Page 1 of My bottle`s going!!

On Monday I go from trusty binman to trainee bus driver for Arriva. That morning all 3 of us trainee`s will be prept and sent out in a sodding huge bus. Having never driven one before I`m expecting it to be very tough going, its like learning to driver all over again in a 32 foot monster (:¦ I cant begin to explain how nervous I am....... I could cry I`m s***ting it that much!


I suppose at the end of the day if you want to better yourself and your career prospects you need to have a crack at these most challenging things!


I hope my guardian angels with me on Monday! :/

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"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
- Christopher Reeve (1953-2004)

Hey man - you`ll be fine dont worry!!

Good luck to you mate ;-)

Neil

Good luck dusty! :)

I`m sure you`ll be fine once you get going!

I hope they`re better payers that First Bus up here.
They have their buses plastered with "You could earn up to £16700 driving this bus"
£16700 !
Whooopeeee !
Seriously,that`s not enough money to have to put up with shift work and all the hassle bus drivers have to endure,is it ? :/

I`m sure it`ll be fine,by the way.
I sometimes drive the trucks here and they`re surprisingly easy.
Well,when you think about it,artic drivers ain`t the sharpest tools in the shed...are they.. ;)

This item was edited on Wednesday, 7th September 2005, 14:51

Character Building (sorry)?
All the best for it anyway.

Good luck. Do we get half fair?

All the best,

Dr 42%er


It`s not easy being different. It`s not easy being cool....but somehow I manage....

Just think, Tuesday you could be driving a 32 foot monster full of passengers and s***ting yourself even worse :D

Oh yea, good luck and watch out for peoples heads with those big wing mirrors and cyclist that liketo do 40mph and undertake you at bus stops! :D :D :D

M.

Dusty,

You can do it..were all with you.

Cowboy

Always seems unfair that bus and train drivers who have the safety of several hundred people at their fingertips are paid so relatively badly compared to aircraft pilots who have copilots to share the load etc.
Still, glad to see you are getting on Dusty, I`m sure you will do fine.

kywy

I`ve been driving buses for 20yrs now as part of my job as an engineer for Stagecoach. One of the best tips I can give you to stop common mistakes is to do with road positioning.

When you come from driving a car you tend to just turn the corner as you normally would, this usually ends up with the back wheels cutting the corner, and either running over the kerb, or worse the bus colliding with something.

Because of the length of a bus, and being what`s called forward control (the steering wheels are about 6ft behind the driver, not in front of him like they normally are), you need to sort of turn later than you normally would. A good point to aim for, say on a left hand turn is the white line of the road. If you drivers side front corner of the bus it near the white line, the back wheels should just clear the kerb nicely.

So if you`re turing left, try to keep the bus as far to the right as you can, and if turning right keep it as far to the left as you can, while also turning later than you`d expect to in a car etc, sort of aim for something but miss it if you know what I mean.

The good thing about the wheels being behind the driver, and the rear wheels are well forwards, is you have a short wheelbase, which gives a tighter turning circle than say a normal wagon of the same length.

Don`t be daunted by the size, if you line the front up right, the back will follow. Once you get used to it, it`s just like driving a big go-kart. You`ll probably learn in a manual, but once out driving will be in an automatic, or semi-automatic possiby...much easier.

We`ve got lots of new drivers on our job, they can`t keep them. As Bowfer says, down to pay, if they paid more, they`d keep the staff, and keep the costs of having to re-train new people down, but they don`t think like that.

I don`t think we`ve got a bus in the fleet that hasn`t got some damage on it, even the ten brand new buses we got last year. But they`ve got to expect that if they lose experienced drivers all the time. New guys need time to build the experience up, but if they`re off to another job because the money`s crap they never get it.

If you`re on £16,000+ that`s not too bad, well compared to our drivers anyway. It`s not much less than us, and we went to college for 4 yrs to train for our job, and work shifts too . The bus industry has been low paid since deregulation came about in `86. I keep telling the guys at work when we go for pay talks and they say `it`s not a bad offer`. I say yeah, if you were starting from a decent wage in the first place, but we`ve lost so much over the years.

Anyway, enough ranting. Good luck, I`m sure you`ll be fine. :)

This item was edited on Thursday, 8th September 2005, 10:01