Hi a friend is thinking of applying for class 1 at warburtons bread any drivers have any recent experience of driving for them. He is applying at enfield depot thankyou.
Steady way to earn a crust, fair dough. Cant go into it half baked though as there’ll be some early rises. Doubt there’ll be as much crumpet as the class two work
I’m on a roll…
hard work, there’ll be no loafing about if you want a slice of the good pay. You’ll knead to go into it with an open mind or you’ll be toast. No good if you’re a delicate flour.
If it’s from Enfield it’s an easy run to Norfolk - I understand they are well into bread there 
Apologies to anyone from Norfolk - we say the same thing here in Cornwall about St Just & Warrens Bakery
I’ve done a bit at Enfield Warburtons, through an agency. The work on agency can be a bit sporadic, a day here and there. They tended to want you to start at 5am or earlier, but I did pick up a few later shifts. That suited me as I have a 45 minute drive to get there. Run-wise, a lot is with double-decker trailers, with very under powered DAF CFs. You could be on a run to Bristol, which is a trailer swap, or down to Kent with a live load. A nice easy day I enjoyed was up to Thetford, usually with a single decker trailer, it was tip, reload with empty bread baskets and back to Enfield.
Warburtons have recently gone in with Tesco, so the workload has been stepped up. Now runs such as Enfield-Banbury-Worthing-Enfield are commonplace, a good chance of running out of time if there’s any hold-ups etc. Other missions include Enfield-Banbury-Bristol-Enfield, also a long day.
What doesn’t help is arriving for work, only to find they haven’t even started loading the trailer. That can add an hour or so on at the start, even more for a decker. You also then hit the traffic which is awful around there.
One of the things I didn’t like was delivering to Lidls, either Southampton or in Kent. As well as tipping yourself, they also expected you to sort through the bread in the warehouse and arrange it by date order and type etc. This delays you big time, followed by the long wait for paperwork.
It’s very much a Marmite job, love it or hate it. They can be disorganised there, I’ve had a few occasions where I’ve turned up and found they knew nothing about it. Luckily, the last time this happened I was used to rescue a driver who’d run out of time on one of the “missions”.
They were telling me that they’ve outgrown their current yard and are soon to be having another over the road as well, to cope with the Tesco work.
From what drivers have told me, the new starters are on a different contract to the blokes that started originally. They’re on a very good package with decent time off, but I think the new starters aren’t so well looked after.
Hope this helps your mate.
Riffer:
One of the things I didn’t like was delivering to Lidls, either Southampton or in Kent. As well as tipping yourself, they also expected you to sort through the bread in the warehouse and arrange it by date order and type etc.
Please tell me you are on a wind up?? Do lorry drivers really sort through the bread after tipping the load?? WTF!
There was another post, that has ended, questioning if drivers are thick as s**t…well that question has been answered!
kendon:
Hi a friend is thinking of applying for class 1 at warburtons bread any drivers have any recent experience of driving for them. He is applying at enfield depot thankyou.
Tell him not to bother mate.
I’ve heard there’s a lot of ■■■■ muppets who work there.
youtu.be/_wsqi5xSuOg
robroy:
kendon:
Hi a friend is thinking of applying for class 1 at warburtons bread any drivers have any recent experience of driving for them. He is applying at enfield depot thankyou.Tell him not to bother mate.
I’ve heard there’s a lot of [zb] muppets who work there.
youtu.be/_wsqi5xSuOg
I clicked the link expecting muppet like behaviour and was not disappointed.
Spoke to a Warburtons driver recently who does store deliveries he told me he does 25 drops a day, I felt un well and had to sit down and have another cup of tea.
I work for tesco doing store deliveries.
The bread guys are always rushing self unloading. While we wait around for hours waiting for the store to unload us because we are not allowed off the tail-lift .
Not worked at Enfield but food class 1 at Castleford a few years ago. Class 1 don’t do many shop or store deliveries, it just trunking to other bakeries. I liked it, Start times were always pm, anywhere from 1300 to 1800.
Always expected to help with tipping and reloading at every bakery.
It’s OK, I didn’t mind it.
sent using smoke signals
I’ve worked at Warburtons in Enfield. Often you find yourself running out of time. When you’re driving a double decker and delivering to Kent late at night, it’s not much fun finding that the East Tunnel on the Dartford Crossing has been closed…which it often is…and having to go the long way round the M25 to get back to the Enfield depot before your 15 hours runs out. Just make sure that you phone the highways agency to check if it will be open or not before you leave the depot in Kent so that you don’t waste your time trying to go through a closed tunnel. At 16ft the double decker is too high to fit through the left tunnel.
As someone else has pointed out, it’s no fun unloading at Lidl’s RDC in Southampton. You have to push all the stacks of bread into the warehouse and push every stack into the correct place in their warehouse. It’s a lot of walking and pushing stacks about, so make sure you have comfortable boots…and try not to get run down by all the speeding fork lifts whizzing about inside their warehouse.
You will also be doing store multi-drop work when they’re short of drivers, and driving 14 tonne rigids, 7.5 tonne rigids, and even 3.5 tonne vans. You will certainly earn your dough.
Someone told me the dispatch staff and key ops can be stand offish to the drivers at warbys enfield ?
msgyorkie:
Riffer:
One of the things I didn’t like was delivering to Lidls, either Southampton or in Kent. As well as tipping yourself, they also expected you to sort through the bread in the warehouse and arrange it by date order and type etc.Please tell me you are on a wind up?? Do lorry drivers really sort through the bread after tipping the load?? WTF!
There was another post, that has ended, questioning if drivers are thick as s**t…well that question has been answered!
No wind up mate, all the Lidls RDCs expect you to self tip. I had a few “differences of opinion” with their warehouse staff, who just ignored me when I asked for a bit of help. If drivers refused this kind of stuff, then things would change…but that would involve growing a spine! I personally told them not to send me to Lidls.
Riffer:
msgyorkie:
Riffer:
One of the things I didn’t like was delivering to Lidls, either Southampton or in Kent. As well as tipping yourself, they also expected you to sort through the bread in the warehouse and arrange it by date order and type etc.Please tell me you are on a wind up?? Do lorry drivers really sort through the bread after tipping the load?? WTF!
There was another post, that has ended, questioning if drivers are thick as s**t…well that question has been answered!No wind up mate, all the Lidls RDCs expect you to self tip. I had a few “differences of opinion” with their warehouse staff, who just ignored me when I asked for a bit of help. If drivers refused this kind of stuff, then things would change…but that would involve growing a spine! I personally told them not to send me to Lidls.
I personally do not like just driving and enjoy the exercise so not really an issue of growing a spine.
Also everytime I have seen guys complain about this in person almost all of them were overweight and could do with the exercise.
Warburtons class 1 also do collections from other bakeries on behalf of Iceland and I think Tesco and its then consolidated with their own product for class 2 deliveries to the stores.
I’ve seen all the major bakeries picking products up from a small place near me, for onward distribution.