kcrussell25:
Driving may not be a great job but it pays better than a lot of other unskilled roles so I will settle for it. I agree I may not become unemployed but I have dodged redundancy 4 times now and I don’t want to keep pushing my luck.
For class 2, it really doesn’t pay a better rate than unskilled roles, and class 1 is only marginally better. Many supermarkets pay better rates to stack the shelves (and for that you get indoor working, shift rotas, and maybe even friends), and entry-level driving positions can be just as difficult and physical.
If you’re coming into the industry precisely for the longer hours (so that you’re earning minimum wage x14 a day, instead of minimum wage x8), then be aware that start times also tend to vary significantly, and that you can probably kiss goodbye to any real home life or social routine. In other words, the sacrifice you’re making for money, is to work 15-hour shifts and sell your life outside work away.
It’s sad to put it this way but really I can only say it is suitable as a step forward (rather than a fall-back) to those who don’t have the ability to do anything more than manual warehouse work but find themselves suited to it, but who want significantly more bottom-line pay (albeit at similar hourly rates to the warehouse) and who are happy to accept conditions that are in some ways punishingly worse than warehouse work. If you’re divorced, childless, a functioning alcoholic, you don’t look after yourself, these are the sorts of people frequently found in the industry.
When you encounter workplaces with more obviously well-rounded, healthy people in this game, they tend to be in their 50s or older, they are often reasonably bright blokes with long experience who are in roles at the top of the industry, they tend to be on secure contracts from 10 years ago or more (that aren’t offered to new starters), and above all they are well-unionised and constantly on the ready for strike action to defend themselves (which is threatened far more often than we hear about it being carried out).
The only exception I’d say to this is the Eastern Europeans, who tend to seem bright and healthy in the same roles where the English look like scruffs and alcoholics, but they are much younger to begin with, and one of those I have in mind from some time ago was complaining about pay and conditions and agencies! And perhaps they haven’t come through the British sewer entrance into the industry, but have come directly from abroad as experienced Class 1 drivers, but it says something if the immigrant workers who’ve been attracted here are complaining about what they’ve found!
