Ackworth / Onward Transport

Bewick:

kevmac47:
Is,nt it amazing! the few times ive posted about the Onward group some pontificating jodrell from the west has stuck his oar in to comment about how much better his company did the job. Who gives a flying ****? This site is about nostalgia and the rose coloured specs should be bringing us together not causing conflict.

The aforementioned gent also talks about drivers being “promoted” as they (in his opinion) learn the correct way to do the job.
Well if you crave “promotion through the ranks” I would suggest joining the forces. As most of us who drove lorries for a living in the
“good old days” haha know, a shiny new sleeper cab could be not quite the the “promotion” you expected, as many a “guvnor” would
use the ploy “if you wont do it I will have to take vehicle off you and give your trusty old A series ERF again”.

Now then “kevmac” don’t get your "underwear twisted"one thing we never did was threaten anyone with either promotion onto,or de-motion from “shiny new sleeper cabs”.Nor did we turn a “wet behind the ears lad” loose with a top of the range motor.When I’ve mentioned the word ranks it was nothing to do with dealing with our staff like the armed forces.The fact of the matter was we always had a very low turnover of drivers so anyone we did start had to accept that we had a loyal set of lads and they had to move through the “workforce” and they could not expect to be slotted in among those that had been with us for years.To be fair of course a quality driver soon found himself being favoured no differen’t to anyone else that drove for us**.Also all our drivers were paid the same hourly(**per T&G agreement) 1 1/2 after 8 hrs and Sat.and double time on Sundays(minimum 8hrs.=16hrs pay).The night men were paid shift pay in excess of T&G rates.Subsistance was at the recognised level also.We paid a daily lunch allowance as well.Holiday entitlement was 3 weeks up to 3 years service and then 4 weeks from the 4th year onwards.We also had a company wide Accident insurance which was activated after 2 weeks off and then paid out for 104 weeks the average net pay calculated over the 10weeks prior to the accident.I can tell you that quite a number of our drivers/shunters had good reason to be thankful for this part of their terms and coditions as they were of quite a while but didn’t suffer financially.We didn’t have a sickness benefit as this could be abused but an accident at work —no problem----I wouldn’t see anyone in our employ suffer financally after injuring himself at work Death in service insurance was 1 years gross wage.With regard to the East Lancs paper mill contract I was just stating a fact that the job prior to us starting was an utter shambles.We streamlined it and gave the mill 100% service levels,we didn’t know any other way so I don’t see how you can "knock that"and here’s the punch line believe it or not—we charged more! But then I suppose you get what you pay for.So don’t take it personal “Kev” it wasn’t meant to be!Cheers Bewick.

Hell I’d long forgotten about that. At one time it caused endless bother at our place, we all kept our “own” motors at that time, 4, 6, 8, wheelers and artics. Everybody on a different hourly rate :imp: It was before HGV licences, were were all doing the same job but with different size vehicles, we all could if required drive owt. Eventually the T&G negotiated a deal for us and we were all on the top hourly rate whatever we drove. Peace was restored.