crack on and some of these young drivers they put a bad name on the young drivers it's why we get a lot of stick they think they know everything and all this and that what i learned very quickly is you can't look silly for asking questions no question is a stupid question you get more respect for asking a question than thinking you know everything and i've met drivers that think they know it all they mess up don't admit it and then it makes it so much worse and there's people and that is another reason why a lot of companies don't take on the young drivers because they're they're not they don't have the right mindset for it and getting tired with the same brush and making this making your hgb life so hard to get with so many people that are on epilepsy is is is mental to me i've had so many people message me saying i've got him in the same situation as you before i did this petition i thought i was on my own i thought i was a one-off but it turns out that I'm not and there are so many people not necessarily brain tumors but they're epileptic and they said the same thing as soon as I come off the meds I have a seizure and it's and then I start again whereas when I'm on the meds I'm absolutely fine I don't even have the side effects but it's it's because of the rule of 10 years medication and seizure free I don't understand why you have to be off the meds maybe maybe even make it five years seizure free but be on the meds you know what I mean so it's not me saying tomorrow let's all give everyone with epilepsy hgb license or a bus license it's let's look at it from a different angle and do the research because it is such a it's such a hidden thing that no one realizes there's a problem epilepsy is so looked over no one notices it and it's just I think it's time to change that yeah it's the best person to speak to your local member of parliament yes so you're gonna go and I'm going to my local Member of Parliament.

31:03We're still doing so much research on it. We're not even finished yet, but we've done a lot already. It's looking in our favour. So we're going to do the petition, see how that goes. And then while that's, we've got till December the 8th, I think it is, before that petition closes. And see how that goes. At the same time, we're going to be taking, we've got about a 20-page research file thing full of facts and figures, positives and negatives of what this would mean. And we're going to go to our MP with it and just see how we go. in my opinion I've got nothing to lose the OS are going to say it's no and I'm just back in the situation I was so I may as well give it a go oh yeah very true saying you've got a fighter haven't you I can't knock Matt I'm too passionate about it and yeah there's probably people listening that think that's just a tool to do a job it's my it earns me a wage and stuff like that and that's fine that's how you want to do it that's absolutely fine but to me it's my life I like the shiny motors they've still got to work hard 100 % but yeah I just It's just my life.

32:01It has been my life since I was four years old. I said to my dad, I said to my mum, sorry, I want to be a lorry driver just like my dad. I can't give that up now. I can't give it up. Yeah. I think there's always been people of that, of the ilk of, there's the two campuses, like it's a tool to do a job. They'll come in, come and do their shift, go home. And it's just, it's there, don't clean it, anything like that. Then you've got the others who, it's your life, isn't it? You know, you spend your time and your own money on it. go to truck shows at weekends to talk trucks with like-minded people and stuff like that and the people that aren't really into it some of them not everyone some of them say oh you're sad for doing the track up you're sad for doing to the shows but what I say is I'm not asking you to do it our boss isn't asking you to get involved so let me enjoy myself it's my hobby as well as my job yeah that's it it is if you have a job you love you've never got to work a day in your life yeah absolutely some people play golf I don't understand that.

33:01I do knock friends, but only because they're friends of mine. Everyone likes to take the mickey out of everyone, don't they? Absolutely. So I do give them a bit of stick for playing golf. Definitely not going to a truck show. But it's like, I remember Matt, when you was at Trans Am and you used to do the videos of you going through Russia and stuff like that. And I've watched them videos and I look at myself and think, I want to do that. I am going to do that. And my dream is to do Europe and the touring. That is my dream. It fascinates me and it's interesting. And I just love it. There's another, not a YouTuber, but he's a driver that does YouTube.

33:40And he works, is it CFL? The red dash with the red trailers that do the tours? I think it's CFL based down south. Something like that. And he is really interesting. He tells you what he did wrong. he tells you what the new rules are and he is really switched on and i'm so interested in it and i i feel like i'm watching them as revision for when i do it one day because at the minute it's not an option for me to say i'm not going to do that because in my head i still am i'm still fighting for it and it's it's it's not an option so yeah yeah you i was very much told you've got to work from the bottom up and i think i've done that i've worked when i was at g webs on the tippers I had a 2012 MAN and it was banged out rubbish.

34:30But I loved it because it was my first truck and I'm sure people listening to this will never forget their first truck, whether it was 40 years ago or last week. You'll never forget it. Yeah. No, you don't. Certainly not. I mean, my first truck was a 7.5 tonner, say it's 814 and I loved it. But then I got an 817 after that and I was just, I was properly in the road with that. And that was the days when the seven and a half tonners could do 70 miles an hour and use the outside lane, that was, yeah. See, then this is what I mean. Yeah, it's a good time. Longs change all the time. There's no reason why this couldn't.

35:04Yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like when I started walking floors on Williams, my first Arctic, it was a Mercedes with a Canapun trailer, and I looked at the thing on the pack on the trailer. It was a 2008 trailer, but it was mine. It was falling apart, but it was mine. And then a year later, I got my Scania and a brand new Stass walking floor and I absolutely adored it what do you think of the Stass it was I really liked them and my one had an electric you know the walking floors they have the headboards that push it out yeah my one it was the headboard went out and it was attached to a massive basically ratchet strap you push a button it builds it back in and it comes back up to the top and I thought it was really interesting and we were doing the rubbish and the paper it's a palm paper at King's Lim so with the rubbish obviously a normal walking floor sheet goes straight across the top of the trailer so you quite often get stuck things you've got to push stuff down and all that whereas mine went up and over a bit like eight-wheeler tippers but they go front to back mine went left to right and over and down I actually thought it was brilliant it was really interesting I think they're I really like them I never had a problem with mine it was great I mean once the hub bearings went on the trailer but that's more of a a hub thing than the trailer thing.

36:21That's it, right? Yeah, rather than Stass manufacturing. Yeah, the bearings just collapsed and that was it. I had smoke coming out of the oven. I was like, what's going on here? Strap my axle up. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a lot. I did have, once with me woodchip one, I've had a whole load of smoke. And to this day, we don't know what it was, but that was proper smoking. And I thought, if this goes up, I've got a full load of woodchippings on. This is properly going to go up. but call out, mechanics came out. I don't know whether the canipers just seized on for a little while or whatever, no idea.

36:55But you could see all the black from the smoke on the disc and whatnot, but never did find out what caused it, and it worked fine. Strange. Yeah, very strange. It's one of them things. I wrote the trailer off in the accident, all the chassis was bent and everything. So obviously what we had to do with black bag waves all over someone's onion field, I wasn't very popular, and neither was we can imagine. But we sorted it out and they put the black bagways back in the trailer, towed it back, netted it all over, made it safe for the road, netted it back to the yard. My trailer still worked. The slats in the walking floor still worked.

37:27So they walked it out and walked it back in onto another trailer. And I just looked at it and I was like, how is that still working? Everything that that trailer has is now bent. And it's still pushing rubbish out. I was just like, fair play, fair play. I mean, were you badly injured in that crash? I actually asked you. No, I had some cuts and bruises. So what happened was I was going from March of Chatteras and I veered off to the left. I jumped over a dike and ended up in a field on my side. So my driver's side was against the ground. I looked to my left and I see sky. And I had people around me ask, this is the first seizure I've ever had.

38:07So at the point, I didn't even know I had a seizure. And I wake up and I see myself on my side and I thought, am I dreaming? me this this ain't real this ain't happening i look around and everything's coming together because when you've got a seizure you're a bit hazy and you don't really know where you quite are so i looked up i see people's legs just people's legs that's all i see and a big hole in the wind and i'm a person fight or flight so in my mind i've said i thought to myself i've got to get out of it i've got to get out of it i'm not going to make it you think worst case scenario and so i was one of them drivers no shoes in the in the truck and the police had no problem with it i said i've got no shoes on yeah no god that's fine whatever but i had my sliders for my wash bag with me flip flops so i came out in white socks and sliders and i looked like it was it was a scene it was definitely a scene it's good job the fashion police weren't there absolutely and it was a driver from ken thomas that run the ambulance and i will never forget it if he's listening he knows who he is and he said to me you you you've ripped your truck off you are you okay and I said yeah I'm fine I don't know what's happened I don't know what's gone on yeah so I came out walking through the hole in my windscreen in my white socks and sliders and I look back and I see my pride and joy look a bit like a crumpled tin can yeah and at that point I couldn't even get emotional over it because i was so confused what happened yeah at this point the ambulance and the fire brigade were already there yeah all i cared about was getting my phone and my wallet because i needed to contact people sharpish yeah as i say i was i was 20 then so i was very young and i didn't know we'd start yeah hopefully this is what i mean by safety my my boss saw my tracker and someone obviously rang williams i mean it's got ardy williams down the side of the phone number you know i mean you see a truck in the middle of a field you're going to ring the company yeah and my boss from what i understood also rang the emergency services and it seems like that trackers that can save someone's life and stuff like that you're tracked all the time so yeah and then i walked to the ambulance i got drug and alcohol tested zero zero um they even checked my phone to see my see if i was on my phone yeah i wasn't and they said did you bite your tongue do Do you know where you are?

40:28And I said, I know where I am, but I don't really know what's happened. Did you bite your tongue? Yes. You've had a seizure. And then I went to Huntington Hospital, had an MRI scan, and they said, you've got brain tumor. So biting the tongue, that's a sign of having a seizure? Yes. You proper bite it. You struggle to eat the next couple of days because it's so painful. It is so painful. You look in the mirror and you just see scabs and scars and stuff like that. and it's really painful that is the worst thing about it yeah but the thing that got me is I've always been one for wearing my seatbelt and all that because it does save your life it saves mine do you know what I mean yeah but the fire brigade said to me have you got a modification with your seat and I said I had a lowered seat base I don't know if you you probably know Matt a lot of people put lower seat bases in the Dutch do it quite a lot about a week before I put that in yeah I said yeah I've got a lower seat base so I sit slightly lower and he said that's what saved your life because the way it crumpled is the top of the door if i was sitting at normal height would have gone straight into my head cool so even to this day i'm not saying i put a lower seat base in my car but i put my seat all the way down as far as possible when i'm in my van it's a slow down as far as possible yeah and i can't drive a car without it and it's just weird things that stick with you like that yeah so yeah and i was just i was just amazed that i walked out I think everyone was.

41:54Everyone was very much, be careful, be careful, you're going to hurt yourself. I said, I'm fine, I'm fine. I've just got cuts and bruises and stuff. I don't really know what's happened. Yeah. And then I had the big bruise across my chest from the seatbelt digging in and stuff like that. Yeah. But yeah, and it's just little things like that that stick with you. I can't sit high up in a vehicle. It's just, it's strange, but. Yeah. Yeah, it's just how it is. Yeah, fair enough. So yeah. My boss at the time, I think he thought I was on my phone, I think because he was a bit he was very worried very worried but I think he was a bit dubious because I was a young driver and it's that it's that name young driver you think you're going to do something stupid yeah but as soon as he found out I had a seizure he was like don't worry about it it's just a bit of metal we move on doesn't matter I've got insurance yeah it happens it's what it is yeah and then and as I say about two years three years later he ran me back he ran me up and said I've got a van do you want to drive it and I said what about everything that happened it's done now on it it doesn't matter do you want to work for me or not kind of thing very old school very fair yeah which is why my law is with him yeah so what is the van actually out delivering then because obviously with Williams most of it's obviously bulk stuff isn't it so so Williams Transport they do walking floors general haulage and pallet network ah right okay so I do the pallet network and I go to I'm basically a posh delivery driver um I do deliveries to the house to houses i do the small pallets that you can pick up with your hands there's no point taking a truck to even though it's a big factory and all this there's no point taking a truck to it for one pallet you can live with your hands yeah i've done some pretty interesting things with it i've delivered to a model railway a new train all right i've delivered a catwalk to some man dealer down in the southwest uh somewhere that was a nice drive out that was great yeah and it's it's really interesting you meet so many people and it's just it's great it's really good people people people say, oh, Palette Network, it's a bit of a pain, blah, blah, blah.

43:53It's very much what you make of it. Yeah. You meet some strange people, some brilliant people, and some not so nice people, but they're people, and you're out on the road, and it is what it is. Do you know what I mean? You do the same with walking floors. Yeah, as I say, it'd be exactly the same in an Arctic, wouldn't it? I mean, I did a little bit of agency work a couple of years ago for a company called Lombard Shipping in Ipswich, and that was on Palette Network stuff in a 17-tonner. Oh, I really enjoyed it. you know start getting at eight o 'clock once the trunk is back and they've loaded your trailer or your truck and then just strap it all down multi-drop i think the furthest i went from it's just berest and edmunds yeah so come back do another run then collections in the afternoon you can get six pallets on my van six full size pallets if you play it right you can get a few more euros on it because they're a bit smaller and it's amazing how many light pallets you get because I thought three and a half ton you're going to fill it up so quickly and you do basically three runs a day so six pallets come back six pallets come back six pallets come back and then go and reload and it was it's easy people motivate it it's easy and it might just be the way my company do it it was easy I really enjoyed it it was great but it's not the artis it's not the nights out it's not cleaning your motor blah blah blah and I'm grateful for what I've got I really am but I want to I want to fight it and just crack on yeah that's fair enough mate fair enough yeah lovely well I think I've taken up enough of your time Billy yeah it was very enjoyable yeah good I'm glad you enjoyed it and well yeah if you send me a link for your petition I'll get it put on the socials yeah no problem and yeah and good luck with it and we'll see how it goes we'll perhaps touch touch base next year and see if there's been any progress absolutely absolutely yeah I hope everyone's I hope I haven't bored too many people and I hope people have enjoyed my story.

45:48Well, you never know, there might be someone who listens to this that was feeling alone like yourself because they're suffering from a similar thing. Yeah, and the thing they've got to do is talk to people. Don't boil it up, it ain't worth it. Yeah, yeah. Yes, we're all big, hairy lorry drivers, blah, blah, blah. Talk to people, don't try and play the hero, it's not worth it. Yeah, so have you got like a Facebook group set up for people in the petition? I haven't. If you find me on Facebook, my account's public if you've got any questions give us a message and it's absolutely fine if you just want to talk about how you feel whatever just talk about anything I'm open to it if you've got questions you want to ask how I got through it blah blah blah just give us a message and I'll get back to you alright brilliant yeah lovely right well you enjoy the rest of your day Billy and we'll speak soon thanks Matt thank you very much love you cheers mate cheers bye bye

46:47guitar solo