Hello all.
I'm Pete the Courier Driver.
And today's video is on five sneaky ways to park,
kind of five,
because let's face it, it's one of the things that is in this job
we probably face the most.
Now, don't get me wrong, not always,
sometimes you might be in lovely scenic locations like this.
You might rock up to somewhere like this, like a farm or distribution centre
with a nice large bit of concrete and you pull in,
"There's your parcel, sir."
Ninety percent of the time...
Well, not 90 percent of the time. It depends where you are,
but a lot of the time it's not like that.
Particularly if you're doing the Amazon, the Hermes, the Parcelforce,
you're going to be multi-drops, 150, 200, 100 drops a day,
and it's going to be residential, it's going to be houses,
towns, cities, all that kind of stuff.
Sometimes it's not so bad.
Sometimes, if you're doing during the day,
a lot of people are out, so the cars aren't there.
It's a close, I can pull in. No one's going to mind.
They know I'm in the van, they can see what it is,
drop a few parcel, people are understand it.
Sometimes it's not.
Sometimes 6 o'clock at night you're doing the terrace houses,
at 6 o'clock at night you can't park, there's cars either side of the street.
You got nowhere to park.
So five sneaky ways of doing it.
Number one, hazards.
Hazards are your friend.
Hazard lights are supposed to be used
if you've broken down or if you're going down a motorway
and all the traffic suddenly starts slowing down,
stick your hazards on. Tell everybody we're signed down.
What hazards also work very well at is,
A,
if you're parking somewhere you're really not supposed to
and you're going to be a couple of minutes,
stick your hazards on, because that way
the traffic warden might go, "Oh, there's a van...
He's got his hazards on.
I'll give him a couple of minutes."
You go, "Sorry, sorry, sorry, got to go.",
that kind of thing.
They're telling you that the fact that the hazard lights are blinking,
since I haven't parked here for the day, I haven't parked for four hours,
I'm literally leaving here while I quickly run this in and I'm running out again.
Not necessarily will buy you time, but it might buy you time.
Second a hazards are really, really useful, is like I said before,
if you've got a drop down in a terraced house in the street,
what are you going to do? What if this is a block of terraces?
It's street. Sometimes you can't park four or five streets away,
run the parcel here and then run the parcel back.
You're on the clock here. You've got to get it off.
So what you do down the middle of the street, you got to drop at number 34,
there's number 34.
Stop dead, hazards go on.
Then you just do it as quickly as you possibly can.
Get that parcel, get it on, knock on the door there you go love,
there might be two or three cars behind you.
On the whole people are now very sympathetic.
In the past there'd had been a horn, "Mate, you can't park there."
But now everybody gets stuff delivered all the time.
They can't really toot their horn when they think,
"Well actually, if I do that then I might not get the whisker I need,
I might not get the pack of cards,
all the records and stuff like that when I get home."
So hazards are handy.
Second tip, laminated signs.
What I've got in front of mine, I've got a piece of A4,
which I've got on it,
"Driver on delivery." and then my phone number
Because I actually do a lot of hospital deliveries,
or I used to do a lot of hospital deliveries.
On the flip side of it it says, "On urgent medical delivery".
I used to deliver kidney machines to hospitals for my mate Simon Brien.
With them, you literally... Hospitals, nowhere to park.
You've got to move these machines
a lot of the time the hospital might be UCL, might be London.
You've got to take these machines up to the 8th floor.
These people need these machines,
because this is a life saving thing and there's nowhere to park.
It's London, it's White Chapel, it's red routes.
You can't park a mile away and wheel a 60,000 pound machine
over kind of cobbles to people that are desperately waiting for it.
I'd park in an ambulance bay but I would put the sign up to say,
"On urgent medical delivery."
The guy told me, he said, "if you ever get a ticket, I'll pay it."
I said, "The thing is, if we ever have got a ticket, he'd appeal it."
And he'd go, "Look, here's the invoice. Here's the email.
We were dropping off a kidney machine.
There are no loading bays around there.
What do you want me to do?"
On the whole you are covered.
So the laminated sign with the number, that way you might get a phone call,
- "Mate, is this your van?" - "Yeah, I'll be two minutes."
It might save you, it might not. These things all help.
Number three, phone in.
When I used to do the fridges,
I used to drop a load of fridges out of Houston.
What they would say to me is, if you got somewhere,
because sometimes they were shops and they had to be on a red route
or they had to be on a yellow line, your phone in.
Because these things, I had to take them off on the tail lift
on the sack barrow,
round the back of the shop to be delivered in,
you couldn't get the van round the back. It was a narrow alleyway.
"So if you phone in, and you tell us where you are
and there's nowhere to park and you get a ticket, we'll pay it."
If you don't phone in you get a ticket,
you can't go, "I've got a ticket, you got to pay it.",
It's too late.
But if you phone in, we get the authorisation.
Problem with this is a bit of a pain,
because that phone call can take five minutes.
"Hello. What job is it? Yes, I'll just look. Where are you?
If you've got to drop 10-12 fridges in a day
and you phone in every time, that phone call takes like 5-10 minutes
that's extra two 2 hours you spent on the telephone,
so you've got to be clever about that.
I very rarely would phone in, because I was still in front
but you try, and as you're getting the fridge in the corner,
you're looking at the van,
yeah, drop that one off, get it back.
Phoning in, that can help you.
Number four, your friend, the street warden.
Now, if you're doing a regular multi drop,
you're doing your Amazon, that kind of stuff.
You will find, if you got a regular run that goes all the time,
there will be one guy in the street, might be an old guy, might be an old lady.
Often they're retired, they're sitting at home.
Don't always get a lot of people to talk to.
If you spend time, and I recommend you do this anyway,
just make the world a better place.
Spend 5-10 minutes if you can, speaking to people, dropping the parcels off.
Makes your day lighter and makes their day lighter.
What you'll also find is you might find Barry or George down that road.
He's the one that you go,
"George, I've got half a dozen parcels for number 34."
"Don't worry, son, they're not in, I'll take them for her."
They might even have a driveway.
So they'd say,
"Next time you're here, just stick it in front of the driveway.
I know where you are."
They will take the parcels for you. You can park on their driveway.
You can block their driveway. They'll let you do it,
if they're your friend.
If you make friends, they will help you.
The street warden, you go, "Okay, well, that's that Terrace Road.
That's very, very difficult. I'll bang the hazards on
and I'll see if Barry can actually take 34, 40, 42."
He'll take him in.
Then when I get him from work, he'll go and see Susan.
He'll go and see Michael.
"There's your parcels, guys."
Everyone's a winner.
Number five, which is the Mickey Mouse one.
Don't do it if you can't get it off, don't get it off.
If they're saying,
"Where the only place I can actually deliver this cooker,
because it's got to go through that door and it's got cobbles.
It can't go-". As if I park on chevrons
or if I park on Nicks' zebra crossing. Say, "no, I'm not doing it."
I could cause an accident. I could cause damage to myself.
I could call someone going around me, run someone over the zebra crossing,
say, "No. So I'm ever so sorry,
but you tell the people that have got this cooker
they've got to find another way around this."
If you physically can't drop it, you physically can't drop it.
You can only do the best that you can.
That's it, there's your five ideas.
There's your hazards,
there's your laminated sheet, there's the phone in and tell them,
that way if you get a ticket, you covered yourself,
there's the street warden,
and ultimately if you can't do it, you can't do it.
Also make sure, I may say this all the way along,
you want a decent sat-nav, so you're not messing around.
You want you googling your ways and you also want a decent multi-drop app
like Circuit which will actually integrate with those things,
because at least then
you're not stopping somewhere that you shouldn't
to drop something off to realise
you was in the wrong place in the first place,
and then you're just making work for yourself.
Hope this helps. So I say, If you could subscribe,
if you could big thumbs up,
if you're do the bell, that's great.
There are more videos over on my channel, which is Pete The Courier Driver,
also on YouTube, all designed to help you take care and take money.