(30 Mar 2016, 1:58 pm)scania driver wrote As someone posted recently, "it's just a case of what is handy in the depot". Or is it just a case of laziness. Makes a mockery of the whole branding thing.

When the leading driver comes in on the morning, they have to put all the vehicles on route they're supposed to be on. They have a list of the route branded vehicles. All allocations, unless the branded vehicles have to be covered with a wrongly branded vehicle are correct.

Some don't realise that, during the day, vehicles have to be replaced with whatever is spare, if a vehicle has had to be substituted with the official spare vehicle when the leading driver does the allocations on the morning, then a wrongly branded vehicle (or if you're really lucky, if a correctly branded vehicle becomes available) will have to be allocated. Vehicles could be replaced due to a defect, late running or could have to be removed to cover a higher-specification vehicle on another route.

So, if all of the vehicles have entered service on the morning and a one needs replacing, then yes, "its a case of what is handy in the depot".

In the case of the non-MAX service on the X66 on Sunday... this seems to be the only time that this has happened to update the media. If they want to do it on the Sunday, then they do whatever is not required due to the PVR reduction then do the rest on the next Sunday where the vehicles have not been updated stay at the depot... Disgraceful from Darlington management in my opinion.