Being like a scout

Sometimes the skills needed to be a lorry driver could easily be compared with those needed in the scouts as both require you to be open to new challenges, adaptable, prepared, patient and willing to learn new things!

All five skills were recently put to the test for Brian a Furnell driver, with us for 20 years, on a trip to Antwerp in Belgium.

Open to new challenges

This trip was Brian’s first time driving in Europe since before covid and he was using “LeShuttle” (previously known as Eurotunnel) to travel the 35 minutes both ways across the channel tunnel.

For safety reasons, lorry drivers are not allowed to stay in their cabs during the journey, so along with other haulage drivers, he was picked up by bus after parking on the train. The bus takes drivers to a carriage for the duration of the journey before dropping them off again ready to depart with their vehicle. This was an organised system which meant all drivers were off the train and on their way within 5 minutes or so.

Once in France, Brian quickly navigated driving an artic lorry on the other side of the road for the first time and was soon motoring along the French motorways. The most surprising thing he found was the vast number of lorries travelling on the motorways. ‘I haven’t seen so many lorries in my life!’ However, the historic scenery more than made up for any challenges as he passed by Dunkirk and Flanders Fields on his way through France.

Adaptable

As a long distance lorry driver, every job can be different and you need to be prepared for a journey that can take you anywhere, at any time, often at quite short notice so being adaptable is a much needed skill.

Brian’s job for Marlowe Digital, one of the UKs largest independent provider of prepress services, involved taking equipment to Agfa Gevaeri. Agfa is an imaging systems and IT solutions company, based in Belgium. Their drop off location in Antwerp was on the site of H. Essers Wilrijk, which is a bonded warehouse dealing with the import and export of goods across Europe. Having this facility on the same site as the drop off location meant the goods could get “customs cleared” within an hour and the delivery could be made relatively quickly.

Once the equipment had been delivered, a place to stay for the night was needed. Finding a hotel car parking space for a 44 tonne lorry is often impossible so it was a night in the cab for Brian at a lorry park near his drop off site. Sleeping in the cab is always a back up option for any overnight job and according to Brian is quite comfortable for one or two nights.

Patience

As every lorry driver knows, before any journey you need to be prepared. Whether it’s checking the route, becoming familiar with the consignment or considering where to stay. For this trip Brian also needed to make sure he was familiar with the customs paperwork needed as well as packing an overnight bag for a stay in the cab and stocking up the fridge with enough snacks and food, being mindful of the laws when taking food produce into the EU!

Always learning

There are always new things to learn too, ranging from new routes, new equipment with specific drop off requirements or ever changing delivery software. Drivers travelling to the EU also need to become overnight experts in customs, commercial invoices and customs clearance as every country has a different method of ensuring vehicles pay the required tax while travelling on their road networks.

Our drivers have a folder of paperwork for any EU job with documents needed for each stage of the journey. After a stop at the Sevington Inland Border Facility in Kent to register the goods and clear customs Brian made his way into France and was fitted with an On Board Unit (OBU) near Dunkirk which tracked the tax needed on goods travelling through Belgium. The required paperwork can be complex and mind-boggling but if you don’t have it in place there can be some serious fines.

The well known scout saying “dyb dyb, dob dob” has a lesser known meaning. In reply to ‘do your best’ (dyb) scouts promise to ‘do our best’ (dob).

And we can’t say anything different about our drivers as they go out of their way to do their best with every job they take on. We really couldn’t do it without them and appreciate their can do attitude that has become part of the job, thank you.

About Us

Transporting equipment across the UK and Europe, within every industry sector including aerospace, medical, computing, telecommunications, printing, dangerous goods and nuclear.