Spent about 5k on licenses. Had to wait 7 months for those licenses to actually turn up after passing test.
Jobs come up offering the same money as someone stacking shelves and get around 70 applicants. Job sites are infested with agencies advertising jobs that don’t exist, you spend all day giving away your data and copies of your documents to them, then tumbleweeds once you have.
I’ve worked twelve days scattered across the previous 10 months.
Got experience coming out my arse. ROSPA, advanced, ADR 1-9, covered over a million miles with no accidents (not in trucks).
Passed the “held license for one year” three months ago. Was expecting things to change as no one will touch you because of their stupid insurance premium arrangements. They didn’t.
Putting heavy emphasis in your cv about all your qualifications can frighten employers off. If the job you apply for doesn’t need the qualifications the employer might think you only want the job as a stopgap till you find a job that does.
Try to find out a bit about the company and target your cv accordingly.
Hope this helps.
It has been said before on the forum that turning up with a CV or making a phone call is better than sending off online applications. There are many jobs out there that are never advertised.
Perhaps a lowering of expectations may be required in the initial ‘getting experience’ stage. This may mean accepting work which isn’t ideal or is lower paid than you would like.
Also, agencies will quite often want a new driver to drive 7.5 tonne and class 2 while they get an idea if you tend to bring the truck / lorry back in one piece.
With driving it is often the case of a licence and a pulse getting you a start and from there it is all about how you perform. All the other qualifications in the world may not assist you.
Someone may turn up and look like an agreeable, well presented individual ticking all the boxes in terms of licence, CPC, but may be a terrible driver. That is what it is like; you kind of have to prove yourself in the job.
Willy Biggs:
I did four months with BCA and left because of unsafe working practices. The number of accidents is disgraceful. They almost killed me.
Driving-wise I never touched anything. Which says a lot, believe me. Because they’re absolute incompetents with route planning (there is none).
What did they do to almost kill you?
Dodgy trucks and trailers. They were told. Accident happened. Narrowly avoided fall from top deck. Generally very dangerous decisions made with drop-off locations. Almost everywhere you go there’s a transporter who’s now a vegetable because of an accident in the previous year or so… or other horrific incidents nearly as bad.
And to top it all off, when you really work the numbers out, you’re on £6 an hour.
Spent about 5k on licenses. Had to wait 7 months for those licenses to actually turn up after passing test.
Jobs come up offering the same money as someone stacking shelves and get around 70 applicants. Job sites are infested with agencies advertising jobs that don’t exist, you spend all day giving away your data and copies of your documents to them, then tumbleweeds once you have.
I’ve worked twelve days scattered across the previous 10 months.
Got experience coming out my arse. ROSPA, advanced, ADR 1-9, covered over a million miles with no accidents (not in trucks).
Passed the “held license for one year” three months ago. Was expecting things to change as no one will touch you because of their stupid insurance premium arrangements. They didn’t.
That’s unfortunate, I seriously think you should go to the newspapers with this tale of woe to warn all the other people who are thinking of throwing 5k at it that all is not what it seems, and that you and many others have been misled by newspaper articles claiming massive driver shortages and wages of 80k.
When I first started out I spent a long time getting no where trying to get a job.
So I decided to apply for tramping jobs much further away from where I lived.
This payed off as I got a job within the first week, it just meant I had drive 60 miles there and back, but being a tramper I only had to do this once a week
shullbit:
That’s unfortunate, I seriously think you should go to the newspapers with this tale of woe to warn all the other people who are thinking of throwing 5k at it that all is not what it seems, and that you and many others have been misled by newspaper articles claiming massive driver shortages and wages of 80k.
As well as that, with regards to unsafe working practices you might want to consider dropping a line to HSE and/or DVSA
shullbit:
That’s unfortunate, I seriously think you should go to the newspapers with this tale of woe to warn all the other people who are thinking of throwing 5k at it that all is not what it seems, and that you and many others have been misled by newspaper articles claiming massive driver shortages and wages of 80k.
As well as that, with regards to unsafe working practices you might want to consider dropping a line to HSE and/or DVSA
Well I know BCA have a “green light” with VOSA. They never shut-up about it. Assuming they got this by developing an app for vehicle checks and thereby washing their hands of any blame should anything go wrong day to day into the bargain.
Did we all see the video of the loaded ECM Rolfo falling over and spilling load onto opposite carriadgeway when a tyre blew out a week or so ago? (ECM is BCA now) Yeah, driver’s fault.
All BCA systems are about making sure their drivers take the fall.