Driving a lorry up and down the UK's roads is a lonely occupation, and one not everyone is suited to. It's not just the endless traffic jams, dealing with other road users and the low pay, it also changes you as a person the longer you do it.
I used to be quite sociable during my time in the RAF, but after I left to have a family and took up driving for a living, I became more insular and inward-looking. Often you'd barely speak to another person all day long, and that takes its toll on you mentally.
There's also the physical side of things to deal with. Most drivers have little to no access to fresh food, so your entire diet is whatever you find at the service station. Unless you've got your own lorry with a mini fridge, you can't get up at 4am and keep food chilled all day until you can pull over to eat it. I used to suffer badly with IBS, which was exacerbated by driving 10 hours a day, and never got time to exercise as I was exhausted by the time I got home.
Driving full-time not only puts a strain on your health, but also on your relationships and family. It was very tough on my wife coping with the children at home and holding down her own job while I was out on the road.
After five or six years I took a £6,000 pay cut to get my life back, so I'm now earning £25,000 a year. It might not be as much money, but I get to see my two young girls every evening and have a better work/life balance. There's been talk of some recruiters paying £80,000 a year, but you'd be lucky to earn that even driving flat out.
Your pay ranges from minimum wage for unloading cargo to around £20 an hour for the unsociable hours driving shifts via an agency, but my average pay was about £550 a week. You can drive anything between 100 to 500 miles a day, five or six days a week. My longest job was Lincoln to Liskeard in Cornwall, then back up to Bristol, then up to Norwich, then Edinburgh, Glasgow and back to Lincoln in five days. You can easily cross the country twice in a week.
There are good and bad jobs in driving - everyone wants the ones with the fewest drops that are closest to home, but sometimes you can be sent miles and miles away on your final shift of the week. My last place stopped paying overtime as some of the workers were taking the mick, so they just paid you for 6am until 2pm, for example, and a lot of us would work through our 15-minute breaks so we could beat the traffic home. You're constantly stressed about timings, which is one of the biggest problems in the industry. I always took my breaks as it wasn't worth the risk to drive while tired.
The facilities for lorry drivers are grim, however. It costs us up to £24 to park up for more than two hours at most service stations, and the toilets are usually far away and dirty - so drivers end up relieving themselves round the back of their lorry. There's usually rubbish dumped all over the lorry park and they're not very secure - sometimes opportunistic thieves will slash the curtain (the fabric covering the side of lorries) to see what's in there, which is why you'll see some lorries with their back doors left wide open to show they're empty. Every time a vehicle's attacked the driver has to wait for their company to come out and fix it.
The showers can be unpleasant too, with nowhere to stow your clothes while you freshen up. Sometimes there's just one shower for 50 tired drivers, so we get used to making do.
It can be a very lonely occupation, just you and your thoughts for nine, 10, 12 hours a day. If you're unloading at a depot you might exchange a few words with whoever's signing off your paperwork, then you're back behind the wheel. I realised I had to leave when I got home after a week away and my toddler daughter happily skipped out to bring my duvet inside, I just thought, 'I can't do this any more'.
What I do miss about driving is seeing the sights of the UK. I travelled all over and saw the beautiful scenery, but I'm so much happier now I get to take part in family life again.
