On why lorry drivers overtake each other on dual-carriageways.

One of the most common things I am asked when I tell people I am a lorry driver is 'why do lorry drivers insist on overtaking each other on dual-carriageways when they are doing roughly the same speed, thus blocking the road for car drivers for ages?' So here's the answer: Well, if you are only a car driver you probably won't accept any of this as a justifiable answer but at least you'll have a bit more of an idea why.

These are the factors:

The speed limiter - laden goods vehicles (LGVs) over 7.5 tonnes, and some under this weight, are limited to 56mph. There is a mechanism in the engine which means that when you try and accelerate past this speed, nothing happens, the acceleration just stops. So, what is the point of trying to overtake each other then? Good question, but the fact is they are not all set in exactly the same place. Some don't go much beyond 54 some you can get up to 56.5. The supermarkets are often limited to 53 as this is supposedly optimum fuel consumption speed. If you take the A34 connecting the major transport hub of Southampton to the Midlands, many lorries are travelling the full length of it. It is 110 miles from Southampton to Northampton, a distance that would be travelled almost exclusively on dual-carriageways. A difference of 2 miles an hour would make a difference of 4 minutes on the overall journey. This may not seem like much but it brings me onto the next point -

Time pressures - lorry drivers are under pressure for time both from their transport offices and from the tachograph regulations. Most long-distance lorries are satellite tracked so their transport office knows what speed they are doing and if they are not doing the speed they could be doing, the office will want to know why. Routes are worked out according to how long it ought to take and if you are not sticking to time, connecting routes will be thrown out of schedule (this is especially the case for things like Royal Mail, DHL etc.). Routes are also worked out to make sure that your tacho breaks fall at convenient times for the deliveries. You can drive for 4.5 hours before you have to take a 45 minute break. Last week 5 minutes was the difference between me making it home on time at and me being stuck in the Midlands for 45 minutes, thus making all the post I was carrying late.

The other factors that influence my choice of whether or not to overtake and block the road for ages are:

Load differences and hills - a vehicle that is heavily laden is not going to make it up the hills as fast as one that isn't. However, while some vehicles have a feature where the exhaust brake kicks in automatically to make sure you stay at the speed the limiter is set to, many do not. This means that a vehicle that is heavily laden will actually go faster down the hills that one that isn't. Frighteningly fast in fact! (69 is the fastest I have ever got a laden lorry to go, I tried to break the speed limit for cars but I didn't quite get there. It was fun but scary and I certainly won't be doing it again!). When deciding to overtake you have to make the decision about whether overall you are going faster than the one in front or not. The A34 is hilly, so if you are overtaking downhill (or uphill, depending on which one of you is laden) you also have to decide whether you are going to make it past the lorry in front before the gradient changes again. Personally if I'm being overtaken uphill and the lorry overtaking hasn't managed to get back in by the time we are going downhill again and going the same speed, I tend to brake to let them in to get the road moving smoothly, as long as I accept that overall they are going faster than me. If I don't think they are, and think they were just being aggressive, I won't slow down because I know that sooner or later I will probably have to overtake them again. This may well end up as a scrap that blocks the road for ages.

The final factor is cruise control. Let's take the A31 coming out of Bournemouth towards Southampton through the New Forest. It has some very long steep hills and at certain times, is very busy. If you are driving a lorry up a hill on cruise control and suddenly realise there is a slow-moving vehicle ahead and brake, thereby taking the cruise control off, your speed could drop by 20mph in an instant, which is dangerous, and it can take miles on the A31 to get that speed back. If you pull out straight away and get past it, it takes seconds and everyone is happy. This is a very thinly veiled way of saying 'Oy! Car drivers! Let us pull out!'.

So anyway, these are the reasons why. Having said all that, the speed limit on dual-carriageways for LGVs over 7.5 tonnes is actually only 50 mph but I have heard from a retired policeman that there is an unwritten agreement between the police and the LGV industry that truckers won't be prosecuted for driving at the limiter on dual-carriageways. I certainly know of truckers who have been stopped doing 56 and the police have not batted an eyelid about the speed and I have never known anyone be prosecuted for it but you never know.

Driver Stereotypes - call for comments

I am starting a blog project looking at driver stereotypes, how accurate they are, why those people drive like that, that kind of thing. I am looking for suggestions on which groups to look at. White van man is probably the most obvious, maybe school run Mums, taxi drivers, truckers (don't be scared, I can take it!).

Basically who can be relied on on the road to piss you off? Equally who do you trust to, on the whole, drive safely and courteously or in a manner that you like?

Let me know.

Ta

Nightriders

Since I left my job at the builders merchant, I have been trying to build up experience of both teaching in rigid trucks and driving articulated ones. One company in this area that takes agency drivers without Class 1 (artic) experience is The Royal Mail. It's a lovely company to work for, especially after the harsh world of the construction industry. A lot of the workers there are committed postal workers and would never have worked anywhere else. The company looks after the staff and the vehicles and I have been given training and support to get started driving artics, even though I am only an agency driver. So all in all, I like The Royal Mail.

Post moves at night. Nearly all the shifts involve a majority of driving during the hours of darkness and the canteens in a lot of the depots I visit are staffed all night.

Last night I did a shift which started here on the South coast around midday and finished back here 12 hours later. The bit in the middle was mainly spent driving around large mail centres in West London. I got to London around 5pm and left about 10.30pm. As I drove around these streets and junctions I knew solely from traffic reports - the Hangar Lane gyratory, the Polish war memorial roundabout - the traffic gradually died down as the sun set, and I gradually relaxed.

Yes, it is easier to drive an artic when the streets are empty, because artics are huge and there are lots of places around them where small vehicles like cars and bikes cannot be seen, and can easily get squashed. But it is also because as it gets dark, the population on the roads changes. The proportion of people driving for a living grows in relation to those who are just going about their daily lives and that feels safer, like you are part of a club, a club that looks out for its members. Let the self-absorbed car driver drive like they own the road in the day, they'll be gone soon enough, and we know we own the road at night.

There is a whole secret world out there of the night worker, the moles who burrow away when the rest of the world is sleeping. There is, as in any outsider community, a cameraderie among those whose working day is the wrong way up. The radio presenters, especially Alex Lester on Radio 2, cater to this peculiar bunch of truckers, shift workers and occasionally insomniacs or nursing mothers. The show is far too eccentric to be aired in the daytime.

The A roads are lined with parked up lorries with their curtains drawn, the driver sleeping inside. This lends an even more restful air to the night. I do have to be careful about taking naps whenever I can and making sure I have enough water and tea with me to keep me awake on the drive back from wherever I've been. But although I end up having less sleep than I would on day shifts and I haven't yet worked out a routine of what to eat when, I like it. I like the standing against the norm. I like the secret world.

A break

I haven't written any posts for a while. This is partly because it is the summer and there are lots of other things to do, partly because I am trying to simultaneously start 2 new careers (while planning a third) and I need to settle into them both before I can blog about them, and partly because I am not sure where this blog is going and I want to have a think about it.

I will be back.

On femininity: S Williams v Sharapova

Some observations on femininity.

I have struggled to write anything after the last post. It was deeply personal and received a good response so I felt as if the next one ought to be similarly profound.

But it isn't!

But it is related. I mentioned in my last post the kick I get out of being strong. I really like muscles on women and there are plenty of them about on the telly at the moment in the form of tennis players.

I watched the match today between Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams. These two women exhibit aggression, competitiveness and above all power while both being extremely beautiful and feminine. Sharapova's long elegant limbs and delicate facial features stood in contrast to Williams' voluptuous curves and strong face. They both had touches of girly adornments - Sharapova her jewellery and Williams her nails and both were wearing pretty dresses.

In both cases, the fact that they are extremely powerful women, who can serve at over 100mph and who hit the ball so hard it makes them shriek, does nothing to detract from their femininity. In fact, especially in Williams' case, I think her muscles heighten her femininity, much as Eddie Izzard looks sexier and more masculine in stillettos and makeup than he does without.

I love this image of women and womanliness that can incorporate physical power. I love watching women's tennis apart from one thing: I reckon they should play 5 sets in Grand Slams just as the men do.

It's time to come out

I think the time has come to talk about my own gender. I have talked about being a woman in a man's world. I have talked about masculinity in the workplace, both mine and that of my male colleagues but I have never actually made a concerted effort to write my own gender, to narrate, if you will, my own gender identity.

So here goes.

I'm scared.

I have always had a pretty strong masculine side. It was always something I both revelled in and was ashamed of, aggressively ramming it down people's throats to cover my own shame. All the time I secretly thought it would be something I would grow out of, once I'd sorted my head out, and grown up, that kind of thing.

But the fact is, I am in my mid-30s, pretty happy and sorted in life but it's still there. I stopped doing a manual job a couple of months ago and since then my upper body has got weaker, I am losing my muscles. I started to think, maybe that's ok, maybe I don't need them any more, maybe that phase is over. But I decided at the end of last week that no, it's not ok. I swam a mile on Saturday, kayaked for 2.5 hours on Sunday and am planning a session on a rowing machine for Wednesday. I want my muscles. I get a kick out of being strong.

I also get a kick out of having long curly hair and hour glass curves.

I could go into the psychoanalysis but I'm not going to. It doesn't matter how I came to be here, this is where I am and that's fine. It's not about fighting men. I like men, I fancy them and when I'm in a relationship, I like to feel like I'm the girl. Very few people have ever suggested that I am a lesbian. It's not about sexual orientation.

It's just that the gender binary doesn't work for me. I don't like my behaviour and my choices about how I earn my living or spend my time to be defined by society's perception of what I should do because I have certain body parts. I don't like the conflation of femininity with incompetence in spatial tasks. Spatial awareness is a skill that can be learned like any other. Professional male cricketers can't catch as well when they first start at school as they can after years of training. Builders don't put up shelves as well when they are apprentices as they do after 20 years on the job. Truckers of either sex are generally rubbish at parking when they first start. So you learn.

I recognise that the male and female minds and bodies are different to a certain extent for evolutionary reasons but they are nowhere near as different as society deems them to be. They are nowhere near as different as society wants and needs them to be. The binary is convenient for society, it's that old line in the sand thing. You're one of those, I'm one of these so we need to act like this.

It may be convenient for society but it isn't very convenient for me. I'm me, I do me things and I act in a me kind of a way.

I don't really attach a label to my gender identity. I don't really know what labels are out there, I'm quite new to this whole debate (I was going to grow out of it remember!). I tend to just think that I am a strong woman, both in body and character, who is in touch with both the femininity and masculinity within her.

Women in construction and the construction of women

I have been working in the construction industry for the last 3 years but I have started doing other stuff so I thought I'd tell you a little story about what may be one of my last experiences in the industry.

Picture the scene: I was driving my truck down into Weymouth from the Wareham coast road side. In front of me I could see the colourful tower on the esplanade with the hill of Portland behind and the sea, flat calm and glittering in the sunshine to the left. The lane I wanted was blocked due to road works so I pulled out into the right hand lane and moved slowly past the roadworks along with all the other traffic. In the roadworks a tarmac tipper lorry was parked up with its back tipped and perched above a hole in the road but still closed. As I drove past at a snail's pace I noticed that the driver was a woman. I stopped my truck, she turned to me and we shared a smile. Then I drove off and we both continued with our day.

It may be that she thought that the quickest way to get rid of me was to smile at me. It may be that she smiles at everybody. However, I have always found that women working in the construction industry have made a conscious choice to go against the grain, to do something all day every day that it is not expected for them to do. I think that a recognition of that shared experience was in that smile.

I have discussed my own reasons for doing the job in a previous post and I didn't speak to this woman to ask her why she does it. However, a lot of people looking from the outside think that women working in construction and other masculine roles are themselves masculine which is why they feel more at home there but in some ways the opposite is true. If you, as a woman, are surrounded all day by men doing manly things like lifting and digging and building things, you actually feel more like a woman. Your gender identity is less challenged - it is obvious that you are a woman, because all the others are blokes.