Honest Answer Required

Evening Everybody
Firstly,hope everyone’s air con is working
As the title says please be honest.
I am a female lorry driver,my current job is sadly coming to an end,I’ve had plenty of notice to go get another job.
However,I seem to be getting some very negative responses,so,what I did is got a female friend & a male friend to ring back & my female friend got same response where as my male trucker friend got a totally different one,to the point a week on they are still badgering him to join them.
If I ring an agency advert it’s usually a female who answers,some have been rude,some have patronised me,but the thing they always say is it for your other half,when I tell them no it’s for me they say It’s Class 1 work. When I tell them I have the licence it goes horribly wrong,& I never get a call back.
As a female lorry driver I have had many barriers by people’s attitude,but I stuck at it.
I’ve never so much as scratched a lorry in 8 years & I am a qualified HGV Driver Assessor,but,I’m getting nowhere getting a job.
So,my question is,what are your opinions on female lorry drivers & any advice on how to get around the fact I don’t have meat & 2 veg & my name’s not Dave

AAMAR:
Evening Everybody
Firstly,hope everyone’s air con is working
As the title says please be honest.
I am a female lorry driver,my current job is sadly coming to an end,I’ve had plenty of notice to go get another job.
However,I seem to be getting some very negative responses,so,what I did is got a female friend & a male friend to ring back & my female friend got same response where as my male trucker friend got a totally different one,to the point a week on they are still badgering him to join them.
If I ring an agency advert it’s usually a female who answers,some have been rude,some have patronised me,but the thing they always say is it for your other half,when I tell them no it’s for me they say It’s Class 1 work. When I tell them I have the licence it goes horribly wrong,& I never get a call back.
As a female lorry driver I have had many barriers by people’s attitude,but I stuck at it.
I’ve never so much as scratched a lorry in 8 years & I am a qualified HGV Driver Assessor,but,I’m getting nowhere getting a job.
So,my question is,what are your opinions on female lorry drivers & any advice on how to get around the fact I don’t have meat & 2 veg & my name’s not Dave

Who’s gonna bite first??

Me, me , me Sir. :smiley: okay, I have no feelings either way on female lorry drivers, much as I have no feelings either way on male drivers. If you’re qualified then your qualified, simple as that.

This has actually reminded me of a current thread re the driver shortage. These short sighted, blinkered and chauvinistic bosses ■■■■■ bleat and whine that they can’t get arses on seats in one breath, then in the next they dismiss a potential driver 'cos she doesn’t fit in with their Victorian attitudes and preconceptions. :imp:

I don’t know why companies would not employ a female driver when they will do the exact same job as a male driver and it’s not exactly a hard job

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I thought ■■■■■■ discrimination was against the law. :bulb:

I know a couple of female drivers and they can do the job every bit as good as their male counterparts, but no doubt there are a few clueless ones about as much as there are male clueless ones
After saying that I would never even want my two lads to become drivers, so definitely not my two daughters, but if you can do the job I would not have a problem if I was an employer.

We had a driver called Dave had some kind of op now we got to call him Davina.

What’s a qualified hgv assesor?

We are seeing more female lorry drivers on the road, not too many but it is not uncommon. The problem with female drivers isn’t the fact that they can’t drive or do the job. It is mainly a male dominant job because of the conditions we have to endure. In peoples opinions because of all of the obvious it is not seen as a feminine job. I tend to agree in some circumstances. Women normally have to deal with kids been sick, at school etc, etc, therefore a lot of employers would prefer a male in preference, other reasons would include maternity leave if they fall pregnant they have to have by law maternity leave. It is like women in the army on the front line, you don’t expect them to have to endure the stress and hardship of war similar to not enduring the long hours and bad conditions of driving. So I would say it is not a point of females not been able to do the job but more it is thought of as a male environment. I am sure if I was a dress maker I would struggle in that arena against female dress makers. It is a fact that although men may appear chauvinistic the fact of the matter is that men and women are different in the main. Women may be more volatile when on their funny weeks and going through the change, they get more emotional than men in general. Like it or not it is a fact of life that most employers would probably take a male driver over a female. My personal opinion differs but I am not a recruiter.

My own sis is still on the job so to speak and that’s some 45 years of class 1 driving going right back to the days of hard graft, tilts ropes sheets chains you name it, she has never failed to get a job on her own merits and has more than earned the respect she receives in spades, she could walk into any lorry job she chose.

I work with two female drivers now who are also respected in their own right, the job is at the better end and they didn’t get referred, they sourced the job themselves which wasn’t the easiest way in here, they have earned the respect they get.

If you are getting negative responses i suggest it’s not that you are female its more the case that you arn’t coming over with the right attitude maybe?, the clue if you will forgive me is that
‘‘As a female lorry driver I have had many barriers by people’s attitude,but I stuck at it.’’ sentence is a clue.

Are you turning mild lorry banter into anti female sentiment, mild banter is part and parcel of lorry world and it will be a sad day when it morphs into a politically correct office environment, nothing nasty is usually meant by it though that’s not to say they arn’t half wits out there.

My sister has taken all the rough work and the rough blokes she’s worked with as she found it and them, of course there were some places she’d go (especially years ago) where half wits with webbed feet who’d never left their incestuous village were hoping a woman would mess the reverse up, but they don’t know her and what she’s capable of and what her lorry history is, which puts me to shame.

Most male drivers i know, certainly the ones i’ve worked with over the last 30 years of specialised work have had nothing but respect for our women colleagues, thats been car transporter and tanker work, and the few women who have ventured into those sectors haven’t had any more trouble getting in than any males who had the aptitude or were up to the workload, there were very few women lorry drivers prior to thirty years ago, if anything they commanded more respect due to the hard nature of general haulage work and the hard nature of the lorries themselves.

Interesting point in UKTramps post, though confess i disagree with much of it :wink: , pertinent point where he mention maternity leave.
The changes to maternity rights and such like have been a very heavy own goal scored by women, and in fact getting to be an own goal for younger men too as paternity rights edge themselves in ever more, not as i’m complaining mind because us older job seekers have never been more employable :sunglasses: thanks to those goals.

Juddian:
Interesting point in UKTramps post, though confess i disagree with much of it :wink: , pertinent point where he mention maternity leave.
The changes to maternity rights and such like have been a very heavy own goal scored by women, and in fact getting to be an own goal for younger men too as paternity rights edge themselves in ever more, not as i’m complaining mind because us older job seekers have never been more employable :sunglasses: thanks to those goals.

I arn’t saying I agree with my post either tbh, I am merely expressing why I think an employer may look at a female driver and the difference with a male driver. I actually know a female owner driver who does very well and she is as good at the job as anyone. I did say at the end of my post that this was not my personal view.

Hiya Dave! How’s it hanging? Left or right? :grimacing: joking aside.

They’re taking the ■■■■, so ■■■■ 'em, they’re not worth your time and effort. You’ll probably be able to do the job better than the 80% of reprobates who pretend they’ve got an hgv class one licence. I used to work with a girl years ago ( about 30 ) and she went all over for Ralph Davies and didn’t ■■■■ about. Well done, and stick at it girl. ■■■■ them. :sunglasses:

Thank you for all your replies,really appreciate them.
In response to one re banter,I have always worked in a male environment,as a school leaver I worked in horse racing,that’s where I learnt all the best banter.
I have noticed a difference in last 4 years or so.
I live in Peterborough & over the last 3/4 years I worked for Freshlinc at Alconbury on the containers,as of Christmas 2016 I was the only English driver left & the banter was very thin on the ground,in response to a comment I definitely don’t use the female equality card, I miss the banter that comes from working in this region.
It’s definitely an issue this neck of the woods regarding agency’s deciding who gets the job

Do you speak Polish.

■■■■■■

Basically it’s an expectation that they are going to cause trouble about working conditions, I think - this isn’t a comment on the rightness or wrongness of that just what I think the general perception is amongst employers.

As the OP mentioned agency work I doubt maternity/paternity rights would be relevant as agency work is meant to be short term assessments with little employee rights

We once got a female driver at a place I worked,to be fair she did say she always needed to be done for 3pm for the kids but still they took her on :open_mouth:
Anyway she always got done for 3pm even if it ment bringing loads back refusing jobs etc,she wouldn’t work weekends as she was a “single mother” and wouldn’t go to tight delivery drops.
Anyway fair enough BUT we had a male driver who had his kids ever other other weekend,he would do any job given to him,he would work every other Saturday and only asked to be home on the Friday that it was his weekend with the kids,he didn’t ask to be done early just home Friday.
Well the office made this difficult every time for the poor sod until he eventually said why can you always manage to get her done for the kids but not me■■?
The managers reply was “well she is a single mother”
Equality don’t make me laugh.
On the other hand I know some cracking female drivers who know the score with the job.
But that scenario is blatant ■■■■■■ discrimination against a fella in my view

Road haulage tends to be middle to late age male drivers .
There are not many Indian or African descent drivers, I see a few a week .
Never seen a Muslim driver .
Haulage does need more female drivers, nothing worse than sat in a RDC waiting room, listening to the ex SAS spout out their bollax .
Or telling lies of what they earn.
Why do drivers tell strangers what they earn?
With power assisted steering, compared to old trucks that didn’t, as that would put women off driving .

Hi. As a fellow female class 1 driver, I’d say don’t let the agency clowns get you down. I’ve had the same over the years and you just have to stick with it. It’s hard to find a decent agency if your a bloke never mind a female. Any firm worth working for will want any decent driver regardless of gender, race etc. Get your CV out there. Go knocking on doors. If they want you to put it on a bay in the yard or do a reverse then go do it and show them your capable. I’ve done that and it’s got me in. I’m at Aldi now and it’s been a good move for me. You wouldn’t believe the number of customers I see everyday in the car parks and the lovely comments they make when I get through the car park and on a bay no hassle no damage. Just doing my job and days like those make all the crappie jobs with crappy agencies worth while. Good luck !!

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Why don’t you go direct to Companies, rather than agency. We never use an agency, so you may be missing an opportunity.

I’ll stick my head over the parapet as an employer.

I’ve no doubt that you can hold your own in driving terms against any man and can do the job as well as any other.

I wouldn’t tend to hire women simply because of the whole maternity thing, it’s a nightmare to have to deal with. That might not be fair, but as an employer it does lay you open to having to potentially make all sorts of accommodations and not doing so lays you open to expensive claims. Of course that may not happen, but my theory is that I try to minimise potential trouble.

I do have one woman driver but her husband works for us and I knew they wouldn’t be having kids.

As an aside, we run double man, so even without maternity issues, we wouldn’t hire a woman for that reason.

None of that might be fair, but neither is potential disruption.

And yes I’m a woman that’s been a forkie and a Euro driver, albeit a puddle jumper.

I know quite a few female HGV drivers, and they can all do the job as well as any bloke…
good luck with your search…