albion:
I’ve never subscribed to the theory that there is a driver shortage.
Anyone that has knocked at my door has never been thrown off site. Of course there are places that you know you can’t walk into, you wouldn’t get past the gate house. You have to use some common.
Carryfast you just look for issues where there are none. You aren’t going to get 150 people walking in because of those 150 applicants, a percentage are only doing so because they need to prove they are looking, another tranche don’t have the get up and go and the 150 are not a new 150 every day.
I’ve done two ads in god knows how many years because people come on recommendation, a system that suited us and worked very well.
As you know my theory is that decent work in the industry ( distance/international full load or bulk pallet deliveries for example ) is ridiculously and disproportionately limited for whatever reason.Almost to the point of making driving HGV’s at least an unviable career choice for many.Then walking away rightly or wrongly disillusioned with the whole thing.
Let alone what there is,is then being rationed on an unfair arbitrary face fits/pecking order type basis.Obviously no such issues with the type of dross which the OP and myself seem to be describing which fills the agencies books and job sites because no one with any sense wants the job.
While drivers should at least having the right to expect that ‘if’ they ‘do’ accept such work it’ll only be on the basis of a temporary stepping stone to something better.Not be left to rot on the shelf while someone else jumps the queue from behind them because of ‘recommendation’ by a mate or a relative who’s possibly also jumped the queue into ‘decent’ work on the same basis.
On that note I’d guess that it’s that ridiculous situation,of not enough decent work within the industry,which is the elephant in the room here.As opposed to selectively,arbitrarily applied ‘nepotism’ and ‘favouritism’ which would probably fall by the way side ‘if’ there were as many decent job opportunities out there for those wanting to answer the call of the open road.As there are rubbish ones delivering building materials around the local housing estates or stuff to the local shops etc.
As for the OP it’s often better to accept a lower pay rate for the right work than a higher rate for rubbish work given the choice.
Carryfast:
As you know my theory is that decent work in the industry ( distance/international full load or bulk pallet deliveries for example ) is ridiculously and disproportionately limited for whatever reason.Almost to the point of making driving HGV’s at least an unviable career choice for many.Then walking away rightly or wrongly disillusioned with the whole thing.
:
Apart from a brief two year foray into heavy recovery work and an eight year break running my own international light freight business I’ve had nigh on 30 years driving lorries doing ONLY the type of work you seem to think is limited. Why is that? I’m assuming that we both have in common the same number of limbs and other appendages so why do you struggle when I and many others manage to walk out of one such job and straight into another such job with no problems?
If I had to take a punt I’d guess that your chances ended once they actually spoke to you face to face.
Carryfast:
As you know my theory is that decent work in the industry ( distance/international full load or bulk pallet deliveries for example ) is ridiculously and disproportionately limited for whatever reason.Almost to the point of making driving HGV’s at least an unviable career choice for many.Then walking away rightly or wrongly disillusioned with the whole thing.
:
Apart from a brief two year foray into heavy recovery work and an eight year break running my own international light freight business I’ve had nigh on 30 years driving lorries doing ONLY the type of work you seem to think is limited. Why is that? I’m assuming that we both have in common the same number of limbs and other appendages so why do you struggle when I and many others manage to walk out of one such job and straight into another such job with no problems?
If I had to take a punt I’d guess that your chances ended once they actually spoke to you face to face.
Strange in that case how my face fitted just fine in the case of 5 years driving council vehicles and 15 years of night trunking interspersed with some local building and retail type multi drop zb.However only once did I find out the reality of too many drivers looking for too little decent work when I was actually taken off of exactly the type of job I’ve described working for an agency and put back on the zb.No surprise when the guvnor had told me that he wanted me put on the job long term.Thereby,with hindsight,obviously creating an issue among the other longer established agency drivers losing just about the only decent job they had on the books to a new comer and thereby wanting me put back on the zb.At which point I walked away.
On that note you’ll obviously have no problem posting loads of the numerous examples of such decent work on all the usual well known job sites to back your bs.As opposed to confirming what I’ve said and obviously the OP’s experience.
Perhaps the question is “does haulage really suit you” , often in haulage it’s difficult to find the happy medium of decent money and a job you want to do, the difficulties you face being a class 2 driver you’ll face being a Class 1, you have to take the rough with the smooth.
You need to sit down and ask yourself what it is you see as acceptable, if it’s a 8 - 5 £12ph 5 day a week job with one drop and one collection, then transport isn’t for you.
Sorry to be blunt. Hopefully you’ll find something to suit.
Grumpy Dad:
Perhaps the question is “does haulage really suit you” , often in haulage it’s difficult to find the happy medium of decent money and a job you want to do, the difficulties you face being a class 2 driver you’ll face being a Class 1, you have to take the rough with the smooth.
You need to sit down and ask yourself what it is you see as acceptable, if it’s a 8 - 5 £12ph 5 day a week job with one drop and one collection, then transport isn’t for you.
Sorry to be blunt. Hopefully you’ll find something to suit.
I’d doubt anyone goes into the job with the expectation of a 9 hour total day.However there’s no reason why the option of 12 hours total made up of an 8-9 hours driving distance run with one full load drop and one collection.Or even two drops max often just one and usually trundle back to the yard empty as I did.All that with just a 16 tonner 4 wheeler no need for class 1.
While as we’ve seen from numerous examples on here it’s seldom if ever a case of rough with the smooth.More like all the smooth for some and all the rough for the others.
8 months into the “job” with no experience and wants something decent.
Many Drivers with far more years experience want decent jobs,its a case of possibly hitting lucky or biding your time doing something until one comes along.
Think the saying is walk before you run, or crawl before you walk or something like that.
Grumpy Dad:
Perhaps the question is “does haulage really suit you” , often in haulage it’s difficult to find the happy medium of decent money and a job you want to do, the difficulties you face being a class 2 driver you’ll face being a Class 1, you have to take the rough with the smooth.
You need to sit down and ask yourself what it is you see as acceptable, if it’s a 8 - 5 £12ph 5 day a week job with one drop and one collection, then transport isn’t for you.
Sorry to be blunt. Hopefully you’ll find something to suit.
I’ll second this it sounds like the OP actually doesn’t want a job with the list of demands he has.
Mr carryfast your job hunting views are ridiculously skewed I don’t know if this is just you or if it’s due to regional bias as where I am class 1 distance is widely available and I’d know where to look if I wanted longer runs on class 2. As above you could finish a distance job here Monday and be into another Tuesday or even Monday afternoon
Nothing desperate about knocking on doors, out of all the lorry jobs i’ve had, the only ■■■■ poor one (lasted 3 months, cheerio) was landed via an advert, all the rest have been through word of mouth, recommend, or the best job of all knocked on the door.
You’ve got to show some nous to get on the right jobs in this game, any bloody fool can select D and press the loud pedal so make yourself stand out from the thousands of others who are only useful for that and don’t try to land the better jobs, show what sort of person you are by pigeon holing the head honcho, those first few minutes face to face are really important, chances are he’s 90% made his mind up in those moments whether to want to employ you or not…without the personal touch you’re just another name on a bloody standard email notification, which is fine if you want to work for one of the cloned logistics mobs.
Juddian:
Nothing desperate about knocking on doors, out of all the lorry jobs i’ve had, the only ■■■■ poor one (lasted 3 months, cheerio) was landed via an advert, all the rest have been through word of mouth, recommend, or the best job of all knocked on the door.
You’ve got to show some nous to get on the right jobs in this game, any bloody fool can select D and press the loud pedal so make yourself stand out from the thousands of others who are only useful for that and don’t try to land the better jobs, show what sort of person you are by pigeon holing the head honcho, those first few minutes face to face are really important, chances are he’s 90% made his mind up in those moments whether to want to employ you or not…without the personal touch you’re just another name on a bloody standard email notification, which is fine if you want to work for one of the cloned logistics mobs.
Spot on…gotta listen to what people are telling you on here…
The problem is with your CV.
Getting one written for you is no good.
Carefully read the job ads, then re write your CV to suit the as. Making sure you mention in the initial about you paragraph everything the as asks for.
Most big companies have a program to sift through CV before it gets to a human to read.
If you aren’t getting an automated response then your CV is laid out wrong
Jimmy McNulty:
Mr carryfast your job hunting views are ridiculously skewed I don’t know if this is just you or if it’s due to regional bias as where I am class 1 distance is widely available and I’d know where to look if I wanted longer runs on class 2. As above you could finish a distance job here Monday and be into another Tuesday or even Monday afternoon
How is saying no thanks to handball/local multi drop zb work ‘skewed’.As opposed to just wanting to drive a full loaded truck over a 4.5 hour distance run get tipped load up with another full load and drive for another 4.5 hours back or to somewhere else.
Same challenge applies as Maoster in that case.You’ll obviously have no problem with showing all of these bs numerous available ‘decent’ work opportunities on the numerous job sites and agency ads out there.Yeah right.
lolipop:
8 months into the “job” with no experience and wants something decent.
Many Drivers with far more years experience want decent jobs,its a case of possibly hitting lucky or biding your time doing something until one comes along.
Think the saying is walk before you run, or crawl before you walk or something like that.
Make your mind up.Either it’s true that there’s loads of decent jobs out there according to any drivers’ choice.
Or it really is a case of too many drivers looking for too few decent jobs and all the smooth for some and all the zb for others regardless of the bs criterea that you’re going to impose to ration the decent work.The bs ‘experience’ scam being one of the worst because there is no set recognised,same for all,career progression and qualification path in road transport as there is in other industries .While some also lie their way to the front of the queue or as we’ve seen jump the queue on the basis of who they know.In which case we get the situation of two drivers starting out from day 1 of being able to get a licence and the younger one ends up on better work before,or at a younger age than,the older one.If not often the older one gets left doing the zb permanently because he gets charactered as a mug and finds out that years doing zb work counts for nothing when trying to climb the ladder.In fact it will more likely count against him.
On that note the difference between a driver being put on and wanting and expecting to do distance bulk pallet runs for example v local multi drop retail/building deliveries etc has nothing to do with ‘experience’.When in fact it takes more ‘experience’ to be able to mess about dropping a load of bricks etc in someone’s front garden with a hiab among all the parked cars in the street numerous times a day.Than to shift a few pallets to the back of the load deck with a pump truck and watch the forkie take them off or vice versa as I did once or twice maybe at most 3 times a day the rest of my day being made up of a decent drive across country.As for all the bs that those types of job are common enough to leave one and walk into another yeah right.Maybe for some but obviously not others and you won’t find them advertised nor by walking unannounced into anyone’s yard.
David5l:
The problem is with your CV.
Getting one written for you is no good.
Carefully read the job ads, then re write your CV to suit the as. Making sure you mention in the initial about you paragraph everything the as asks for.
Most big companies have a program to sift through CV before it gets to a human to read.
If you aren’t getting an automated response then your CV is laid out wrong
Realistically in this environment it’s easier to just tell them exactly what you’re looking for in the CV after providing a clear but brief,truthful,itemised work history starting with most recent first.Assuming you’re not reading yet another advert for a local multi drop retail/building materials deliveries etc etc type operation.Then you’ll only get replies containing the job you want to do assuming that is they don’t blatantly lie in a desperate laughable attempt to fool you ( more likely if you’ve already got a zb job and trying to move on ).However most of those worst types of job seem to be very accurately described.Possibly because of such operators having been caught out previously with drivers bringing the thing back to the yard and walking away in the middle of a shift.Which with hindsight is what I should have done within one or two weeks of starting on an agency.
I have no problem doing long shifts or tramping. Tramping jobs however are virtually non-existent for class 2 drivers and the ones that do usually pay a lower hourly rate.
I do have a very decent “job” at the moment - long distance runs with 1-3 drops, half the time I don’t even have to tip myself, 8 hours paid no matter what, higher pay rate for weekend work and bank holidays…the problem is it’s agency work so sometimes I will only get 2-3 shifts a week. This on top of the odd hour worked occasionally going “missing” from my payslip to which I turned a blind eye (until now) as to not rattle the boat…As mentioned, this company only employs 10 drivers (if even that many) with 0 turnover rate (decent pay, decent work, very rarely shifts over 10 hours which for me is not an issue either way) hence my frustration with the situation…
Anyways my credit card came in with a £3000 limit so I’ll be booking a class 1 course soon, thanks for the replies to those who bothered, even the critical ones
ETS:
I have no problem doing long shifts or tramping. Tramping jobs however are virtually non-existent for class 2 drivers and the ones that do usually pay a lower hourly rate.
I do have a very decent “job” at the moment - long distance runs with 1-3 drops, half the time I don’t even have to tip myself, 8 hours paid no matter what, higher pay rate for weekend work and bank holidays…the problem is it’s agency work so sometimes I will only get 2-3 shifts a week. This on top of the odd hour worked occasionally going “missing” from my payslip to which I turned a blind eye (until now) as to not rattle the boat…As mentioned, this company only employs 10 drivers (if even that many) with 0 turnover rate (decent pay, decent work, very rarely shifts over 10 hours which for me is not an issue either way) hence my frustration with the situation…
Anyways my credit card came in with a £3000 limit so I’ll be booking a class 1 course soon, thanks for the replies to those who bothered, even the critical ones
Check out the vacancies on offer for class 1 first v asking the agency if there’s any way they could increase the amount of work of the type you’re doing because that is probably as good as it gets for class 2.Maybe the agency is sharing out the job among its drivers and just not bothering to fill out the rest of the time for you with rubbish work that they think you might walk away from leaving them in the zb.While if that job is all you’ve done ? you’ll get a shock if you then end up in the real world.Which will probably be the choice of class 1 night trunking at best which is no fun now with hub systems and speed limiters spoiling the party.Especially if you end up somewhere where drivers have to ‘assist’ in the trans shipment operation at the hub.
Jimmy McNulty:
Mr carryfast your job hunting views are ridiculously skewed I don’t know if this is just you or if it’s due to regional bias as where I am class 1 distance is widely available and I’d know where to look if I wanted longer runs on class 2. As above you could finish a distance job here Monday and be into another Tuesday or even Monday afternoon
How is saying no thanks to handball/local multi drop zb work ‘skewed’.As opposed to just wanting to drive a full loaded truck over a 4.5 hour distance run get tipped load up with another full load and drive for another 4.5 hours back or to somewhere else.
Same challenge applies as Maoster in that case.You’ll obviously have no problem with showing all of these bs numerous available ‘decent’ work opportunities on the numerous job sites and agency ads out there.Yeah right.
I’m not finding a job for you but like I said maybe where you are there isn’t a lot of mid distance work.
As oppose to Yorkshire/North West/Midlands where you can get nearly anywhere and back in a shift. There is also a bigger manufacturing presence.
Maybe you should look at the parcel firms or see what’s happening at the airports
Carryfast:
Same challenge applies as Maoster in that case.You’ll obviously have no problem with showing all of these bs numerous available ‘decent’ work opportunities on the numerous job sites and agency ads out there.Yeah right.
I’ve never looked at a job site or looked at an agency ad. Because I’m a normal person who’ll actually get off my arse and create opportunities as opposed to expecting to be spoon fed everything in life good things tend to happen to me.
Perhaps if you weren’t so “woe is me” and learned to wind your neck in a little when dealing with people you just may find similar doors opening for you!
Jimmy McNulty:
Mr carryfast your job hunting views are ridiculously skewed I don’t know if this is just you or if it’s due to regional bias as where I am class 1 distance is widely available and I’d know where to look if I wanted longer runs on class 2. As above you could finish a distance job here Monday and be into another Tuesday or even Monday afternoon
How is saying no thanks to handball/local multi drop zb work ‘skewed’.As opposed to just wanting to drive a full loaded truck over a 4.5 hour distance run get tipped load up with another full load and drive for another 4.5 hours back or to somewhere else.
Same challenge applies as Maoster in that case.You’ll obviously have no problem with showing all of these bs numerous available ‘decent’ work opportunities on the numerous job sites and agency ads out there.Yeah right.
I’m not finding a job for you but like I said maybe where you are there isn’t a lot of mid distance work.
As oppose to Yorkshire/North West/Midlands where you can get nearly anywhere and back in a shift. There is also a bigger manufacturing presence.
Maybe you should look at the parcel firms or see what’s happening at the airports
Ironically I don’t need you to find me any job because I was medically retired around 20 years ago after around 15 years of class 1 night trunking much of that with a well known parcel firm after they bought out my previous employers ( mixed parcels/pallets ).
What I do know is that Tufnells are advertising for virtually the same type of work for double the money that I was getting.Having also made it clear in the ad that drivers aren’t expected to be involved in any loading/unloading which is a luxury which for me went when the firm was bought out.Anyway to save you the bother I’ve posted a randomly chosen few jobs from a few pages of typical class 2 work around west yorkshire which of course is an area I know well although I’ve always lived in Surrey.
Although to be fair I did find this which might give some credibility to the geographic thing.Which seems to be saying away on nights out all week.Which I’d still probably go for if I was the OP and if he’s based up Norf.
The problem probably then being the lottery of being chosen from the other 150 + applicants.
Meanwhile this is the type of job ‘opportunities’ which we’ve typically got to put up with and it didn’t take long to find it.I’m guessing no big queue for that at any wage.
