Stand Up For Southport Guest Blog: Trucking Along by Gladys Rimmer-Armstrong
I had started to get myself slightly wound up about the fact that this country is being bombarded about the wonders of our NHS and I started to think about the people involved and, yes, they are doing a brilliant job of work and doing that job under enormous pressure and I have many reasons to sing their praises, but on the other side of the coin we have so many other wonderful people working equally as hard and also under enormous pressure.
I have two neighbours, Paula and Ben, both live in different homes in Crossens and both are HGV drivers. Paula lives on the left side of our block D and on the other side of the block lives Ben, but that’s where the similarities end!
Paula leaves home at 4am on Monday morning and goes to Tarleton where she loads her truck and rarely arrives back home before 4pm, 5pm, 6pm or even 7pm on Friday evening.
A Sefton Council refuse collection lorry in Southport. Photo by Andrew Brown Media
She learned to drive ‘big vehicles’ at the tender age of 17 whilst serving five years in the Army and she now spends all day every day on the road and sleeps in her cab at night and travels the length and breadth of mainland Britain, delivering equipment, fertiliser and other necessities to farmers countrywide.
Ben leaves home at 4.45am every morning and drives to Preston to start his daily drive and usually arrives home before 6pm. He travels long distances to deliver fuel to remote farms and he loves his job. It is one that he has been doing since he was 20 and has no plans to do any other type of work.
I also spoke to Rob, a transport manager from West Lancashire and he feels much the same way as I do about the drivers not being recognised as ‘essential workers’.
I asked him if he felt that they were important during the current situation?
His instant response was “They are very important at any time, not just this time; our current drivers are a good bunch, they are doing an essential job.
“Drivers are essential and nobody gets told; they are very undervalued and maligned. The average person still wants their goods in the shops, etc, but don’t want lorries on the road and don’t understand how the vehicle operates and the constraints they are under.
“If a driver arrives 10 minutes late in the afternoon they are not allowed to unload and may have to wait until 8am the next morning!
“The Department of Transport has investigated drivers’ working hours but the wording is so ambiguous that you would hesitate to deviate from the driver’s normal hours – the law is unnecessarily complicated.”
So, I hope that having heard about and from the folk in the background you may be understanding a little more why I feel there are people out there working as hard as possible and not being mentioned.
Let’s not keep on about individual sectors, but mention as many as possible of the great British workforce who are doing their absolute best to keep us all alive.
A few examples are shop workers, care workers, police officers, ambulance paramedics, firefighters, bin men, postal delivery service workers, and more. I am sure I have left some out so I will apologise to those, but wish them well and (as they would say in America) Thank You For Your (Selfless) Service.
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