Ian Tocher


8 November 2021

Off the Road

As one of the one million or so people in the UK with an HGV licence who isn’t driving lorries for a living, I recently received a letter from the government trying to tempt me back into the cab. It won’t work. I started off in the 1980s delivering bedroom furniture. This involved being nice to people while carrying heavy loads upstairs and trying not to rip their wallpaper or drip sweat on the carpets. It was gruelling, relentless work and some days there was barely enough time in the schedule to eat lunch. A few of the established drivers set their tachographs (the so-called spy in the cab) to ‘break’ but used the precious down time for unloading instead.

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