dave21478

Its way, way WAY too late to be asking this question - its done, and nothing is going to stop it. 10 years ago was the time to protest automation. Driverless cars are in use, Uber have driverless taxis on trial, shipping companies have driverless lorries on trial and their rate of exapansion is going to increase exponentially. The necessary technology is already being integrated into car design so that "driverless" can be easily activated once testing is complete. Within the next 20 years, driving jobs will be pretty much obsolete in the west.....it will start with the big companies who can invest in the new vehicles, meaning the job market will flood with experienced drivers willing to cut each others throats to get a job driving for the remaining small firms until even they find it better for the bottom line to sack the meatbags and install machines that can run literally 24/7, never fall asleep, never argue, never get drunk, never join a union and demand better pay..... Truckdriving is the most common job in Trumpton and the driverless vehicle is going to decimate the countries economy. Not just driving, McDonalds have recently announced that states planning to introduce a 15 dollar minimum wage will be the first to be equipped with automated restaurants....these are on trial and even here in France, most now have automated ordering stations to replace the counter staff. Give it 20 years and there will be very few jobs not at risk from the machines. EVERYONE from burgersmiths to truckdrivers to warehouse staff to office workers and shop workers is at risk. There isnt a large supermarket that DOESNT have self-service tills already. Those are not going to go away. They will soon enough be replacing all the manned tills. Amazon have recently launched a shop where there are no tills at all. You walk in, scan your phone at the entry, sensors and machine intelligence track what you pick up, you put it in your bag and walk out, with your account being charged once you leave the store. No humans needed. Think that high skill stuff is safe? Googles medical artificial intelligence is ALREADY out-performing meatbag doctors by a vast margin....instant access to literally millions of medical reports, drug trials, textbooks, patient medical notes and the ability to cross-reference and extrapolate data in fractions of a second leaves the most experienced doctors scrabbling to keep up. I am naturally pessemistic by nature but I am not alone in thinking it is going to be grim times ahead.

Its not the Gates of Mordor he is buying. Its getting shipped on a pallet 3m by 1.2m. Thats not much larger than my kitchen table. Without wishing to cause offence - and that statement usually guarantees it - this thread is full of "advice" from someone who is coming across as very knowledgeable shipping agent who is fully versed in what their computer tells them, but have never actually seen in the back of a lorry. Lets have a think about the last few big deliveries I have received and tell me how they fit in with your volumetric load rules and all that jazz.... A pallet of netting...it was on a standard pallet which was on top of something else which had collapsed and was wedged at 45degrees against the side of the trailer. It got yanked out and unloaded on the tail lift. 6 large stone antique water troughs. Each one on a pallet, God knows what weight but I would guess several hundred Kgs each. They were piled one on top of the other and I had to get the tractor to unload them. A large antique draftsman/architect desk. It was delivered stood upright strapped to the inside of the trailer. A kit log cabin on several large pallets and straining the curtainsider to the point of bursting its seams. I could go on literally all evening about the way sh!t gets transported. Yes, it is SUPPOSED to be all neat and secure like a game of Tetris, but the reality is very, very different. Anyway, this thread is degenerating into farce now, so I wish Nomoss luck and Im out.

[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]Thanks Andy 4. So snide comments apart... In terms of weight, the gates take up more 'chargeable' volume in the truck than they would do in 'chargeable' weight. 9 pallets (the same space as the gates) combined could weigh up to 9000 kgs. In this case the customer would be charged on weight. A couple of gates depending on their material will weigh lets say 200 kgs max so it is neither here nor there when it comes to a truck that can carry 38 Tonnes. So weight is not important in terms of transport costs but the space they take in the trailer is. The only concern is how do you off load them. A good affréteur will get this job done for 200 euros + their take. Like I have said before, British expats take the easy option and fall back on the UK when it comes to trying to do things in France and think they are getting a good deal. Fair enough. There is a fully functioning economy in France that allows you to function as cheaply if not more cheaply as the Uk if you are bothered to find it. I don't need the UK to function.[/quote] Christ alive - talk about over complicating matters. Do you really believe this chaps garden gates take up the same space as NINE FULL PALLETS? As for offloading them, I would suggest he uses his hands.

Apart from the whole "attacking the tools" thing! I liked it when the operator shut the cab window - like that was really going to help, should things have gone in that direction.

"sometimes"

Your trolling gets weaker as time goes on. Time to retire, I would suggest. Insecure? very, very far from it. I dont call myself a builder either. Never have done, never will do. It doesnt matter if the table was sourced direct, via ebay, amazon, or ordered via smoke signals, the point was a clear example to your query of transport costs. Poor old nomoss has had his topic derailed far enough, I think.

https://streamable.com/qihz

I am still laughing at the chief of logistics for the whole of France thing.... Personally, I am the world -wide chief executive of logistics for my own company. Todays tasks - I need to get a cheque from here to the tax office. I will sub-contract that job to LaPoste. I then need to deliver myself to the kitchen. I have checked the shipping forecast, the tides and the Maersk shipping timetables, but decided that the best routing would be to walk down the stairs. The return journey will be made heavily laden with two egg sandwiches. I have calculated the volumetric weight and decided that an Ikea plate should be sufficient.....Must remember to book a forklift for unloading once I get back to the livingroom.

- How exactly is it cheaper to send stuff across from the UK to France than sending stuff from France to France ? LOL Because people in Uk are used to sending things overseas. I recently got a heavy wooden picknick table for a client sent from UK as it was cheaper than buying an inferior one in France. - Never seen a barn style gate in France. Apart from the British, do you really think there is a market for such gates ? The whole point of a gate is to keep people out and to add privacy. A barn gate does neither. I see them all the time. Doesnt matter if there is a market for them or not, he will be able to get them made locally if thats what he wants. As I said before, its a GATE, not some complicated bit of electronics.

Its a 3m gate and a 1 m gate. Apparently "farm style" which to me suggests a 5-bar gate type of deal made out of beams or posts. 80kgs is the total pallet weight quoted by the company making them as stated in his opening post. Whats even more insane is that apparently nobody local can make anything. It obviously depends on the chosen design but if its what I think it is, then there is a hundred euros worth of wood, coach bolts and hinges and an afternoons basic carpentry work for someone with a little skill and common sense.

Arctic lorries and forklift trucks? What the hell are you lot talking about? Its a fuking garden gate not a tugboat engine. Its 3 meters long and weighs under 80kgs. Thats within spec for the roofrack of an average hatchback. "chief of logistics for the whole of France" Actual LOL! I need to send a Christmas card to my father in Scotland - maybe you could help me organise a Chinook to airlift it?

Hire a van and get them yourself? Watch the mileage charges on the van rental though.

I always make it abundantly clear that I am Scottish and not English, which seems to get me a better reception in most situations. Anyway, I predict three pages of bickering for this one.

I havent had a moan for a while, so here it is whether you like it or not. And its the Christmas edition because that all apparently starts in November these days. Billboards. Part of France since forever. I like seeing the remains of the old hand-painted ones...mostly "Suze" round here. Sadly usually partly covered by some plastic crap giving directions to the nearest two McDonalds these days. Then there are the big poster boards....massive things on buildings or standing alone by the roadside, where every month or so some guy with a bucket of wallpaper paste and a very long broom - and quite a bit of skill, I would say - puts up the latest price of sausage in Intermarche. I like these. The moan? Within the last few months they are being replaced by actual televisions. Seriously....In Castres, the main retail zone is maybe a couple of kilometers long and there are now six of these fuking things along it...monstrous screens the size of full billboards cycling through the same four or five adverts. They are obnoxiosly bright and very distracting to motorists. I havent seen one happen but cant help but notice the glass-and-plastic evidence of rear-enders along this perfectly straight bit of road. On a planet of dwindling resources at a time when energy conservation is becomming gravely serious, what bellend thought that massive screens blasting jiggawatts worth of adverts into thin air night and day would be a good idea? Oh and what happens to the guy with his long broom? These horrors can no doubt be updated in seconds to the latest sausage price remotely with a few clicks on a tablet computer. Litter - towns are still very clean compared to UK, but I see a lot more rubbish in the countryside lately. ciggy packets on the road, coke cans on the verge and random bits of plastic bags or sheeting in the hedgerows. ....which I think is partly due to peoples crappy Me First And Screw Everybody Else attitude these days. Folk in their early thirties or younger have been brought up believing that they are unique and special snowflakes that are owed everything by the rest of the world and this can be seen in attitudes on the street, on the roads and everywhere else. And the next person I see walking in a daze around the supermarket holding their phone horizontally just in front of their chin and having their conversation on loudspeaker so we can all hear how important/exciting they think they are will find it getting slapped out of their hand and stamped on. Behind me on a sliproad joining the carriageway? that doesnt mean you get to cut into the lane as soon as you can and accelerate up beside me before I get on, leaving me nowhere to go. Not sure if self-entitled knobbers or just completely oblivious to the effects of their actions. Despite being a fat, ugly, balding oaf (or maybe because of that) I have recently bought a silly 2 seater cabriolet with a loud exhaust. Since I live in a redneck, hillbilly farming area the reactions of passersby are funny. Most folk in the local village literally stop in their tracks and stare, jaws agape, as if I have just beamed down from the moon or something.....I would paint it pink if I thought I wouldnt get lynched. RTL2 - get a bigger playlist. there is only so many times in a single day that a non-australian man can listen to Beds Are Burning by Midnight Oil without getting unreasonably angry. Sick of the price of living. Why does everything in the supermarket cost a fiver? Yeah, thats a broad generalisation, but I notice an awful lot of stuff is around that price point. A packet of ham....4.70-something....Not far off a euro a slice for Gods sakes. Its not super-gourmet stuff either, just the normal bright pink fake ham. Mince - SEVEN euros for 500grams. Decent eggs are almost 50c each and the price of fruit and veg makes me unreasonably angry. I wouldnt mind so much if there were decent stuff available, but its the same old sh1te, quite often pre-rotted for your convenience....just buy it and throw it straight in the bin, saving you loads of time. Good luck finding an apple thats not Gala, Pink Lady or those yellow ones... Still not getting on with tradesmen. Coming up to eleven years here....you would think I would have learned the lesson by now, but I guess some tiny optomistic sliver of me thinks "maybe this time it will go well". Some guy to do a complex bit of iron-mongery. Quote accepted, OK given, delivery was supposed to be two months ago. Radio Silence. Quote for a LOT of complex windows....Its taken me years...literally years to find anyone even willing to quote but its all gone silent again. I ended up getting Ze Germans onto the case and went into very detailed correspondence with one place who eventually sent their main guy down to have a look for himself. He was 101% sound, and after a look around said he wouldnt take the job on....not comfortably within their expertise....but he thanked me profusely for considering their company and so on. I expected and would have happily paid a bill for travelling expenses etc, but they wouldnt hear of it. Try that from a French place! The local places I have tried have all gone silent. If you dont want the job, just say so....Too big? too complicated? just dont want the hassles? I literally dont care, JUST SAY SO....dont drag out the charade of quotes etc for months on end, its wasting everyones time. Speaking of tradies....bodgers. I was tasked with fitting out a wee loft space as an office, part of which required fitting a couple of sockets and a single light fixture. There were some Gaines with junction boxes running through the space that looked likely to tap into so I opened one up and found a 3X2.5mm cable going through a domino connector. Perfect. I wired in a wee radio and turned it up loud, went to the fusebox and started flipping breakers till the radio went off. Turned out that wire was for another room with only a couple of sockets, so perfectly ok to tap in and add a couple more in this office. I ran my cables and started making connections and got a decent jolt off the "isloated" wiring. It took a LOT of head scratching but it turns out that this single 3 core wire has the live running to the previously mentioned room sockets, the neutral does God-knows what but is on a completely seperate breaker in the fusebox and the earth is actually a switched line for a stairwell light from the push switch to the telerupteur in the fusebox. Someone paid money to have this done. Lots of money. Brexit - sick of it. Since brexit this....since brexit that.....IT HAS NOT HAPPENED YET so nobody can say brexit has had whatever effect they are finding facts to support their argument about. Its all just speculation and guessing. Every forum I use on every subject has some kind of thread about it and thay all degenerate into a massive sh1t-flinging contest by page two. Change the record, guys - this one is as bad as Beds Are Burning.

courroie de distribution - timing belt. kit de distribution - timing kit, comprising of timing belt, idler pulleys and usually the tensioner. Its recommended to change the whole kit as if one of the pulley bearings or tensioner fails, its just as catastrophic as the belt snapping. Having said that, its very common for me to remove old original metal parts and fit replacements from the new kit that are plastic and have poor machining tolerances and low quality bearings. Thats "progress" for you. If its driven by the timing belt, you might also need/want the water pump changed at the same time..... Pompe a eau.

He is not declaring VAT. Its pretty certain he wont be insured either. You have no guarantee. Dont pay him anything more.

Yes, I dont see why it wouldnt be ok. The cable I ran is 3x 10mm, which is massive overkill for a dozen sockets and some striplights, but allows future upgrades if they desire. The original consumer unit has an earth braid of unknown but large size, the proper uncoupler/test point or whatever its called and the spike is driven deep into permanantly damp ground. I am not particularly fussed about the normes given the horrific state of the wiring in the rest of the place....and thats "up to standard" and done by "professionals". What I have installed is a hell of a lot safer than the rest of it by a large order of magnitutde.

So....The feed from the meter and main switch goes to the main consumer unit in a house. There is a barn out back that needs powered up, so I have fitted a wee consumer unit in the barn and ran a heavy three core back to the house where I have connected it in parallel to the original consumer unit. Cable length is about 20 meters. Should the barn unit have its own earth spike? I thought there would be no harm in having one and have the necessary, but it turns out the barn is built on bedrock and knocking a spike into the ground aint going to happen. At best I could give it a horizontal shallow burial, but only a few centimeters down, so not great. TBH, I dont see any problem in not fitting one and using the earthing of the original unit. Any thoughts?

Local, and for the service rather than the price. I phone the guy up, he says he will deliver when he has the time. I go on with my life. He knows where the oil tank is, fills it up and sends me the bill, which I go into his wee shop a few days later to pay. No waiting around for the delivery, no trying to give directions to a tanker driver who doesnt know the area and no hassles of any kind. Oh, and I get a free pen and if its near the end of the year a calender!

I never specified it was closed on Sundays, just assumed everyone would realise that. A public service...on Sundays? absolutely no chance!

My nearest post office closed a while back and they opened some kind of Post Office Lite service in the Marie. Which is fine except its the one woman in the mayors office who does both jobs and whenever I go in to post something there is the usual selection of giffers queued up to complain about the street lighting or whatever to the mayors office. Weird opening hours seems to be becomming more and more common for various things. For example the local dump have always been open every morning (except mondays, obviously!) and all day Saturday - easy enough to remember but now they have changed to 3 hours one morning, 2 hours another afternoon, closed some day, 3 hours the next morning or whatever it is, with no logic to it and not easy to remember.

Quote.... Did think that if there was a dial gauge with a string and float attached to the cap a quantity could be arrived at. Is there a solution? Exactly that. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fully-Adjustable-Float-Gauge-IBC-Tap-Adaptor-Tank-Fitting-Oil-Water-Fuel-Gauge-/271430954923?hash=item3f328bafab:g:YE4AAOxyUgtTLA2w

Bricodepot sell it in full sized sheets and surprisingly its not too dear. Quality is ok too. Someone paid me actual money to sheet over the inside walls of a rotten caravan for them, which they then wallpapered. Total bodge, but whatever....the customer is always right, apparently.

The dud foglight wouldnt fail anyway, it would be noted as an advisory.

So long as the spare is the correct size, it will be fine. Brand, model etc is not considered. To be honest, I dont think the spare is even checked. My tester gives it a glance if its an underslung wheel but if its in the boot I have never seen him lifting the carpet to check. I have never had a spare tyre mentioned on any CT report in any way. And its not actually necessary to have the same tyres on either side. They must be the same size and load ratings but different brands will pass with an advisory...."montage inadapte" or something like that, but not require a contre-visit. This is all part of the "illegal to sell just one tyre" myth that garages like to trot out.