When I left school I went into airfreight as an export clerk and worked up to sales before I got feed up with being made redundant.
Then while training as a driving instructor I did some driving for a local agency in white vans and 7.5 tonners.
Then after 8 years as an instructor I got bored and went to work for a VW/Audi dealers as a valater, it is really hard to get back into normal employment after being self employed and this was the first job I was offered, eventually I got fed up with the company as although they knew I could do more and often got me to do parts sales, servicing, customer reception and even demonstrating they wouldn't let me move up as they couldn't get hard working valaters.
After a bit of agency driving I ended up at a courier company for 18 months that led to an offer of a 7.5t driving job with a special event furniture hire company,
www.spaceworks.co.uk , great job for the single man as we were at the heart of the entertainment business doing most major sporting and media events, F1, american champcar, superbikes, international rallying, wimbledon, chealse flower show, the brits (did that 5 years on the trot). I put myself through LGV2 and LGV1 while here. Unfortunatly durring while working here I became unmarried and when I remarried I walked out a week later.
9 months of driving Royal Mail artics for manpower got very boring so I took a job with a local civils plastic merchant as a 7.5 driver and when we got taken over I progressed to rigid crane lorries (including releif driver for our wagon and drag - a cab length longer than an artic!), unfortunatly the area we covered got smaller so the furthest one would drive is about 30 miles, 2 hours driving and 6 hours loading unloading, even with a remote control crane is not my idea of fun. I got myself transfered into the yard with the intention of working up to distrabution manager, it is slow progress but I might get there before I retire.
Currently my job consists of running an inter depot trunker (from load planning through admin to driving the fork lift to laod it), I am also a releif driver and jack of all trades in the yard and try to get my finger into as many aspects of the depot and company as possible, today I spent 2 hours sweeping up before spending some time in my capacity as a member of the companies directors/employees commitee (20 of us from 1100 staff).
Officially my job title is "LGV relief driver", my employer is
www.burdens.co.uk
In my spare time I am doing an open university BSc.