cav551:
The allowance IS for meals and showers although one could argue that an employer is obliged to provide washing facilities. What it is NOT for is parking the employer’s vehicle overnight. It is also worth noting that regular overnight parking in the same layby or industrial estate road by an operator’s vehicles might be brought to the attention of the Traffic Commissioner, regardless of whether that occurs locally to his operating centre.Bring on the roadside call out invoices for slashed curtains and punctured fuel tanks. Or is this industry now heading for employment contracts which make the driver financially liable for any damages which the operator decrees to be the result of what he views as irresponsible parking?
The Freight Transport Association:
The operating centre is defined as the base or centre at which a vehicle is normally kept. Operating centres must be specified on the licence before they can be used. The term ‘normally kept’ usually refers to where the vehicle is normally parked when not in use.
If the driver is sleeping in the vehicle then it’s in use so you could park it in the same place every night of the week if you wanted too, provided that when there is no driver in the vehicle for a night it is parked at the registered Operating Centre.
And the allowance is to cover the costs associated with a night out in the vehicle, which is why the amount is different to that paid to mobile workers staying in hotels all week. Costs associated could be argued as the cost of parking the vehicle, though I can’t think of any case law off hand that has ruled either way.
The employer has an obligation to cater for the health, safety and well being of their staff. I could easily make the point, which is made by many a large haulier, that you have access to facilities for washing and personal hygiene because you are usually able to access a shower or facilities for a through wash when stopped at an MSA or truck stop for your break.
Cav551, I have to ask. Are you actually an operator or are you one of the employed drivers who pops their head around the door of the Owners and Operators forum every now and then, (as I used to be!)? Either way I’m sure that all the guys that have been here for years are happy for you to contribute and I quite enjoy debating your positions with you. But. You don’t seem to understand operator licensing properly, you seem to have a very entitled view of what an employer is required to provide and you don’t seem to understand that a potential for £3500 outgoings a year is something that really should be minimised as much as possible.
I have learned very quickly since putting mine on the road that several of the ‘facts’ of running a truck that you know as a driver are completely different when its your name on the side of the unit. I used to think that four nights a week in a truck stop shouldn’t kill the business.
But lets say all ONP costs the £18 charge at J38 Truck Stop. Take off the VAT and thats £15 a night. Go four nights a week, 52 weeks of the year and it comes to £3,120, or three weeks diesel, three weeks of a driver, a month and a half of a 64 plate Actros, fully maintained on hire, five and a half months of combined Road insurance, PLI, Employers Liabilty and Goods in Transit insurance. Its 80% of the cost of a sliding skelly for a year, again fully maintained. Its probably three times your annual planned maintenance budget for a unit, (though I don’t know on this one, as I said, all my stuff is hired with maintenance included.)
The earlier point about pricing ONP into the job is a good one, and if everyone did that it would work well. Unfortunately every operator on here has to compete with every other operator with a Standard O-Licence in the UK and if, as is the case, a large portion of those don’t pay for parking, then an operator who does is automatically £3k per vehicle more expensive than an Eddie, or a DHL or any of the others. On a one vehicle contract that could very well lose you the gig. On a ten vehicle job, you are looking at being 2 warehousemen more expensive, just on parking costs alone.
That doesn’t even begin to take into account the flip-flops who will come over here, run around on cut price diesel, pay their drivers a fraction of what the law (quite rightly) requires a UK haulier to pay and park up in laybys, industrial estates and even residential areas for nothing, who we also have to compete with.
I’m going to end now with a quote I learned when working at a McDonalds restaurant. Its from Ray Kroc, the bloke that went to sell the McDonald brothers a shake machine for the one small restaurant, bought the place and turned it into a $3.7bn company by his death:
“You must monitor and control all aspects of your business if you expect it to be a success.”