With thanks to Trucking Truth, we offer you some thoughts about working the night shift around Amsterdam from a trucker named Angelique:
I haul car fuels, which basically goes on 24/7. The Netherlands is not that big, and most of the work is in our own part of Holland. Mostly we have 3 trips per shift; sometimes if you are lucky and drive for BP you have only one trip—but to fill up several gas stations on the way from let’s say the south of Holland back to Amsterdam. Those shifts take up to 11 or 12 hours.
Otherwise you will normally be busy for 10 to 11 hours, with 3 trips from the Amsterdam Fuel Depot to wherever the dispatcher sends you. You always have some extra time, as the company we haul for wishes for things to go right rather than fast! Putting gasoline into the diesel ground tank would not be a great idea, so we have to take real good care.
I always find the first night of the night shift the hardest, because you really—or anyway I—cannot sleep through a large part of the day in order to go to work around 17 o’clock (5 p.m.). So, the first day is always a very long day, and it gets hard between 03 and 04 (a.m.) Really, it does. The rest of the week it’s okay and you have sort of a rhythm. What is not nice at all is that my neighbor is trying to learn how to play the violin. It should be forbidden by law for anyone older than 8 to start learning to play the violin. It just will not work. Believe me!!!
Well, back to my fuel truck.
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