Charity bags

I've just been reading back through the posts and realised I hadn't written about the time I worked for a clothing charity. You know the sort- they put a bag through your letterbox and ask you to fill it with your unwanted clothing and leave it out a couple of days later.

I worked for this firm a couple of times. The first time was when they were still based in Kettering and I was asked by my temp agency if I'd do a few shifts shunting the vans as they returned to the depot. The drivers would return to the depot and park the van in a side street. I'd collect the key, drive the van around the block to the loading bay, put the van on the weighbridge while full, then back it up to the unloading bay where a team would unload it. Once it was emptied I'd drive it back to the weighbridge to be weighed, then fuel it and park it in a compound. Repeat until all the vans were empty of goods, full of diesel and parked.
It wasn't too strenuous although it was sometimes stressful getting thirty vans into a tiny compound. It was just possible if you turned all the wing mirrors in and squeezed through the tiniest gap between the vans. Sometimes I was sure I'd miscalculated and wouldn't get the final van away and the gates locked, but somehow I managed to park them all. Once the vans were parked I could go (and still be paid for the full shift) so there was always an incentive to work quickly.

I was offered a job driving a van but turned it down. There were better jobs going at the tims, but a few months later I was offered the work again. By now the firm had moved to Wellingborough and I had to drive there and get there by 6 in the morning, pick up the van and assistant (who sat in the passenger seat all day without exchanging a single word in conversation, listening to Radio 1 at full blast- o joy!)and then drive to the town where we'd be working.

I'm not sure how many vans there were. I guess there were at least thirty. The firm had a contract with a large charitable organisation, and the bags we distributed all had the charity's name printed on it. We'd drive to a town, buy an A-Z street map in order to keep tabs on where we'd been and where we had to return to, and then we'd start work.

Our brief was to distribute 1000 bags to homes in the morning, have a break, then drive around the streets where we'd left bags two days beforehand, pick up any bags that had been left out, and then drive back to the depot. Simple? Er, no.

Some towns were easy to work, especially those with street after street of terraced houses. In some towns there were over a hundred houses in a street, and you'd soon polish off a thousand bags. But once you'd covered those streets you'd move into the more up-market estates where the houses were set back from the road, and there were fences between the gardens. These streets took much longer. Once you'd done those houses, then you'd move on to the detached houses with the long drives, then to the villages surrounding the town....

Unfortunately the person who allocated the work would tell you that you had say, three weeks to cover the town of Hereford, except that there aren't that many houses, and you'd be scratching around after two weeks. You were expected to return to the depot each night with a full van, and some areas were easy, but others were very hard. I remember being told to distribute 1000 bags a day to Ross on Wye and all the surrounding area. I drove to the area, bought an A-Z and found that there weren't more than a few thousand houses in the whole of the county! There were more sheep than houses to be honest.

Urban areas were good, but the yield from rural areas was always very poor. Why was that?

I expect that people who live in rural areas shop more often. They probably buy more clothes and therefore fill their wardrobes more quickly. Every few months a charity bag drops through the letterbox and the householder sees a way of easing the clothes storage problem, while making them feel they are doing their bit for chariddeee.

My experience would bear this theory out. I was sent to Walton on Thames to cover for a sick colleague, and by the end of the afternoon it was hard to get any more bags in the van, it was so loaded. It really was rich pickings compared to deepest rural Herefordshire.

What else did I learn? I loved the different archtectural styles in the old building wherever I travelled, but I'm sad to say that the new builds were all depressingly similar. I'd walk down a street on an estate near Colchester and realise that I could be anywhere. All the houses looked the same. In a lot of cases they were decorated the same, with the same front doors in the same colours. I really could be anywhere. And that's a shame.

In the end I had to pack it in. The money wasn't bad for temping through an agency, but the firm wanted me to work for them direct, and to be paid according to the tonnage I collected. I'd seen enough to realise that the area they offered me (half of Essex outside the M25) would never yield as much as the area within the M25 , so I declined. I was also fed up with the 13 hour days. I was leaving home at 5.30 in the morning, leaving the depot at 6.00, driving for anything up to 120 miles before starting the rounds, walking for three of four hours, then driving around picking up bags and then driving back to the depot, arriving back sometime after 5.30 most nights.
By this time the work arrangements had changed so the drivers were now responsible for weighing and unloading their own vans and then parking them. They were also responsible for fueling them and washing them, and I'd not get home until after 7 at night. That's lot of hours and a lot of miles for minimum wage.

I did a couple of days driving to charity shops collecting bags of unsold clothing. That may come as a surprise to you, but charity shops rely on new stocks coming in every day or week, and they don't keep stock for more than a few weeks at most. If it's unsold after that time, it's bagged up and sent back to the depot.

I recall one journey where I had to drive to Brighton and collect some bags. I arrived at about 9.30 and found the shop. Once I'd loaded up I then drove across country to Tunbridge Wells, then on to Whitstable. My last pickup was supposed to be Minster, but I chose the wrong one and ended up driving around Sheerness instead of further east near Canterbury. By this time it was late afternoon and I still had to drive back. I got back at about 9 o'clock, fifteen hours after i'd set off.

One of my colleagues would drive from Wellingborough to Penzance, then to Falmouth and Plymouth and back- almost every day! He'd be on the road for 15 or sixteen hours a day. There's no way I could do that week in week out. Of course there's nothing to stop a van driver driving these hours- there's no tachograph and so no driver's hours regulations.

Looking back I must admit I enjoyed my time on the charity collections. Although there are many shady operators, the firm I worked for did a good job and performed a useful role in keeping people's wardrobes just empty enough to fit a few new clothes in. The clothes we collected were sold on to Eastern Europe and Africa, providing needy people with good cheap clothes and making a few pounds for the charity in the process.

Multi Drop

About ten years ago I was working in a distribution warehouse and discussing the rise of the internet. I made the sweeping statement that town centres were doomed because of the rise of out of town shopping centres and the internet. I went as far as to say that one day we would either be warehousemen or white van men. Either picking and packing, or delivering goods ordered over the net.
Nothing I've seen has changed my view. You can go shopping at Iceland and they will deliver your shopping for you. You don't even have to go to Tesco or Sainsbury's, just click on the website.
After I left the retail sector following redundancy about fifteen years ago I've done all manner of jobs including warehouse/distribution and multi-drop deliveries. Yes I've been a white van man. And a white 7 1/2 ton lorry man.
I drove a C15 fridge van around East Anglia for a meat products firm. My round extended from Peterborough in the north to Clacton in the south, from Ipswich in the east to Hitchin in the west. In the eighteen months or so that I worked there I averaged 2000 miles a week and went around the clock at least once. I wore out several sets of tyres and broke down and had to be towed home a few times as well.
I must have driven along every road between the A14 and the A12 looking for a way past traffic jams and making up time. Every customer wanted his goods first thing and you can't be in Peterborough, Cambridge and Colchester at the same time.

Another time I drove a 7 1/2 ton lorry delivering goods to schools in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. There were always too many deliveries and I'd always run out of time and have to bring some back. I was working for an agency so I'd only get an odd day here or there and I never ever went to the same school twice. I recall driving through rural Oxfordshire full pelt, trying to make up time, with my map on my knee and trying to get to the other side of the valley. I turned down a country lane that appeared to connect the two roads only to find it narrowing at the bottom and with no way to turn around. I decided to continue and forced my way through the trees overhanging the road. The sides of the lorry were quite scratched and there was branches and foliage all over the road.
Another time I managed to spill a tin of emulsion paint all over the floor of the van. What a mess. I talked my way out of that when I got back to the depot.
I wasn't so lucky a few weeks later when, as I drove past some roadworks, a digger suddenly turned and caught my wing mirror with its shovel, shattering the glass.
I took the van back and explained that it was a genuine accident.
I don't think they believed me because I wasn't asked back.

Another time I worked in a distribution centre unloading the night time trunkers. You've seen the vans driving around the place delivering catalogue goods. Back then they were festooned with three flying ducks along the side.
We worked from about 9.00 until 6 or 7 in the morning. A trunker would pull up and back up to the loading bay. The tractor would detatch the trailer, hook up to an empty trailer and go back to the hub. He'd return later with another full trailer, unhook and take the by now empty trailer away. And return a couple of hours later with a third.
The back of the lorry would be opened and the goods would cascade out all over the floor. The constant motion of the journey put paid to any stacking of the goods. It looked as though the trailer had been loaded by a hopper chute through the roof.
Our job was to take each item, look at the delivery label and place the item by the back doors of the delivery vans, anything up to 40 of them. There were all kinds of items from clothing to hoovers and garden tools, in fact anything you could order from a catalogue. Our small team worked away and eventually emptied the trailer. Then we had a short break and started on the next one which had just arrived. It was all go and we earned our money.
It was still preferable to driving the delivery vans. Each driver was expected to deliver 60 or more items to household addresses often miles from the depot. If there was no-one home he had to go back later and try and deliver it and get a signature.
I worked as a driver's mate delivering large bulky items that couldn't be handled by one person. That wasn't too bad as the drops were well spaced out and there weren't as many, but I always declined any offers to work on the delivery vans.
That was a hiding to nothing.

More Rubbish

One of the many jobs I did in the late 90s was to drive a furniture lorry. I passed my driving test in the 70s, and my licence allowed me to drive any vehicle up to 7 1/2 ton without any extra training. These days you have to go on a training course.

The lorry was fitted with a tachometer and it was a job to remember to fit a disc and then set it correctly. I've lost count of the times I drove miles while it was set for a mealbreak, or took a break while it was set to drive. The discs were stacked up in the despatch office and I never saw anyone ever look at them.

Two or three times a week I'd deliver furniture around the area. I had a mate who'd help me carry the items into the houses, and we had fun getting overstuffed sofas through narrow doors. Sometimes we had to take the doors off, or remove front windows. I noticed that the newer houses were much smaller than the old ones, and a suite of furniture that looked nice on the showroom floor would completely fill a living room. There was room for a sofa, one armchair and a TV set. Maybe that's all people need these days.

When people bought beds we'd offer to take the old one away. It cut out the hassle of getting the council to collect it, and cut down on the amount of fly tipping.We'd take the beds and suites back to the yard and stack them up. When we had a lorry load we'd take them to the tip.

These old beds and sofas were classified as trade waste and had to be taken to a depot in Northampton where there was a weighbridge. I spent a couple of hours loading old saggy, wet and mouldy beds and sofas into the van. There was a certain amount of covered storage at the yard, but the other staff wouldn't be bothered to stack the beds under the shelter but just leave them where they fell. Once I'd loaded up I'd drive the fifteen miles or more to Northampton and I'd pass these enormous open top container lorries heading in the opposite direction.
Upon arrival at the Waste Transfer Station (to give it its proper title) I'd get the vehicle weighed and drive up the ramp to unload in a cavernous dusty and smelly building. I'd back up to the heap of rubbish and throw all the beds and sofas out. A large digger would drive up and flatten everything and then scoop it up and drop it down a chute into the lorry waiting below.
I then returned to the weighbridge to be weighed again, this time empty (plus me in the cab of course) and then they'd charge me for the difference in weight. Once I'd settled up, I'd then drive back, following the lorry that now contained all the crushed bedding that I'd unloaded.

So why couldn't I just drive the bedding to the landfill site instead of a pointless thirty mile round trip? There's a weighbridge at the landfill site and both sites were operated by the same company.
Whether the beds were collected by me, collected by the council or flytipped, the probability is overwhelming that they'd have ended up in the same landfill site eventually.
There's money to be made from rubbish. All those road miles moving the rubbish around may be bad for the environment, but they're good for business.

A dozen or more years later and the fleet of lorries still travel between Northampton and the landfill site near Corby. They use a different route these days but I still recognise the vehicle livery and the huge trailers that look like forty foot containers with the roof sliced off. They pass close to a windfarm the receives subsidies whether the wind blows or not (it seldom does. It's estimated that the farm is no more than 7% efficient). Plans for an electricity generator powered by burning rubbish keep getting turned down on environmental grounds.
Any methane gas that is given off by the tons of rotting matter in the landfill is burnt off rather than collected and used to generate electricty.

It's all rubbish really.