hi there…can anyone tell me the average rate for traction work in uk please…regards theted.
Too low.
Next?
Seriously, how much should you expect to be earning?
I think average about a quid a mile Ted, i reckon it depends on whether you get a trailer thrown in and other stuff as well.
Mal.
Average is £1 a mile AND you shouldnt have to pay for any trailer hire , in fact you shouldnt have to pay for trailer hire full stop. If a Company has trailers to move their goods and you are supplying the traction I fail to see why you should be paying the trailer costs when its their trailer!
Eg People who pay this are : McBurney ( approx 56 p per Km loaded), Maenhout , Derijke( approx £1.00) , no charge for trailers.
I couldn’t agree more routier and I personally wouldn’t pull for anyone who wanted to charge me rent for their trailer. I never have paid and never will and have turned work away in the past for this very reason.
The frightening part of this post is that its true! 
In 1986/87 I had a spell in a transport company office, grass been green and all that.
The standard rate was £1.00 per mile taken from AA routefinder maps +7% to cover mileage discrepancy so a 200 mile trip on the map was charged at £214
Since then fuel,wages and everything else is 3 times the price.
I dont know the answer, I just wanted to put it on paper.
As an owner driver on these rates I struggled to cover my costs, even though the truck was earning £1500-2000 per week.
What , where will it end?
My **k per year for 40 hours is quite sufficient with no worries about fuel bills and tyres
routier:
Average is £1 a mile AND you shouldnt have to pay for any trailer hire , in fact you shouldnt have to pay for trailer hire full stop.one company that does charge you trailer rental for traction work is hanbury davies on their distribution work
MRS charge as well Sean, I reckon theres a few that do, dead-wood do as well dont they?
Mal.
and all subbies on containers! unless they are clever enough to buy their own, the cost of the trailer should be in the haulage rate to the customer!!
paul
Spent 11 years as owner driver for Sayers of Newbury (bought out by De Rijke)
12 years ago we were on 82p per mile on tacho miles empty or loaded, cheap fuel supplied, no trailer rent, all repairs and servicing could be done by them, we were well looked after, they had 3 depots, Thatcham, Manchester & Gainsborough all with showers & toilets for drivers, shame that all good things come to an end.
Wheel Nut:
As an owner driver on these rates I struggled to cover my costs, even though the truck was earning £1500-2000 per week.
Considered being an owner driver did a costing and profit and loss. Even on French diesel prices I could not get a profit under £1.10 per mile loaded or empty That was paying myself £300 quid a week plus expenses. If you put the money in the bank for five years and drove for somebody else it would give you a 6% return who’s making that? 
Obviously ODs arn’t in it for the money.
robB39:
Obviously ODs arn’t in it for the money.
That’s a bit of a generalisation is it not? I do this job because I enjoy it but I also have a wife, two kids, mortgage etc so I have to be in it for the money as well.
It is amazing that so many owner drivers talk in terms of cost per mile, it is dangerous to measure costs in this way. Costs are a variable mixture of time and distance related. Time related costs are mounting even when the vehicle is not being worked and the distances that may be covered from one period to the next can vary enormously according to the type of work being done. Costs need to be an amalgamation of cost per mile and per day.
You first need to determine an average number of days you expect the vehicle to work each year then add up all your fixed costs, wages, vehicle, insurance, RFL, etc and dived that by the number of days you expect to work which will give you an amount per day. You can even divide this down further and get a cost per hour should you wish.
Then you need to add up all your variable costs, fuel, tyres etc. and divide that by the number of miles you expect to cover each year, this will give you a cost per mile.
So if you are then asked to quote for a job that will take two days and cover 700 miles it would be 2 x your daily rate + 700 times your mileage rate + any extra costs for that job that you haven’t taken into account, for example road tolls, + a percentage for profit.
If the job being offered is less than the figure you arrive at it is not worth you doing it, every £1 less is coming out of the profit margin and you may end up just covering the cost if it is too many £’s below your figure, or worse not covering your costs and doing the job at a loss.
If you work more days than you estimated your costs per day will be less, like wise if you cover more miles but if the reverse is true your costs per day and mile will be more so your initial figures need to be as accurate as you can make them.
This may sound as little complicated and in fact that above is the simplified version but just doing it on a cost per mile basis is about the quickest way to go bust.
nail on the head there, neil!
paul
Coffeeholic
Much wisdom posted above.
I’m on tipper work and pence per mile is a meaningless measure of profitability. My best days are when I’m running VERY short runs (2 or 3 miles) doing 4 mpg with lots of tips.
I tend to the view that I’m selling time not mileage and in that 10 or 11 hour sale I’m looking to make £15 - £20 per tonne. More is always nicer but that works for me.
Or it does when I have a bleeding truck to drive - mines on “holiday” having loads of work done on it for mot … at least DAF are paying!!
Three days and counting… 
Coffeeholic:
robB39:
Obviously ODs arn’t in it for the money.That’s a bit of a generalisation is it not? I do this job because I enjoy it but I also have a wife, two kids, mortgae etc so I have to be in it for the money as well.
You have fixed costs depreciation ,tax, insurance, the wages you need to live, all that stuff, then there’s running costs what it costs the vehicle per mile to run, fuel, tyres, R&M oil etc. I agree it depends on the job and type of work but you can then calculate ppm to cover your fixed costs.
You then need to work out capital employed and add on a profit margin. YOUR WAGES ARE NOT PROFIT!
@ 1500-2000 avg per week I calculated £1.10 pm to make a small margin.
Ideally in a ‘perfect’ world you should be getting around £1.25 plus money for loading and unloading for a good return.
I was generalising as some ODs will be getting the above or more 
But at £1 per mile, (again it depends on the ‘package offered’) like many have said, “It’s not worth the risk.”
Then again I know an OD does all his own books spends saturdays doing his own maintenance his wife puts hours into the business and he makes a profit but at what cost?!
Sorry if I offended. Like I should have said it’s more than money that drives them. Excuse the pun
robB39:
you can then calculate ppm to cover your fixed costs.
If you are only working your fixed costs on a ppm basis you are heading for trouble. What about days when you do low mileage, maybe not as low as that quoted by lard in the post above as that is relevant for his type of work, but as he says you still have to cover your time. Just doing it on mileage won’t work out in the long run.
robB39:
Then again I know an OD does all his own books spends saturdays doing his own maintenance his wife puts hours into the business and he makes a profit but at what cost?!
Sounds like at quite a high cost from that scenario. I do all my own books but that’s because I enjoy doing them and with one truck it is not a big undertaking, couple of hours a week, if that, and an hour for the VAT return once a quarter. Since day one as an owner driver I have never done any of my own maintenance, I decide if I had to work six and seven days a week and do stuff like that myself then it wouldn’t be worth being an OD
I agree entirely.
But, I believe most traction work is offered at pence per mile (ppm).
And some firms offer money for loading and unloading.
But you have to convert your fixed costs to ppm based on an average mileage over whatever timescale you choose, in order to calculate whether the ppm rate is worth taking.
robB39:
I agree entirely.But, I believe most traction work is offered at pence per mile (ppm).
True
robB39:
But you have to convert your fixed costs to ppm based on an average mileage over whatever timescale you choose, in order to calculate whether the ppm rate is worth taking.
No you don’t, there is no need to. Take the example I gave in my post further up the page
"So if you are then asked to quote for a job that will take two days and cover 700 miles it would be 2 x your daily rate + 700 times your mileage rate + any extra costs for that job that you haven’t taken into account, for example road tolls, + a percentage for profit. "
Now if the company say they are paying x.■■ ppm for that job you multiply that by 700 and that will give you what they are going to pay and if that is more than the figure you arrived at then you are laughing and if it is a lot less then it’s not worth doing.
PPM rates are meaningless when taken on their own. On another thread about rates in the PDF, here, a TruckNet UK member, North Surrey Haulage says
north surrey haulage:
I’m on £1.04 p/m
On it’s own that doesn’t mean much because if he is only doing 600 miles a week there is no way he could make it pay but he goes on to say
north surrey haulage:
with a 1500 mile minimum guarantee
Now the PPM rate makes more sense because it shows that he will get at least £1560 a week and he can begin to make that pay.
Coffeeholic:
robB39:
But, I believe most traction work is offered at pence per mile (ppm).robB39:
But you have to convert your fixed costs to ppm based on an average mileage over whatever timescale you choose, in order to calculate whether the ppm rate is worth taking.No you don’t, there is no need to. Take the example I gave in my post further up the page
"So if you are then asked to quote for a job that will take two days and cover 700 miles it would be 2 x your daily rate + 700 times your mileage rate + any extra costs for that job that you haven’t taken into account, for example road tolls, + a percentage for profit. "
A traction contract is offered, over a fixed period, of varying work to several destinations at ppm. If you know what your average/guaranteed mileage is going to be (work on a worse case senario and a best and somewhere in the middle will be safe), over, say one month regardless of job (varied work) then a ppm conversion (for fixed costs) is a good way of working it out. You divide your fixed costs over the month by the average mileage.
Your way is good too coffee. 
But you’d have to apply that to every run/job.
Otherwise calculations for a day rate arn’t that straight forward, if you ran out of hours and ran back next day, had to wait 'till next day for a load etc (worse case).
The point I was trying to make was, it would be difficult to make a good margin at £1.00 per mile and you would have to look into the whole deal/package offered to make sure you’d make anything at all.
As some owner drivers will, after the experience and hindsight agree.
robB39:
Your way is good too coffee.
Exactly, you do apply it to every ru/job, each job has to be worked out on it’s own merits.
robB39:
Otherwise calculations for a day rate arn’t that straight forward, if you ran out of hours and ran back next day, had to wait 'till next day for a load etc.
True, I did say it wasn’t straight forward but by working it over the year you iron out things like that and just doing it from month to month is too short a period, some months can be heavier than other expense wise; when the RFL is due for example,
robB39:
The point I was trying to make was, it would be difficult to make a good margin at £1.00 per mile and you would have to look into the whole deal/package offered to make sure you’d make anything at all.
Agreed, a £1 per mile isn’t good but to not make anything at all at that rate means theer is something wrong with your figures.
robB39:
As some owner drivers will, after the experience and hindsight agree.
No doubt but many ODs go into it with blinkers on, they have to have a big powerful truck straight away which may be way over specced for the job. They have no idea of their costs etc and end up running for rates that five minutes with a calculator would show aren’t even paying the bills.
On the other hand many ODs are doing the job, making a wage and a profit for themself and while they may never get rich they are happy in what they are doing and enjoy the fact of being independent.