My current job with a supermarket group is based in Ireland and I’ve done it for 21 years. I’m very lucky my employer pays well – the companies paying above average don’t have turnover issues.

Truck driving is very solitary. It gives you time to think, maybe too deeply. Sometimes I find myself getting upset at memories of loved ones who are deceased.

It’s peculiar. I would not change a thing, but yet I’m complaining. But I will always be driving. It’s all I wanted to do.

The free-wheeling life

Dad drove a smaller lorry, though not in haulage, my older brother, Dave, just retired, but another brother, Ronnie, and two nephews are still driving and another is on the buses – I’m very proud of them.

As a teen I was a frequent passenger with Dave before the health and safety brigade put paid to that.

I was 15 when I hitched a lift to Dublin from my home in Raheny with a driver called John Brownrigg. At the Docks he was told he was headed to Germany with beef for the US defence forces.

That was me hooked. I wanted to be told on a Tuesday morning I was off to a foreign country. That was forty years ago and John is still driving to Europe every week.

After my Leaving I tried for a diesel fitter apprenticeship with AnCo to no avail so I asked my brother's boss in freight forwarding, Gerry Cunningham, for a job.

He suggested I contact an employee of his who needed help in Dun Laoghaire with customs clearance.

Even though I wanted to go out driving, I enjoyed it as I was allowed to root around in the trucks. I stayed four years and when I told Gerry I wanted to go driving he was expecting it and suggested I work as a haulier for his company.

I was 22 and trusted, people needed to know they could rely on you, you would not act the maggot. Back then if you were not known you would not get a job.

I did my test and two days later was sent to Austria with T forms, permits, diesel cards and a load of Irish whiskey. Maps were bought en route and after getting terribly lost I got the delivery done and when I got back half jokingly asked Gerry for my old job back thinking “you clown what have you done”.

Keep on truckin’

The weeks turned into years and I met some wonderful people.

For many, education was not a priority growing up but they are smart in other ways. My French is fluent, but others had to bluff their way through police and customs without a word.

I’ve seen families destroyed by international work and I didn't want to go that route, so I applied for my current job around 1998, but was turned down.

A couple of years later I was in Holland working for a lovely man – we are still in contact, just as I am with most of my ex-bosses – I felt quite ill but kept on driving until I got home and went to bed, only to wake in Beaumont on life support with meningitis.

The doctor told me you cannot continue to work from Thursday pm until Saturday without a break. Shortly after this I got the call for my current job. Good timing as Bernie, my better half, was six months pregnant with our second child.

The chilled food chain

On a typical week I leave my house in Leitrim between 10 and 11pm on a Sunday and start work between 12 and 2am with chilled and frozen deliveries.

This could involve a three- or four-hour drive to the West or Northwest so I’m ready for 5am or 6am deliveries.

Rather than drive home, I stay in Dublin for three nights in a camper van on site and return home on day four.

Breaks are two days, and one day per week, and then five days off every four weeks giving me time to do things like painting the house and gardening.

All our products are delivered by large trolleys, 50 to a trailer. It keeps me fit. Interaction with the customers is amicable. Manners cost nothing. I try to remember it’s only a job and no point in falling out.

Food is cereal and fruit for brekkie, and a home cooked meal for dinner, which I bring with me. For many years we did the greasy fry-ups once we got on the boat at Holyhead – how we did not expire, I don’t know.

I used to listen to the radio but now I’m into BBC podcasts – politics and history.

More and more of the blue chip companies are micro-analysing their drivers performance which they send in a detailed email. It’s very annoying for somebody who has never sat in a truck to be telling someone with 20 or 30 years experience this is what you are doing wrong.

Express delivery at what cost?

Society, through no fault of their own, doesn't see us as doing important work.

They want to order online and for the shelves to be stocked but they don’t want to think about how it arrived.

I am well paid, but for the responsibility of the machine and public safety this is not reflected in the wages of drivers generally.

Potholes ahead

A great man from Forkhill, whose family is still in transport, told me 35 years back in customs that when you are away, you represent the company you work for, your country, and your profession.

Truck drivers are the company's public face and as with equipment, or property, they must invest in those drivers. Good drivers aren't cheap,and cheap drivers aren't good.

There are many reasons people are not going into the profession.

In my day the test was booked and done. Now young people have to stage their licences, so car, van, rigid lorry must be done separately – it’s expensive.

Drivers regularly get fined for working over their allocated hours. Not the good old days of non-stop driving, but for minutes.

Stowaways are a constant menace as you get closer to the Channel ports and various factories, distribution depots and facilities regularly deny drivers a hot drink, even toilet facilities. It's as if you are a social pariah.

Although becoming more frequent, motorway services in Ireland are still a novelty and try spending a penny late at night.

You are not respected as a driver, I can show you pictures of drivers going to warehouses where they’re directed into a cage to sit on a plastic chair and only let out when their load is delivered.

The call of the wild

I’m very happy where I am though I miss international work. But as Bernie says, the same craic wouldn't be there now, as there`s not so many Irish drivers doing it as in previous years.

She has always been supportive and says to do whatever makes me happiest.

Two years ago I took on a job in Italy. It was after the best man at my wedding, a great friend and fellow driver, Dominic, died. I needed time to think.

I'll probably go back to the international work when I`m done here, but it will be at my rate of knots.

On my days off I go walking on the lovely canal walks near us with Bernie, my son Jamie (nearly 32) or Chloe (23).

In previous years we did not go on sun holidays; France, Italy etc being no novelty for me. Then Chloe had open heart surgery in Birmingham at 15 months and one day after work I came home and there were four tickets on the table for the Algarve.

Bernie said it was no problem if I didn't want to go but they were going. Since that year we have missed just one sun holiday.