My name is Phil Blow; I'm a heavy goods vehicle driver. I work for CEVA Logistics, and I'm based at the Bristol depot. For me personally, and the particular work that I do, I like the routine that's involved in it. I tend to keep to the same job day in day out, week in week out, which suits me personally. I just like being out there on the road, you know, in the big rig, as it were, trying to be a responsible... take a responsible attitude towards doing my job and looking after the vehicle, being responsible to other road users, and I feel it's a good sense of achievement to do that, yes.
00:00:40 When I was at school I was a bit of an academic, really. I passed my eleven plus. I went to grammar school. I took A levels. When I was in my teens I planned to go to university, but I never got sufficiently good grades to qualify me for it, so I ended up going to Bristol Polytechnic and I did a course in... Well, I started a course on business education there in the early 1970s, and I lasted about a year and a half before I decided that an academic career wasn't for me.
00:01:16 I decided that I wanted to become a heavy goods vehicle driver because in my younger days I used to travel a lot with my father. He wasn't a driver himself, but he used to like driving his car. He was a very enthusiastic motorist. And of course as soon as I was seventeen I wanted to get my car license, and I did enjoy driving around, and I'd sort of met a number of drivers and some of the things that they said kind of inspired me to think 'oh, I think I could fancy doing that,' but I never really thought at the time I would actually take a career in it, but I thought 'Well, this will sort of get me over a small term, you know, short-term problem, and it's a short-term thing that has lasted about thirty-five years.
00:02:01 I guess the real definitive turning point in my life career-wise was, as I say, resigning my college course and taking a heavy goods job.
00:02:15 The first job I had didn't last very long - only a couple of months. It wasn't a very good one. But then I was quite lucky that I found a job that was very good, a very good distribution company, well organised, well run, and I spent seventeen years with that particular company until they decided to close down our operation in the West Country and we all got made redundant. I did have a brief gap in the early 1990s when I did take a... when I took a course in computers and did a bit of office work, but that never really materialised into anything substantial, so I went back on the road, and, as I said, my entire career has been mainly involved in the road transport, heavy goods distribution.
00:03:02 If a good job opportunity had come along when I had my chance to take computer work, I could have progressed that, and then it might have been different, but I'm sure I would have spent some part of my career as a driver. Yes, I've no regrets about it. It has been a very interesting and worthwhile career.
ENDS
Phil Blow
Philip Blow
My name is Phil Blow; I'm a heavy goods vehicle driver. I work for CEVA Logistics, and I'm based at the Bristol depot. For me personally, and the particular work that I do, I like the routine that's involved in it. I tend to keep to the same job day in day out, week in week out, which suits me personally. I just like being out there on the road, you know, in the big rig, as it were, trying to be a responsible... take a responsible attitude towards doing my job and looking after the vehicle, being responsible to other road users, and I feel it's a good sense of achievement to do that, yes.
When I was at school I was a bit of an academic, really. I passed my eleven plus. I went to grammar school. I took A levels. When I was in my teens I planned to go to university, but I never got sufficiently good grades to qualify me for it, so I ended up going to Bristol Polytechnic and I did a course in... Well, I started a course on business education there in the early 1970s, and I lasted about a year and a half before I decided that an academic career wasn't for me.
I decided that I wanted to become a heavy goods vehicle driver because in my younger days I used to travel a lot with my father. He wasn't a driver himself, but he used to like driving his car. He was a very enthusiastic motorist. And of course as soon as I was seventeen I wanted to get my car license, and I did enjoy driving around, and I'd sort of met a number of drivers and some of the things that they said kind of inspired me to think 'oh, I think I could fancy doing that,' but I never really thought at the time I would actually take a career in it, but I thought 'Well, this will sort of get me over a small term, you know, short-term problem, and it's a short-term thing that has lasted about thirty-five years.
I guess the real definitive turning point in my life career-wise was, as I say, resigning my college course and taking a heavy goods job.
The first job I had didn't last very long - only a couple of months. It wasn't a very good one. But then I was quite lucky that I found a job that was very good, a very good distribution company, well organised, well run, and I spent seventeen years with that particular company until they decided to close down our operation in the West Country and we all got made redundant. I did have a brief gap in the early 1990s when I did take a... when I took a course in computers and did a bit of office work, but that never really materialised into anything substantial, so I went back on the road, and, as I said, my entire career has been mainly involved in the road transport, heavy goods distribution.
If a good job opportunity had come along when I had my chance to take computer work, I could have progressed that, and then it might have been different, but I'm sure I would have spent some part of my career as a driver. Yes, I've no regrets about it. It has been a very interesting and worthwhile career.
ENDS
Phil Blow is an HGV driver. He got his driving licence when he was 17 and he envied the professional drivers he met. He realised the academic route wasn't for him even though he was clever, "I just like being out there on the road, you know, in the big rig, as it were, trying to be a responsible... take a responsible attitude towards doing my job and looking after the vehicle."
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