PLEASE GO TO THE SALES SITE,YOU WONT BE DISAPOINTED… 
Giving up Steve■■?
Or are you updating ■■?
cheers
STEVE.
sorry to say it mate im bailing out… im owed £28500 and i am fed up with people saying the cheques in the post it will be on you doorstep in the morning…only for the postman to hand me another bill…
Sorry to hear that mate.
The sooner the government does something about this late payment thing the better.
Probably won’t stop some of them not paying though.
cheers
STEVE.
steve i was shunted in april for £17325, the liquidators told me i would get about £900, then told me not to hold my breath for anything, the bloke went skint for the 4th time for 2.25 million… he will be up and running in 6 months time under yet another name, unfortunately i cant seem to get back on top of the finances so i will be just another name on the list of people he has taken out of business,but the government dont give a ■■■■ about us small busineses trying to make a living,they simply tax the zb out of us,and drive us into the ground,also the insurance is mental£554 per month,thats more than my mortgage, i have to say i am truly gutted, i love my truck, love the job,and love driving but 28500 is a lot of money to be owed when you have ZERO in the bank and 5 kids to look after.all i can say is i had a go… and loved it when i was getting paid… but as i said enuff is enuff
Sorry to hear this Steve and hope your luck changes for the better. Did you consider Factoring? I know it means you lose a little of your earnings weighed against other things it may be worth it to not have to wait for most of your money.
I read somewhere recently that more small firms go bust with cashflow problems due to late payers than for any other reason. If that is the case then legislation is well overdue.
to be honest ive had enough of being skint towards the end of every month,and fed up with begging for money,ive done the work please pay me,ive spoken to loads of o/ds and every one of them run into their overdraft at the end of the month,then you get a big tax bill and have to borrow money to pay it off.i am not saying its a bad job because its not there is no better feeling than driving along, windows down,music blareing,along the south coast with the sun shining through the windows of the truck that you own,and your the boss,
Oh steve…
I am so sorry to hear of your predicament. Just goes to show what a [zb] mockery this goverment makes of a once Great nation…
Mmm, wheres that immigration thread to Canada 
…
I wish you all the very best of luck in finding a buyer mate, and wish you luck in what ever you do in the future…
Hi Steve,very sorry to hear your situation,I can’t think of anything more infuriating than doing a fair days work and not getting paid at the end of it.I was thinking ,in the future with some experience and knowledge behind me,I should like to become an owner driver but with so many tales of woe Iam rapidly changing my mind.I wish you well for the future and I hope and believe you reap what you so in this life.The person who turned you over will pay in the end,sooner the better!!Regards Jamie.
thankyou all for your kind words,i have enjoyed driving my own truck,and if anyone is considering doing it,i feel you have to do it because if in 10 or 20 years time you might think i really wish i had done that and regret not trying it,just make sure you get paid on time (30 days max)because the fuel and insurance companies take their money at the end of every week, good luck
I was sincerely sorry to read of Steve’s predicament. However, from some of the posts on this site I think some of you are under the misapprehension a Company Director can just let the company rack up a raft of bills, let the company go into liquidation and then set-up again a few months later without any ramifications.
This is not really the case anymore, if a company goes under owing large amounts of VAT or PAYE/Corporation Tax then you can almost guarantee that the Revenue or Customs will aim to have the Director disqualified, thereby preventing the person from acting as a director in the medium term. This would also preclude the person from acting as a ‘shadow director’. A shadow director would typically cover the case where the disqualified director sets-up a ‘phoenix’ company with their spouse as the director but the disqualified director in effect runs the company.
But this doesn’t really help with the loss of earnings, which is what hurts most of you in this situation, here you need to show in some way that the Director involved has a personal liability to you, thereby circumventing the veil of limited liability.
Directors of company’s when dealing with customers and suppliers are usually regarded as acting as ‘agents’ for their company’s, which means that provided the director makes it clear in his dealings with you, that the transaction is with the company and not themselves then they will not incur a personal liability.
So the first point to make here is if the director personally guarantees the company’s obligations under a contract or arrangement, then you have recourse to their personal assets. Secondly, you would also have recourse ot their personal assets should the director have failed to make it clear to the third party that they were acting as agent for the company…
Really you would be looking to include in your contracts with customer, a personal liability clause or being able to show the director had failed to make it clear that they were acting as an agent for the company.
I accept both of these are likely to be difficult to acheive and therefore you then have to look at one of the other ‘offences’ committed by which the director may find himself personally liable. Here you should be looking at ‘wrongful trading’ this is the situation where a company trades whilst insolvent (broadly the company’s liabilites exceed it’s assets) and there is no reasonable prospect it will be able to meet it’s creditors claims. Here the director maybe required to make a contribution towards the insolvent company’s assets from their own resources. A similar offence is fraudulent trading, where directors make dishonest representations to creditors, for example, a director contracts with you for a number of deliveries but has no intention of paying you from the outset.
Fradulent and wrongful trading are also grounds for diqualification, and should a disqualifies director act as a director whilst diqualified then he also becomes personally liable.
I can anticipate some of the reactions to this piece, I agree that many of you are not going to be able to instruct lawyers to ‘go after’ directors when you are already struggling because of unpaid invoices so maybe some kind of fighting fund is required for owner drivers, or perhaps finding out whether it is possible that a solicitor might be able to take the case on a ‘no win/no fee’ basis.
I would also point out in the strongest terms that I am not legally qualified and therefore you must not act on what I have written here. It is merely for information purposes only. In any legal matter you must take advice from a qualified Solicitor who is a member of the Law Society. I will not accept any liability for any loss or damage from action taken as a result of what I have written in this piece.
I would also point out that when dealing with customers who aren’t paying, there has to come a point at which you either get payment in advance for further work or refuse to do anymore work for that customer. Easier said than done I know.
Best of luck for the future Steve.
Welcome to TruckNet taxman, very interesting post there. Thank you.
By the way, I really enjoyed your two articles on your trips to Europe, but two things bother me, how long do you have at home between drives? (I might be able to do a 7 or 9 day trip, provided I had some time off with the family in between) and are attacks on lorries (even when the drivers are in the cabs) as prevalent as it seems?
This week not long as I got back this morning and will be away tomorrow, however I will be back either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and will be home until next Sunday then. A ‘normal’ week for me is ship Sunday and home by Thursday lunchtime, which gives me until Sunday at home.
As far as attacks go it does happen, maybe not as much as the stories would have you believe, but it does. If you use some common sense when parking you can lessen the chance of it happening. In 15 years of travelling over the water nearly every week I have never suffered an attack of any sort.
sorry to hear your situation steve ,
have you actually sold up yet or are you still advertising your motor.
if you still have your motor have you thought about doing some container work similar to what i’m doing
i know its not glamorous work but i get paid weekly (after 4 weeks) and it goes straight in the bank by bacs i also get a minimum gurantee of 1500 miles every week ,which helps when covering your overheads.
if you want more info i dont mind meeting up with you to give you more detail i only live in wallington.
Commiserations Steve.
Good man NSH, don’t forget about the fuel card, even though you only get one after a couple of weeks.
i feel sorry for steve and he is not the only one it has happened to …these cowboys get rich by other peoples misery and they know all the loop holes…so they put the company in their wifes name or their sons name and they are up and running…they just say they are acting as an observer only…there is always a way around the problems and its the poor owner driver who pays the cost…
it happened to me when i left england with 5 deliveries for czech…hungary…romania…bulgaria…and poland…in that order…i was already owed for the previous trip and did a quick turnaround to help them out…however i had problems in bulgaria and phoned the company only to be told your on your own weve gone under…and he said he was only in the office to clear up his desk…how sad !!..but luckily i had their trailer behind me …and it was a new trailer (tilt) and i sold it to get my money i was owed…
perhaps i was pone of the lucky ones…
Steve, I sympathise with your situation (as a short-lived o/d) but it begs the question:
What where you doing to LET HIM GET so far into you debt wise■■?
I know its so easy for others to comment without knowing all the facts, but a couple of consecutively missed payments & I’d have pulled the rig off his job.
Taxman: interesting stuff! Especially the bit about “shadow directors.” I’m guessing this is a newish legislation to try curb the so many times where this trick of setting upagain in the wifes’ name has been pulled b4?
Welcome to Trucknet, I think you’re knowledge will come in useful from time to time for some of the guys on here.
Sorry to hear your news. Idrive trucks self employed because printing is no better 30% of what i invoiced last year for printing remained unpaid. Most of what came in i had to beg for.
At least if I dont get paid one week for driving I dont show the next.
To think i actualy took my test with the intention of putting a truck on the road!
From what i have read that would be out of the pan and into the fire.
What you gona do next?
did the reg go as well ?
Greedy
Driverone UK wrote:
What where you doing to LET HIM GET so far into you debt wise■■?
It is easy to run that much debt up because a company who pay on 90 days or dont in this case are already into you for 24k if you are invoicing £2000 a week
Im afraid that is the state of the haulage game. If you can get paid sooner then that is better but in my experience an invoice with any discrepancy would be returned not paid till it was adjusted. You have to keep working though.
I know one lad who is earning money but he factors all his invoices to keep cashflow going. A hiding to nothing in my opinion 
I know 90 days is extreme but it is not uncommon.