trade platers/hitchers,anyone given lifts to one ?

[slave-plater]

about 2 yrs ago I picked up a DRIVER/TRADE PLATER , who needed to get from JUNTION 25 on M25 to... BEDS_"AMPTHILL " , thats a distance of about 40 MILES !!, he needed a ride /hitch for ..... I could only take him a mile on the LONDON-CAMB, route on the "A10" , dropping him off on the m25/J25, the TRADE PLATERS SCHEDULE for that friday was to COLLECT VEHICLE from "AMPTHILL" BEDS, and take it back with him to his home town WIGAN , this was 1pm, when I picked him up.... to HITCH FROM ENFIELD to AMPTHILL is distance 40 plus miles, anyone got simalar/unsimalar experiences of picking up one of these ....(NOT GENERALLY PAID BY THE HOUR) "PLATERS" ???

[Buenchico]

I always pick up hitch-hikers (whether or not they're platers); I did so even before I was a trade plater myself. On some occasions, I've made some very lengthy detours to help people out. (e.g. a journey from Ipswich to Clacton ended up going via Swindon!).

Some of them have been provided with some very limited information by their companies. For example, I picked up a guy at Bury St Edmunds who'd been hitching for many hours, from the north of England, to get to 'Colchester Car Auctions'. It was 1.20a.m (!) and he was still about 45 miles from Colchester. Furthermore, he'd got no idea that 'Colchester Car Auctions' is nowhere near Colchester! (It's well on the way to Clacton). He was planning to arrive in Colchester town centre, in the early hours of the morning and then find out where the auction site was. Although I was only less than 20 miles from home, I added another 60 miles to my journey so that I could take him to the right place.

When I later became a trade plater, the firm I worked for had some very strange ideas about times and distances. They persuaded me to deliver a car 'first thing' to a firm on the outskirts of Eastleigh. When I asked what 'first thing' meant, they said 'Oh, we think that they open at 8a.m.'. I had to drive from Suffolk, so I set out in the early hours of the morning and found that I'd allowed too much time because I arrived just after 7a.m., only to read the sign which told me the place opened at 9.30a.m!

I'd not been given any details of my next job, so I phoned for details when our office opened at 9.00a.m. They promised to phone me back soon. I phoned again at 10.30, 12.00 and 1.30, to be told the same thing. (All of this time, I was stuck in Eastleigh, unpaid). Eventually, at 2.00p.m. they phoned to tell me that they'd found me a job as long as I could get there by 3.30p.m. The car was 120 miles away, in Bishops Stortford!

Chris