8: Fulfilling All Your Driving Dreams

0:02Hello and welcome back to another Mat's Trucking Great podcast. Mat Ireland host him once again and today I'm joined by Luke Vernon. Now Luke you may well know if you've ever been on the internet, whether you've been on Facebook or on good old TruckNet which is sadly missed. It's quite a vocal character on there I think it's fair to say. Hello Luke, how are you doing? Good, thank you. Yourself? Yeah, I'm very good thanks mate. It's a beautiful day out there. So yeah, we're all good. Yeah. So how on earth did you end up? Well, you're not truck driving currently, but how do you end up becoming a truck driver in the first place?

0:40Well, like for a lot of people, it runs in the family. My granddad was a truck driver. My dad was as well. Well, my dad was a mechanic. Well, my granddad was a mechanic to start with. And I started off that way, actually, because when I left school back in the depths of time, you still had to be 21 to drive a truck. so I ended up going off to being an apprentice mechanic for three years. Did you enjoy it? Hated it. Yeah, exactly. No, it wasn't for me. It's funny because my dad's a fantastic mechanic. My youngest brother is a fantastic mechanic as well. It just wasn't for me though. I just wanted to drive lorries.

1:13That was all there is to it. No, fair enough. Was that with a dealership or a small independent company? No, that was with a local bus company and then I did a bit on forestry machines. They had a workshop in Aberguilie and it had no doors so it was an absolute nightmare in the winter. Ah, yeah, I can imagine. Fixing like Leyland leopards and Leyland tigers and stuff, you know, the flat engine buses. Yeah. Awful things, awful. Well, it could certainly keep you busy, I guess, fixing Leylands. Yeah. So you just literally bide your time to your 21. Yeah, well, I ended up, funny enough, so I left the bus company as an apprentice mechanic and then went to work for a forest machinery company.

1:52But then I went and I often did my transport manager CPC when I was 19. And I came back from my week off from the forestry job and the boss sat me down in the office and he said, I want an apprentice that wants to be here. And it's like, you clearly don't. So he gave me the tack, which is fair enough. So I ended up going back to the bus company because you could drive buses at 18. So I started driving buses and that was the beginning of my driving career. I don't remember that. Yeah, no, you always could. As long as it was under, the route had to be like 100 kilometres or 60 miles, I think. oh got you right yeah local buses and stuff so i um yeah yeah i went and did that for a year and a half then the company went bust so they bought their first bus and um first bus don't run any coaches obviously so uh that would pay to any ambitions to heading off down the road a bit yeah did you enjoy driving buses at all or i enjoyed driving coaches buses uh was fine but if i if if i got my licenses back i would go back coach driving coach driving i do think actually coach driving's a better job than truck driving for me not the case for everybody because not everybody's in lorry driving is particularly social yeah basically choose the right work and you're just going on people's holidays all the time um so yeah i guess so getting paid for it but yeah i could imagine like local bus routes would just i mean i know i've got a repetitive job at the moment but bloomin heck that would just be soul destroying it wasn't so bad then because it was like my first driving job so anything was exciting but uh yeah but yeah so i went to work in London then.

3:22There's lots of people from all over the country to work in London driving coaches because the money was better. The work was better and the coaches were better. I did my HTV within weeks of my 21st birthday and then I spent another four years desperately trying to get a job driving trucks and everybody kept knocking me back. No experience. The most notable one, I remember one, it looked quite promising. I rang him and I was in the south of France with a coach load of passengers and he said to me oh he can't give you a job you've got no driving experience and I just like kidding me like it's nuts the coach and bus industry is way ahead of transport transport is short so short-sighted when it comes to um new drivers and young drivers and stuff if you met the average bus or coach driver and you ask them who paid for their test 90 of the time it will be the company but it's the other way around for trucks so yeah it's uh it's just so short sighted it's mad that they trust you with all the uh people but not loaded toilet rolls yeah absolutely absolutely i mean i think some of it comes down to the insurance because where i am at the moment they've had a couple of young people pass and subsequently leave and they could they would they would insure them on a newer arctic that i'm driving but they wouldn't actually insure them on like the eight wheeler that i cover as well so they were really limited to what they could do for some reason even though they're both over they're both over 25 that they just didn't have the actual on-road experience the insurance company were were the main issue there so yeah whether that's a bit of a factor in i don't know but but yeah they're a law to themselves as we know it's funny though it's like it's funny how things work out because i'm glad it in hindsight now i'm glad it worked that way because those four years driving coaches around europe were four of the best years of my life so if i'd have gone straight to trucks i'd never have had that no fair enough you eventually managed to find a job driving a truck then i did Yeah, my dad was working for the famous Nolans at the time.

5:12And we'd been asking the whole time if I could have a job, but they kept turning me down. But then eventually, when I turned 25, they offered me a job, Nolans. So I spent a year at Nolans. That was a baptism of fire, it's got to be said. Were you based directly out of Ireland? Because they had quite a few out-based in Wales at the time, didn't they? Yeah, they used to just keep the truck with you and take it home at weekends. I was living up in St Helens at the time, because it was my one time in a relationship. and they never really shipped trailers through Hollyhead back then. Because if you're from the south, they'd ship trailers through Pembroke.

5:45So you just pick up trailers and run trailers out of the dock. So I end up shipping back to the forwards. It was murder because I'd have like three hours sleep on the boat, run around Ireland all day, back to the boat, three hours sleep on the boat, run around the UK all day, back to that. I was on the boat like five nights a week. I couldn't do it now. It would absolutely bloody kill me. But yeah, young enthusiasm. Was it just around the UK and Ireland? Yeah, just UK and Ireland with them. Right, OK. Was that down to just the lack of experience? Well, I say lack of experience, obviously, like I say, you've been driving coaches throughout Europe for four years.

6:16It was the age. They'd had some bad experience with younger drivers having accidents and sadly to admit, they didn't have a great experience with me on that respect. But when you're running day and night, I mean, it's not fucking... And everyone has bumps and prangs when they first start. It's just, that's just kind of the way things go, isn't it, really? Seamus, the bloke who was in charge of all the drivers and stuff, while he was sort of the boss, but he was, worked in the workshop, like, he was very assuming, he'd basically no rules time, and I pulled into the yard one day, and he came over and laid into me and sacked me, and so I rang up to the office, because the office was up the hill, and I said to Noel, his brother, I said, he said, oh, take, pick up that trailer, go for the boat, and I said, I think I've just been sacked, and Noel shouted, what?

6:59Slammed the phone down, came driving down the yard, and went over to Seamus, and they were shouting at each other in the corner of the yard for five minutes, and then, And Noel came over and just said to me, get that trailer, go to the port, F off. So, yeah. Because that was the thing. It reinstated very quickly. Yeah, because while I had accidents, I was on the time all the time, and I never complained, which is fairly rare in this industry as well. But yeah, they weren't there for years. What was your first truck with them? My little green Actros. Right. I still remember the registration to this day as well, 00WX4936.

7:30Excellent. Because, I mean, nowadays they've got an awful lot of DAFs, older DAFs, but they must be well maintained because they just sent, they're not worried about sending only trucks anywhere. I mean, I see. Oh, no, exactly. They're always well on top of the maintenance when I was there. Yeah. Yeah, they're not, like, even when I was there, you'd run day and night, but the trucks were always in top notch condition. I imagine it's still the same. Just like to say, you can't really run 10-year-old deaths across Europe without being on top of the maintenance. No, definitely not. I mean, you know, I see a screenshot, I think it was, of the tracker.

8:01And I think at the time there was three of them in Morocco. this was only a couple of weeks ago you know Sicily all over the shop so it's nice to see that somebody's still heading to all these destinations really and somebody independent as well I always thought that when Jimmy the old man died that they'd probably sell up because they must have lots of offers because I imagine one of the big logistics company would love to get their hands on them but then somebody I was talking to the other day pointed out that it's a very big family so maybe it's because they wouldn't make enough money to make them more comfortable but uh maybe or i guess it's still still making money and they're happy just to keep exactly doing it and building something yeah exactly so so where'd you go from nolan's then i went my dad went off to work on agency in london um me and my dad have followed each other around most of our lives so um yeah this was in the days of big money so we went now went to work in london with him rented a room down there um it was the days of big money because it was the days of Pope Tacos and the day was a running day and night again.

9:01Yeah. The money was nuts. Absolutely nuts. Yeah. Because you could just do shift after shift. You could do as many shifts as you want. It was frequently like a regular for us was Iceland at 4am out of Enfield. Driving those bloody god awful LFL 10s. And you'd be in Iceland all day for 15 hours, finish at 7 o 'clock at night, get in the car and then go to another customer, do a night trunk for somebody and then come back for Iceland. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. Again, I couldn't do it now. It would bloody kill me. But lots of us doing it at the time. Yeah. It was funny as well, because sometimes you'd see somebody, like when you were finishing Iceland, the night shift would be coming in, the drivers, and sometimes you'd be at a place and you'd see one of them who had just seen you finish work at Iceland and then saw you in another truck a couple of hours later.

9:45It's like, it's not me. You can't see me. That's my twin brother, honest. I actually got lambasted for saying the comment, I'm glad those days are over on a previous podcast, which I genuinely... I had great fun while it happened. I always wanted to do it. It's something I always wanted to do. Well, it's something I say on courses, actually. I don't boast about it. I'm not proud of the fact I did it, but I'm not ashamed of it either. You see, like, lots of us did it back then. But I had to start running legal in 2010 when I got my first digital tactical after Lurion. And at the time, I was a bit annoyed.

10:17But in hindsight, I'm glad because you see so many older drivers in their 60s who've been doing it their whole lives. and they're absolutely wrecked. So I'm glad. It was my mid-30s when I stopped, so I did it long enough to have a good go at it, but I had to give up before it killed me. Yeah, because I have heard several times that sleep deprivation and a regular lack of sleep is one of the worst things you can do for your body. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's something I teach in my health CPC as well is how important sleep is that people sort of underestimate. Something an awful lot of us lack, I believe.

10:51It is, yeah. Such is the way of life. So you're on the agency, then you had a change again then? Yeah, the agency went quiet. So I went to work for another of Europe's most notorious companies, HSF Logistics. Aha! They had an agent in Coventry that would supply all their drivers back then. They did this thing called the Day Night Day. It's mad now, isn't it? I say this to people. It's mad to think that back then entire companies ran like that and we all knew about it. And they got away with it regularly. Yeah, exactly. like if you were if you drove a Nolan or an HSF lorry you wouldn't bloody get past the checkpoint that was open so an average day night day would get off the boat in Holland do your deliveries and collections because there'd be a lot of them as well because it was all like multi-drop meat work yeah take it all back to the depot at nine Megan of an evening tip and reload yourself on the bay and then drive all night to the UK and then either do drops all next day in the UK or go to the Hollyhead for the boat to Ireland and you'd do at least one of them a week but sometimes you do two I remember when I went it was one of the few jobs I ever had where I had to go for an interview because nearly all my jobs have been given over the phone their driver turnover was nuts because so many drivers thought they could do it you'd see you'd go to Nijmegen and you'd see a new driver and it was he was on his first day night day and he looked like the world had just collapsed um because it suddenly dawned on him what was being expected of him he never got too friendly with them because he never saw them again most of the time that day down in the interview and he looked down on my cv and he said oh i can see you've worked for nolan's he said i think you'll be fine um which i was to be fair spent about three years i looked working for hsf it It was a great job.

12:19What were you driving, Scania for them? I was, my first truck there was one of the Volvos. They had some Volvos with double-deck trailers. Then I drove one of, they used to have a load of 380 Scanias, which were hilariously underpowered for the work they did. Yeah, the 4 Series top lines, weren't they? That was it, yeah, that was it. I remember once putting up out of Dover and I weighed about 48 tonnes. I thought it was going to bloody start rolling backwards. It was so slow. So it did always mystify me when I see them. And I thought, why on earth have they bought 3.8? I know the Netherlands is very flat.

12:52That's probably it, yeah. But we also all know that the weight in the back is quite a generous 44-touch. Yes, exactly, yeah. Fair to say. But that was sort of wetting my palate a little bit for Europe, but it wasn't proper European work. It was just Holland and Belgium and UK Ireland. So I always wanted to. So somebody told me Virginia were looking for drivers. So I rang them up, and they seemed a bit disinterested on the phone, so I just thought oh that would be the end of that then and then a couple of weeks later Sean the boss rang me Sean's a very softly spoken man he can be very hard to understand sometimes and he'd be like do you want a job do you want a job and he's like sorry what did you say he said do you want a job so yeah I said go definitely so I had my notice in did my notice packed my car up in Coventry drove to Ireland put my stuff in a lorry and off we went for Virginia then which ended up being the best period of my life probably good company to work for oh yeah by far the best it's like family run like I've done all the work for the big logistics companies and supermarkets stuff on agency but I wouldn't want to work from full-time something I say to people is I quite like having the phone number of the bloke who pays your wages it's nice to be a name and not a number it is yeah I ran quite hard for them as well and like Italy non-stop and stuff like that so I did r500 06 r500 when I was there for the first three years and then they gave me the 2010 and that was my first digital tachograph truck I remember saying to him I'll move into to that truck tomorrow and I'll sleep on the old one tonight to Ray and he slapped me on the back and he said that'll be the first time we've ever slept in that lorry because I could have a bit of a reputation for running quite hard but yeah it was fantastic they kept me on the UK for a week but then my first run for them was Portugal so that was where all my dreams started coming true fantastic had you been to Portugal on the coaches previously?

14:35no actually I hadn't actually this is completely new territory completely new that one and then in 2009 I started I recorded my first little vlog so I used to make little videos for friends and family because they sort of got how i started better than photographs and then i thought to myself one day why don't i just pop one on youtube so that's what i did and yeah the rest is history absolutely you must have been one of the first out there i was actually the first i've tried some people kept telling me i was the first and i never believed them but uh when i was um you know i went off and tried to find anybody that did it before me and i can't find anybody so i always claim it now as i was the first why not it's my little It's not like I split the atom or anything.

15:15If I hadn't done it first, somebody would have done it. But yeah, I'm quite like that little fact. I never got massive. I mean, it's a lot of work. You get people bitching and moaning about people like Trucker Tim, thinking it's easy money and stuff, but it's not easy money. The amount of work Trucker Tim's had to put into that channel, it's a full-time job. Oh, absolutely. It's a lot of editing and recording and setting up and faffing about. Yeah, exactly. It was only ever a hobby for me. I just used to, my videos used to come out in dribs and drabs whenever I fancied it. So that's why I never got a massive audience.

15:49Because if you want a massive audience, you need to have set videos at the same time every week so people can look forward to it. I mean, you just look at the comments and people are saying, oh, where's the video this week? They sent me other creators and stuff. And it's like, yeah, I was never into that. It was just like a hobby. I find that with today's age as well. It's people just create content just purely to create it. and it's just mostly a lot of it is just dribble but it's just purely to get so it's just purely to get something out there it is to sort of keep keep their name or whatever at the top of the algorithm i guess just to keep it you know keeping popular i suppose there's a lot of there's a lot i'm not going to name any names but there's a lot of boring content yeah there is that as well unfortunately but everyone's dogs doing it in trucks now aren't they son yeah it certainly seemed to be it's really taken off i mean i don't do a great deal now just purely because my work is very very regular and i only go to sort of three places and that's it and there's only so many times you can film film going to exactly the same place week in week out so my mind sort of really dropped off an awful lot were virginia's quite happy with you doing that sort of thing whilst you're working well because we were sort of the first it was not like you know when none of us had preconceptions about what it was i remember right i didn't tell them when i put the first video out and sean came up to me in the yard a week after he said sat me i really enjoyed the video i really enjoyed the video and they did handle it really really well i mean they did enjoy it ultimately they bought me a 750 because of the content they was coming up to their um 30th anniversary in 2012 and i remember saying to my dad i might jokingly ask him if they'll buy me like an r560 or something to celebrate their anniversary and then one day i pulled into the yard and ray comes over and says oh we've ordered a 750 and we want you to drive it and it's like okay um and that was i think that was purely because they weren't known for their big power trucks and i think that was just making the most of the publicity i could bring it so uh yeah were you happy to get out of a scania into a volvo or did it not oh god yeah i've never been i've never i'm not i'm not a i don't have a particular favorite truck to be honest well i i swapped from r500 to an r440 and people thought it was mad giving up a v8 but i've never really been bothered about power and then people thought i was mad going from a scania into a volvo again i've never been really bothered about makes because they offered me a they bought a 560 at the same time actually and they offered me the scania and i said no no it's fine i'll take the extra power people thought i was mad for that and it's like i'm not going to give up 200 horsepower for a badge no did they not also have a 143 at the time as well no i still got that yeah it's still yeah they've still got it because you have a little drive in that i did yeah it's um yeah it's funny isn't it you get one of my things i find funny is the amount of rose-tinted spectacles there are amongst drivers.

18:29Oh, yes. And it always makes me laugh when you see somebody like a company who posts a picture of an old truck and a new truck and all the comments are like, oh, take the old one any day. And my view is like, yeah, you'd last an hour before you'd made a horrible mistake. So I drove that 143 at Virginia. And it was nice to experience. But my God, this is so uncomfortable compared to a modern lorry. Yeah. Most people take it to the end of the road and back and say, can I have my comfortable automatic back, please? White's had an F-16 that we took for an MOT because it was down there being fixed.

19:00And that, I mean, took it for a spin, take it for an MOT. And again, while it's a nice truck and it was iconic in its time, the F-16, of course, Globetrotter, we both got out with a headache and a bad neck being riled around. People don't realise how fantastically comfortable modern trucks are. Yeah, and easy to drive. And easy to drive, yeah. I don't know, people with lorry drivers seem to love the idea of more work, don't they? Yes. they moan on about roping and sheeting and stuff and I remember how many much drivers used to hate roping and sheeting back in the day tilt trailers as well an awful lot of rose tinted glasses and mega tilts as well which were just even worse I saw some people swooning over an FL10 the other day and it's like now now now now it's like yeah nobody liked them at the time Bosses Motors used to be called didn't they but they were a nice truck to drive yeah comfortable put them around they weren't but the problem with them is they weren't designed for tramping which an awful lot of them ended up doing same as same as the p cab scania they again they were a proper governor's motor um and they're abundant before before i think the driver shorts really start to bite in and cabs just progressively got slightly bigger and and before long drivers come like why why would i want to do a week away in that when i can have another guy's going to buy me a truck i can actually stand up to get dressed in yeah exactly you reminded me there because i worked on the agency for tesco in the age of the day cab scanners they used to have the four series god they're rock or lorries something else i point out in courses as well is how these days a long distance cab pretty much comes with a fridge as standard whereas when i started driving fitted fridges were almost unheard of weren't they oh yeah that was on the passenger seat that you've bought yourself exactly with the seat belt around it and everybody waking up the flat batteries because they've forgotten to unplug it yes exactly but yeah i think microwaves are starting to become more common as well i personally think if you're going to have drivers expecting to be away all week in a lorry that's the least you can do is give them a microwave and a bridge the overall cost say spread over five years is so minimal if your driver isn't worth say five pound a week just to keep them happy then exactly but maybe i'm wrong in saying that you're not particularly good boss but you know it's everyone's different yeah so so you had the 750 volvo for virginia's best truck of your career yeah that was the best truck i was ever allocated i loved it it was nice and they've still got it actually the work was great as well tramping all over europe yeah um the best jobs they had was coca-cola ingredients at balanar in west of ireland used to take it all over europe yeah adr worked that as well coca-cola ingredients uh hazardous and carried under adr so it says a lot about the drink doesn't it if you're yeah big there were big ivcs just of these corrosive liquid for coca-cola my favorite run for that was uh Budapest actually loved going out there but yeah so all my dreams came true at Virginia pretty much fantastic was there anywhere that you didn't quite get to that you wanted to with them Finland I was away on holiday and then he rang me up two days before the end and said oh we've got a load to Finland would you want to come back and come back early and do it and I said no I should have said yes there we go did you never quite manage to get to Finland then no I never got to Finland oh that's a shame did sweden we ended up i ended up in norway as well with virginia yeah because used to do these um they used to a jewish group in ireland used to go all together on holiday and they'd send their food ahead blessed by their own rabbi we'd do that a couple of times a year i was told to go meet the cruise ship in copenhagen at 8 a.m on monday morning i got there at 8 a.m on monday morning and it's gone and uh turns out it should be an 8 a.m sunday morning i had to chase it to a norwegian fjord which was quite good fun the customs wasn't fun because obviously norway's not in europe so i didn't have any bloody paperwork for the load so uh ah there we go sorting out but then i um i said having a life settling down living with friends in bristol so i handed my notice in and um he said oh we want to open a depot in the uk um do you want to do that so i said oh yeah i'll do that so i had my transport manage the cpc so while i did get them a depot and i did set it up ended up getting the sack from that which was sad as well because we both me and Virginia handled the whole situation very badly the relationship which has since been improved which we've made up since then but it was sad that the biggest problem was the depot was in Tamworth and I was living in Bristol right yeah it was just a nightmare commute trying to do that every day I can imagine rolling into the office at like midday and stuff like that it's not ideal and then I went to work for Bull in Bristol doing a lot of Tesco work very good company He got a nice fleet.

23:37And he ended up buying me a 750 as well. All right. It was lovely, that lorry. But again, that was solely because of the social media and stuff. That sort of went a bit sour, actually, because we had a bit of a falling out over a load of mayonnaise that ended up being shot because it was badly loaded. And he blamed me. So that was the end of that job. And then I went off to work for Mr. White. Good old White. Still friends with Pete. Good job, that. Doing lots of European work. Driving all those flagship studies, which was quite nice. Straight back into Europe. Yeah, exactly. a lot of Italy oh yeah lots of Italy on that one lots of multi-drop Italy because I prefer multi-drop I know lots of drugs hate it but I prefer it and then I sort of came and went from there for the next three years did a bit of work for Broughton's as well or Gibson and then I decided to have a go settling down again so I went to live in West Wales and went to work with my dad who was by that time working for Mantell Day was on the milk tankers but I'd got serious ill by that point as well as having stomach problems with stomach ulcers and stuff but I wasn't really sorting myself out I was trying to deny and I was a bit of a wreck.

24:38At one point, I'd like lost half my body weight because I wasn't eating. And I weighed like 47 kilos or something. And then just for good measure, in 2020, I went and crashed into a gate post and nearly killed myself. I was flown to hospital in the air ambulance. Yeah. Because I wouldn't have made it in the road ambulance. Parents told I probably wasn't going to make it. So this was February 29th, 2020, which is quite handy because it means there's only an anniversary every four years because it's the lead yeah um which is good for my mum because it's quite a stressful thing to remember um but yeah i was in a reduced coma for uh five weeks and then i woke up in hospital my memory from the last at least 10 years had gone completely blank i couldn't remember a thing wow and it was at the start of covid as well so i woke up into this hospital nobody could visit everybody was in masks it was very surreal It was like some sort of dystopian film.

25:32I can imagine, yeah. And me not knowing while I was there. Was it all kind of linked back to your stomach ulcers and just not being particularly well, I guess? Yeah, probably, yeah. Having not had a memory, I don't know why it happened, but yeah, it's probably something. It's a miracle that I survived, really. I mean, the doctors were amazed I survived. Some healthy people, because like at all, I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. I had no idea why. I always do wear seatbelts. I ended up being launched out through the passenger side window headfirst. The window was shut, of course. and if you've ever tried to break a car window you know i'm hard that is especially with your head yeah exactly so that's what did the damage but yeah so i woke up uh just had to start piecing i learned to walk again they uh shunted me out of hospital early i was then in so i was in the induced coma for uh five weeks and then i think i was in hospital for another three weeks yeah and they discharged me unable to walk and as they said normally they'd never have discharged me of the state i was in but because of covid they wanted to get me out while they could um blimey for my own good really i mean yeah two days before i was due to leave they come up to me and said oh we're gonna have to uh put you in isolation and do a test because we you've got covid symptoms and uh that was terrifying because if i'd have got covid that would have killed me because i smashed my rib cage to bit so much i've got like a metal rib cage now coughing was a nightmare so imagine going into a coughing fit would have been horrendous so uh oh yeah it's not worth thinking that was it they shut me out i'd stay with my parents for a few weeks and learn to walk again.

27:00If that's not a lesson to really listen to your body if you're not feeling 100 % and get checked out, I don't know what is really. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Something I make quite big of in the courses is looking after your health. Because as the lorry drivers, we can often just be guilty of not sorting stuff out and trying to deny it's happening and stuff, because of course it can be really hard to get appointments. Especially when you're up the road. Exactly, yeah. I saw there was a scheme recently at one of the service areas where they had doctors and people could just get consultations, car drivers and stuff, which could be a good idea.

27:37Yeah, definitely. But yeah, it was quite an experience. Ultimately, it's going to sound really ridiculous, but it was quite a good thing in the end because it sort of gives you a proper perspective on life when you've nearly lost it. Nothing is actually that important after that. And any day you can get up in your own bed and you get out of it on your own steam is a good day, frankly. this episode of Matt's Trucking Great podcast is proudly brought to you by Go Fetch with Fly Pets if you need animal transport whether it be UK Europe or the rest of the world give Go Fetch a call whether it be a cat a dog a rabbit a hamster a guinea pig a bird you name it they can move it no matter where it needs to go in the world so check out the website for Go Fetch or flypets.

28:22Lost my licences on medical grounds. I might get them back. We're going to see maybe this year. I had to get my car licence back. I went to work for a local company, Jan Soilage, doing Yodel parcels. Oh my God, what an awful job that was. It's just a nightmare. Give me so much sympathy for parcel drivers. It's a nightmare job. Yeah, that just looks horrendous with what they've got to plan with. Because we're in the middle of nowhere as well, my run was Corwin, so I'd love to run up an aborist with and it'd be at least an hour and a half to get to my first drop and then you'd have like 90 100 drops if i ever say that online people saying oh that's nothing i have 250 drops but it's different when you're in a city i mean this was yes corwin corwin was in insanely rural and uh you'd have several minutes between every drop and it was a nightmare loads of jobs in my career and i've always been proud i've never walked out anybody i've never left them in the lurch even if wanted to but that was the one i did because we had it was that really snowy winter and i'd only got so just before christmas i'd got like 25 drops done in a day i mean three times i got out the van it was sliding down farmyards without the unit and we were in the office next morning um all the drivers and all the office staff and the boss starts ripping into me for only doing like 25 drops and i just said right that's it i'm going home and uh as i walked past he said if you go now don't come back and it's like well that's the sort of the point um yeah that's what i was aiming for yeah yeah no absolute nightmare so yeah i i we're too welded to next day delivery i think that's causing people people moan about vans drivers parking in stupid places doing stupid things they moan about it like leaving them in stupid places like you get people saying if they like spent 30 seconds more walking down the path or something but it's like when you've got 150 jobs like seconds 30 seconds to mount up yeah if you do that every time so um people need to like the problem is we're just too bloody obsessed with next day delivery yeah unfortunately that's the world we live and it's it's amazing though isn't it the like i i just find it amazing because this is a part of the transport logistics is sort of fairly new since i was driving the amount absent has blown up um yes i don't know whether you follow him on facebook there's a bloke his nickname's Mavis he worked he is an Amazon driver around the southeast and he just goes from depot to depot but they've got like depots everywhere it's amazing and I find it insane how I'm in darkest West Wales and I could go on Amazon now and look for something and it will be here in the morning I mean how is that possible it's nuts absolutely nuts and I was wondering the other day whether Amazon actually have an O license and actually their own trucks because I think they just own trailers and not actually trapped in it.

31:12I don't know. I think it's just all franchisee hauliers, but I don't know. Hang on, I'm going to write that down so we're going to find out. Yeah, I was just curious as to what sort of, you know, what responsibility they actually have. Yeah, but yeah, it's crazy. Well, it's the same with the van things. I do personally think if you run vehicles in a professional capacity, you should have to have an operator's licence. If you've got a farm that has a truck for hire or reward and a tractor is caught with defective tyres or something like that on the road, that goes against the operator's licence.

31:45So should that not be the case? So just using DPD for argument's sake, because they've got vans and they've got trucks. Now, should there not be some sort of regulation towards these van drivers that would reflect onto DPD? Yeah, DPD must have transport managers and O-licensers and things like that. But yeah, like I say, it's sort of part of the business. It's entirely blown up since I was driving. It's all new. People say, do I miss driving? And I suppose sometimes I might miss doing Budapest or something like that. But I don't miss the bread and butter driving that's like doing those Amazon jobs and stuff like that.

32:23also the aggro that goes with the job as well because going to Budapest once you're through customs and you've got a nice clear road in front of you exactly it's lovely that that bit's fantastic but all this and then like like you'll you'll know trying to get parked up in Germany for argument's sake after four o 'clock in the afternoon just be a bloody nightmare just just near on impossible isn't it and just you know just the stresses and aggro's and stuff and just all that the whole package just makes it a lot harder and it's not as much fun as as what it used to be as such no and like i said don't really i don't like miss the driving like the uk work and stuff you never know might get license back we'll do i'll do a little bit of work now and again if i do just keep my hand just dip in and out be a bit more enjoyable like that as well i'd say oh it was yeah because you know that you just walk away that's not a problem exactly yeah and then i always fancied the idea so i did the videos my favorite videos to make and the ones that were often most popular were top tips which is basically just telling people about how to do certain parts of the job because the reason I started that is when I was starting out I must have rung my dad like multiple times today to ask him about how to do this how to do that how to do the other and then when I started making the videos I thought a lot of people won't have that so I was going to try and be that for other people so it made sense to just go down the CPC route and that's where we are now so ultimately every all the business I've got now is basically built on the back of the social media i mean it'd be really hard to become a cpc trainer straight away on your own without following behind you i think but yeah it's fantastic i really enjoy it was it quite a slow sort of start with it all or how did it no no it's pretty good it's um yeah i had a few customers and get go and like my repeat business uh is nuts and i do enjoy like providing a decent service to people as well and it's yeah people find it easier as well because it's a lot of travel is obviously for good reason find it hard to go and sit in a classroom and be taught how to do the job by somebody who's never done the job definitely that and that was my my sort of bugbear when it very first came out we went on our first days driver cpc and i can't remember exactly what the module was but the the chap running it i don't think he'd ever been a driver he'd always been like managerial stuff like that and he was then trying to show us how to thread a ratchet strap and he couldn't and in the end my mate my mate got up and showed him and sat back down i was just thinking this is ridiculous now since i've become involved with training myself i'm a big advocate for training and i think it's got its place and i think it's a good thing i personally i think the law should be changing so slightly that you'd have to do first aid and driver's hours as two modules or such every five years to because in my head if every single truck driver has got a basic knowledge of first aid even if you're terrified of blood because that's what a lot of people would say about you don't necessarily have to we don't need you you know banishing people up and whatnot but just even just to deal with someone who's in shock and know what to do so then when there's a scene of an accident you will get a truck driver turn up because there's trucks on the roads at 24 7 3 6 5 so at least that driver in theory will have a basic knowledge if nobody else has which could potentially save a life before the emergency services come exactly yeah it's um yeah i was always in favor of the cpc even when it started um yeah people say i'm just saying that now because i make money out of it i mean as i say to people the idea that you should be able to pass your test in your early teen late teens early 20s and then go the rest of your career without any further training is nuts i mean any other job that has safety is such a big heart has ongoing training I think the problem is the CPC was very badly put together to start with.

36:03And I think it's still fairly badly put together. It could be so much better. Absolutely. Because that's what I try to do in my courses. I'm trying to make them something worth doing. And it says a lot as well. Like I had a bloke the other day. I think he was 60 and heading for retirement. And he said, he emailed me afterwards saying, I learned something from your courses, which means a lot. I like to try and take pride in the fact that I think everyone I've done, somebody has learned something. Exactly. Yeah. yeah yeah well it's then it's happening when you put it across an engaging way as well you get so many people just sit there droning on yeah and then of course because of like you have i can insert my own experience into it all over the place um which is a very helpful real world experience yeah i also do think that it should be legally required that companies have to pay their employees and it has it has to be done in work time i mean when i started doing them my my friend who works in pharmaceuticals he's never worked in transport he was amazed that most of my customers were individual drivers employed drivers but paying for their own cpc and doing it in their free time he was amazed that people were paying for their own work training yeah that's it because if you if you don't your company's not going to you've got no license have you and it's just exactly yeah yeah it's ridiculous but there's so many things that need to change in this industry for the better well that's that's it you know i guess half the problem is that the rates are so bad that there's such a small margin i mean training is essential at the end of the day you need your drivers to be compliant and up to date and also again things like regulations change i mean how many drivers are unaware of the the latest changes with you know pedestrians and crossing the road exactly exactly that and i point this out to somebody recently and and they they said what they thought it was i said no that's not actually right and that's why we've got things at cpc to keep people updated because there's no way to read about it on facebook but is it actually true on there what you're reading like that's one of my one of my favorite pastimes now is arguing with morons about the law on facebook god it's hilarious i mean i'll be honest i'm surprised you've got time to do your actual driver cpc courses if you're spending a lot of time arguing with morons on facebook it's hilarious though i love the fact they turn so in they turn to insults really quickly yes and end up calling your names and stuff and it's like i just find that baffling what people get so defensive about it and it's just but but you're wrong you've got it wrong and that's the whole point of the cbc is to try and make you understand it one thing i always find funny is as well is people turn really nasty really quick if somebody turns really nasty i go the other way and go really really polite yeah like being really nice to them and you can watch them melt down over the next few comments it's because they can't hack somebody because people who want an argument it's i i cover this in like my um so i've got like a social media cpc but people so many people out there want an argument and the best way you can get somebody who wants an argument is not giving an argument um yes one's not something chronic so just go really nice and they just can't handle it it's brilliant yeah absolutely yeah so so have you created any of your own modules and got them no no not yet in process um not yet i still uh go through a consortium but they are in in the writing stages and um i had a few bits to the uh bits and pieces to the to the ones i do anyway like it's extra content so um to like my own experience and whatnot but yeah it's fantastic i'm sat here now in my little office with my dog at my feet life couldn't be better so would you like to teach in a classroom based environment or are you just quite happy doing that online oh i do do the uh classrooms too i did one for Alliance Logistics a couple of weeks ago.

39:41I quite enjoy doing the classroom ones, actually. At the moment, it's primarily online because I live in the middle of nowhere. But yeah, I do travel around the country. So if anybody wants some CPCs done. Well, you never know. You never know. So I find the classroom-based environment a lot more interactive and a bit more personal. It is, yeah, exactly. Very much so. Because the problem is that most lorry drivers have never been on a Zoom call. it's an alien world isn't it and yes they sort of aren't confident speaking up sometimes so frequently the courses nobody really interacts which is fine i mean if you're not or don't want to interact i did my thing is i just want people to be comfortable if they're comfortable to speak they feel free to speak but if they're comfortable to stay quiet to stay quiet yeah i'm not gonna i could talk yeah i tend to find there's always at least one who is very very interactive and or do an awful lot of talking.

40:38And if you get one who's funny and genuinely funny, they just get the whole place going for the entire course because there's usually at least one clown who is actually rather funny. I quite like doing the in-person ones at a company as well because they're all laughing and joking with each other because they all know each other. Absolutely. And it's quite good to bounce off that sometimes. Yeah. So that can be really helpful. Definitely. So what does the future hold for Luke then? Are you going to expand your teaching into ADR for argument's sake? No, I nearly did. The consortium did do, you can offer transport managers, CPCs, and I was going to do that.

41:21But then at the beginning of last year, I really thought hard about it. And it's like, I don't really want to do that. Yeah, fair enough. I'm just going to concentrate on drivers because a lot of people sort of move up the ladder and drivers end up getting forgotten. So I'm just going to concentrate on the driver's CPCs and doing them well instead of sort of doing more different things. And it's sort of a bit unfashionable to say, but I'm sort of quite unambitious as well these days. I'm quite happy just with my own little job, working for myself in my own little office. I don't want to employ anybody.

41:54I don't want to work for anybody else. I'm just happy doing this. Cannot fault that at all, really. I'm rather unambitious as well. oh, I've got no desire to try and work my way into an office or anything like that. I'm quite happy. Exactly, yeah. I mean, I did all my ambitions driving. My driving career was nuts. I had a fantastic time. That's also because people say, do I miss it and stuff? And I think now one thing that helps is, I mean, if I write down my job experience, it looks nuts. It looks like about five different people because I've been around the block so many times. But that's, I think, partly why I don't miss it because I did it all.

42:31There's nothing else I wanted to do. You've got no burning desire to go out and do a particular job. Exactly. I ticked all the boxes. A particular job. So it's not like what could have been because it was. So that's a good bit of advice to anybody. Just follow some ambitions and dreams. I mean, when I was lying in hospital, I remember sitting there lying there thinking, if I'd have died, could I be happy with how life had been? And I went, yeah, absolutely. I had a fantastic time so far. And now we're in the age of Albert with the dog. good old albert yeah that was that is one of my last ambitions and dreams so obviously i've been in love dogs my whole life my family's always had dogs i never had one of my own and of course if i had gone back driving i wouldn't be able to have a dog moon so no absolutely yeah there is something to be said about being home and having a regular life so if people want to find out more about you have you got a website uh yeah lorrydriver.co.uk you want to book cpc and is it the same on the socials as well lauradriver.com facebook is the main one I use and if anybody wants to book a CPC I've set up a you can get five pounds off if you use trucking great podcast as a discount code oh that's very kind so book a CPC and I promise they're not born no I can imagine they're not I think they'd be good fun right well I think I've taken up enough of your time brilliant you spend a lot of it online so yeah it's been most enjoyable perhaps we'll touch base again maybe soon yep no problem lovely thanks a lot Luke cheers cheers mate bye