m.a.n rules:
whilst on the subject of burger’s. to all you student’s who passed their exam’s congratulations. to those who didn’t I don’t like gherkin on my big mac.
My anecdotal evidence suggests that you’re as likely to find a graduate behind a fast food counter, hotel reception, or on a customer service helpline, as anywhere 
What’s more surprising is that other people (often themselves parents) still seriously believe that graduates are predominantly going into cushy, well-paid occupations.
Rjan:
My anecdotal evidence suggests that you’re as likely to find a graduate behind a fast food counter, hotel reception, or on a customer service helpline, as anywhereWhat’s more surprising is that other people (often themselves parents) still seriously believe that graduates are predominantly going into cushy, well-paid occupations.
The majority do. Dependent upon the subject they study, they may well go down different avenues. It is a small percentage that will find themselves questioning the viability of what they have gained. It may also takes some graduates years to finally land that cushy job and in the mean time may take a lower paid job out of their particular field until they find it. It is a complete fabrication of the truth that most graduates end up in “crap” jobs, similar to the truth of a “driver shortage”.
UKtramp:
Rjan:
My anecdotal evidence suggests that you’re as likely to find a graduate behind a fast food counter, hotel reception, or on a customer service helpline, as anywhereWhat’s more surprising is that other people (often themselves parents) still seriously believe that graduates are predominantly going into cushy, well-paid occupations.
The majority do. Dependent upon the subject they study, they may well go down different avenues. It is a small percentage that will find themselves questioning the viability of what they have gained. It may also takes some graduates years to finally land that cushy job and in the mean time may take a lower paid job out of their particular field until they find it. It is a complete fabrication of the truth that most graduates end up in “crap” jobs, similar to the truth of a “driver shortage”.
do they? Out of all my friends, the highest earners are the ones that didn’t go to uni… and by quite a margin too.
there are that many degrees out there now that unless you’re studying a STEM subject, you’re going to most likely get an average paying job.
Harry Monk:
It’s only a profession in the sense that you get paid for doing it, a bit like a professional footballer. It’s not a profession in the sense that being a doctor is a profession.
It’s a profession in the sense of arguably being a more skilled job than a train driver.While loading the thing properly can possibly mean having a similar understanding of load distribution and placement and its effects at least as the truck’s design engineers.In addition to load security knowledge which can possibly match some of the skills required of a construction worker/design engineer.While also calling for general driving skills that way exceed those expected of a top grade police driver.As said above drivers need to get some pride in the job.
maga:
do they? Out of all my friends, the highest earners are the ones that didn’t go to uni… and by quite a margin too.there are that many degrees out there now that unless you’re studying a STEM subject, you’re going to most likely get an average paying job.
I didn’t mention money, I mentioned a “cushy job”, money doesn’t always go hand in hand with good jobs. Some are vocational jobs that pay average wages. Some do indeed go into higher paid work. A friend of mine is a Saturation diver and earns £500 per day offshore, he also has never been to Uni.
mick.mh2racing:
A point I made on the fridge scientist post was that many jobs pay less than we’d think.
I earn more than my wife who’s a primary school teacher. More than a fireman and a paramedic or nurse.
Make of that what you will.
When I first started work when everything was in black and white, my dad was the wages clerk. Blokes in the warehouse earned about 15k and we’re on good money. They all assumed and couldn’t be convinced otherwise that my dad earned less than 10k. They thought he must be on 25k plus.sent using smoke signals
The shunter driver in our yard gets a higher take home pay than a fireman.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Carryfast:
It’s a profession in the sense of arguably being a more skilled job than a train driver.While loading the thing properly can possibly mean having a similar understanding of load distribution and placement and its effects at least as the truck’s design engineers.In addition to load security knowledge which can possibly match some of the skills required of a construction worker/design engineer.While also calling for general driving skills that way exceed those expected of a top grade police driver.As said above drivers need to get some pride in the job.
I will assume you are actually taking the ■■■■ with this statement?
rob22888:
chrisdalott:
everybody deserves 10 an hour. the whole country needs a pay riseSo, the minimum salary for a full time job (40 hours) should be £20,800?
There will be an awful lot of managers out there on low 20’s wanting a substantial pay rise as well to reinstate the gap, otherwise why bother?
Everything will just get more expensive to pay for it all & then a few years down the line Jeremy Corbyn will be campaigning for £12ph…
Honestly, the minimum wage is getting too high if anything. The real problem is all these lousy zero hour contracts & the ever increasing popularity of agencies & the ‘flexible workforce’, ie. employees with bugger all financial security.
This is what it boils down to. Everyone quotes the aldi rate but it is very hard to get a full time job. They are all part time and overtime. Say no to the overtime because you have plans for Saturday night and you won’t get asked again for a couple of weeks. Holidays and sick all based on the contracted hours as well. Even if the hourly rate is high if you only get 15-20 a week you can’t keep a family on it.
Whilst the driving hourly rate is lower you can be sure to get the hours in to make a living. I am not saying that I think thats the right way but a lot of people don’t have a choice now.
The days of full time jobs all over are gone and only getting worse.
UKtramp:
Carryfast:
It’s a profession in the sense of arguably being a more skilled job than a train driver.While loading the thing properly can possibly mean having a similar understanding of load distribution and placement and its effects at least as the truck’s design engineers.In addition to load security knowledge which can possibly match some of the skills required of a construction worker/design engineer.While also calling for general driving skills that way exceed those expected of a top grade police driver.As said above drivers need to get some pride in the job.I will assume you are actually taking the ■■■■ with this statement?
Which part of that don’t you agree with ?.While it’s clear enough that many ‘drivers’ don’t take the job that seriously. 
sweepster:
I’d be very happy to pay more in tax, to see public service workers get an inflation linked pay rise every year.
Assuming you mean public sector, I agree that the likes of nurses and those who do actually work for their corn (and you can include the likes of the lads on the bins in that) deserve a lot more than the 1% rise that the government has imposed on them. In those cases, it is scandalous.
But when it comes to the likes of the types who seemingly infest the likes of HMRC, the Passport Office and so on, my experience is that they are often in the public sector because they are nothing short of unemployable anywhere else. They are often grossly incompetent and are incapable of carrying out simple tasks without making some kind of error, and the culture in such organisations seems to be that not only is tolerated, but nothing is ever done about it because nobody can actually see that anything is wrong. In those cases, minimum wage would be substantially more than they merit.
Harry Monk:
ezydriver:
"Driving lorries is a profession, there are some true professionals out there, and we should have more pride in ourselves and our industry.It’s only a profession in the sense that you get paid for doing it, a bit like a professional footballer. It’s not a profession in the sense that being a doctor is a profession.
For my PGCE I had to write a 5000 word essay on professionalism. If you care I can dig out he full thing for you, but in a nutshell, it’s all about pride in doing a proper job. Some the the wrinklies on here would probably refer to it as being ‘old school’.
rob22888:
chrisdalott:
everybody deserves 10 an hour. the whole country needs a pay riseSo, the minimum salary for a full time job (40 hours) should be £20,800?
There will be an awful lot of managers out there on low 20’s wanting a substantial pay rise as well to reinstate the gap, otherwise why bother?
Everything will just get more expensive to pay for it all & then a few years down the line Jeremy Corbyn will be campaigning for £12ph…
Sounds like a virtuous circle to me. The idea that you can be a manager now and not even be on the average wage is laughable.
SHYTOT:
I wonder if the person that thinks £7.00 to £10 is a 30% rise drives trucks for a living
It was a very rough estimate
I was also factoring in that I wasn’t sure of the current NMW rate precisely off the top of my head so I abbreviated it to £7. Using the actual rate, £10/£7.50 = 1.33, which is close enough to a 30% difference. The thrust of my argument was also that larger increases would be better economically.
It’s worth pointing out in this discussion also that the Tories have promised to raise the minimum wage to £9 an hour by 2020, albeit paid for in their calculus by attacks on social security and other public services.
Carryfast:
Harry Monk:
It’s only a profession in the sense that you get paid for doing it, a bit like a professional footballer. It’s not a profession in the sense that being a doctor is a profession.It’s a profession in the sense of arguably being a more skilled job than a train driver.While loading the thing properly can possibly mean having a similar understanding of load distribution and placement and its effects at least as the truck’s design engineers.In addition to load security knowledge which can possibly match some of the skills required of a construction worker/design engineer.While also calling for general driving skills that way exceed those expected of a top grade police driver.As said above drivers need to get some pride in the job.
Instead of trying to inflate perceptions about the amount of skill required for driving a lorry, it would be better to ask how essential is the role, and what is it’s value to society?
That is a better basis for calculating the wages deserved for a particular occupation, because much valuable work in life doesn’t require any fantastic flair (which is always going to be defined relative to the supposedly ordinary skills of the majority), it just requires someone to turn up regularly and do it competently, and that’s enough to deserve a decent standard of living in a civilised society.
UKtramp:
Rjan:
My anecdotal evidence suggests that you’re as likely to find a graduate behind a fast food counter, hotel reception, or on a customer service helpline, as anywhereWhat’s more surprising is that other people (often themselves parents) still seriously believe that graduates are predominantly going into cushy, well-paid occupations.
The majority do. Dependent upon the subject they study, they may well go down different avenues. It is a small percentage that will find themselves questioning the viability of what they have gained. It may also takes some graduates years to finally land that cushy job and in the mean time may take a lower paid job out of their particular field until they find it. It is a complete fabrication of the truth that most graduates end up in “crap” jobs, similar to the truth of a “driver shortage”.
It might reflect the class of people I tend to come into contact with, but I don’t see a clear relationship. It’s not always that the graduates are working “out of their field” - they are often working in their field, on poor pay and conditions.
The correspondence between the “driver shortage” and graduate occupations is probably closer than you think, in the sense that in both cases hype and the illusion of decent pay and conditions being on offer, is being used to draw people into investing time and money on what are essentially deteriorating occupations and dead-end jobs.
I’m aware of some graduates who have left university and embarked on a proper career path in a large firm, but I’m aware of substantially more who have backfilled routine occupations or have gone into poor-quality positions (with commensurately low pay) with no real development prospects.
Working people are facing a jobs market that is deteriorating in quality (whether it be in terms of pay, working conditions, job security, pensions, training and development opportunities, or the hoops that must first be jumped), and headline figures of economic growth and so on mainly represent rampant increases in the wealth of the rich rather than a general increase in prosperity.
The-Snowman:
ezydriver:
I don’t normally respond to trolls, but I break with tradition this once.Imagine somebody who has never even driven a car. Imagine that person getting behind the wheel of say a 44 ton articulated 16 speed manual DAF XF with a 15’ 6’’ curtainsided trailer, loaded with chipboard, or pallets of coke cans without shrinkwrap, or any other load that’s vulnerable to moving.
Then imagine that person taking that vehicle from the middle of London to the midlands, making a delivery in coventry city centre, then Birmingham city centre, then returning to central London with a backload from Northampton, and hitting a diversion on the way back. Then, when getting back, being told to drop the trailer, pick up the fridge, and go and do a local run to Dartford.
Do you think they’d manage it, flawlessly, completing their daily checks (and knowing what to check), without shooting their load one way or the other, returning 10mpg, without hitting a bridge, being on time, side swiping a car in their blind spot, adhering to the DVSA’s load security policy (as much as possible
) , leaving all railings intact on tight turns, making sure not to set a red light camea off, keeping within speed limits, keeping within tachograph and WTD restrictions, staying out of weight restricted areas, without succumbing to road rage, causing no damage whilst maneuvering (forward or backward), or indeed finding a keyfuels pump because the previous driver left it in the red? That person would probably cry as soon as they eyeballed the gearlever.
Do you suppose that same person who has never even driven a car could flip burgers?
Do you suppose he should be paid the same in both scenarios? Or do you think he should be worth at least a few quid more in the first?
Driving well is definitely a skill, and those who can do it seem so complacent about it because it’s easy and natural to them. But most of my friends can’t even grasp the concept of keeping in the left lane in their cars. They’d be hopeless doing this job, as many of us would be hopeless plumbers, artists, or doctors. When I compare my current self (13 years class 1) I’m 1 million miles better than I was 10 years ago, because I learnt through my mistakes, and through years of practice. I’m worth at least £15, and I get it!
Add ADR, HIAB, PDP, or whatever, and we’re worth a touch more even. Driving lorries is a profession, there are some true professionals out there, and we should have more pride in ourselves and our industry.
+1
Well said mate.
Problem is though mate you are not worth £15 an hour and Maritime do not pay you that 
I am the first to say truck drivers wages are cack, but £15 per hour for doing Amazon RDC’s in a curtainsider? Don’t think that’s realistic fella.
eagerbeaver:
but £15 per hour for doing Amazon RDC’s in a curtainsider? Don’t think that’s realistic fella.
I can guarantee that it is realistic - and I know guys who are paid it!
SHYTOT:
I wonder if the person that thinks £7.00 to £10 is a 30% rise drives trucks for a living
He was using Diane Abbott’s abacus, assured to give an answer between eleventy three and twelvety seven. 
Rjan:
Instead of trying to inflate perceptions about the amount of skill required for driving a lorry, it would be better to ask how essential is the role, and what is it’s value to society?
A wonderful notion in which socialism decides what is essential and what value it has - and the rest of us pay for it!
eagerbeaver:
Problem is though mate you are not worth £15 an hour and Maritime do not pay you thatI am the first to say truck drivers wages are cack, but £15 per hour for doing Amazon RDC’s in a curtainsider? Don’t think that’s realistic fella.
I can assure you, when my nightshift allowance and tax-free meal allowance are considered, which are continual parts of my salary, my flat wage is only pennies shy of £15 per hour. I also work a few shifts per week which are less than 12 hours, yet I get paid 12 hours (did 8 1/2 hours last week for £172). When I factor these in over the course of a year (I like mathematics) I earn £15 per hour before tax. It’s the contract that says £12 per hour, which is the flat flat flat wage, before all the daily extras.
And I am categorically saying I am worth £15 per hour, because of the way I approach the job. No damage, no infringements, and all A’s on the fuel each week, no shennanigans, never ring in sick, a positive can do attitude, etc. A bloke with my attitude IS worth £15 p/h to anybody who owns a fleet of lorries and wants them driven efficiently, on time, without any drama or damage. I would not apply for a job paying less than that, which is why I always earn that. It’s all about how we value ourselves. If I was over-valuing myself, which you imply, I wouldn’t be in a job, but I’ve worked on class 1’s continuously for 13 years, the last 3 of which (where I have felt fully competent and confident of myself) have been what I regard as well paid.
