Noremac:
Some of the better paid class 2 work may involve significant manual labour either in offloading products manually from cages / pallets, or playing tetris with ambient, chilled and frozen cages / pallets in the back of the vehicle. Also, throw in taking recycling and empties and not forgetting taking tonne pallets off on the tail-lift.
Pretty much this.
I passed my class 2 in Feb. First job was with Fresh Direct. Pallets of frozen/chilled goods. Quite a bit of manual labour using sack trucks. Some drops were atrocious but most were relatively straight forward. 4am starts, same route every day so got better/quicker over time. 31k salary permanent position. Depot in Wigan. No overtime bonus unless you worked a 6th day on a Saturday.
Did a week for agency curtain siders, general haulage. Pay was £13-£16 per hour. Earned £336 net for 3 shifts.
Now with DHL doing cage work/chilled + frozen. Physically demanding role but the pays decent. 33,700 for a a standard 4 out of 7 rota. I’ve just signed up to a weekend shift Fri-Mon. 36k before bonuses etc. So the money is there, BUT it’s a graft with 12hour shifts on the regular and 500kg cages with ramps full of potholes and bumps.
But the pay is very good I would say. Overtime is paid at x1.33 so a decent wage for an honest days graft.