Some firms eg BRS, had agreements or just an unwritten acceptance regarding the average speed for journeys so that it would be assumed that it would take x hours to get to a certain town. If we can possibly avoid loads of union bashing what are our recollections? I can recall that as late as the mid 1970s 30 mph was a rule of thumb for how long a journey took.
Father and big brother both drove for the Whitbread group in the late 50s and through the sixties. I don’t know whether it was a union rule, or company policy, but their journeys were worked on an assumed average mileage, don’t know what it was, something like 22mph I think, but I do know that Sheffield from Chelsea was a night out, as was Worksop.
Bernard
Did a bit for the old Co-op distribution centre out of Beddington Lane, Croydon in the late 80`s. If I remember correctly all the deliveries were timed at a rate agreed by the union. One run in particular was from Croydon to Ramsgate or Canterbury (somewhere around there) and the time allowed to get there, tip and return was…8 HOURS!!! 
Edit… and god forbid if you came back quicker, the union shop steward would have you kicked out.
In the 60s the BRS ran at 22mph which was 220 for 10 hours driving but remember there was not much of a motorway network, A roads were 40 mph max. and you still went through a lot of town centres.
I was at Pickfords ( BRS ) and the speed limit for special types was 12 mph ( this was the legal max. ) but we would do up to 132 miles for 11hours driving pay the 25 ton Scammells would do 14 mph loaded and 18 mph empty and this was union agreements but Sheffield depot would pay 11 hours for 154 miles loaded and 198 empty .
In the mid 70s I went to Sykes Bulk Liquids which had a bonus system this was 1 hours pay for every 22 miles, 2 hours load, 2 hours tip and 2 hours clean out and half a hour for changing trailers or dropping trailer to weigh barrel only 15 minutes for fueling up this was then worked out at first 8 hours each day at basic and everything over at time and a half Saturday time and half all day and Sunday double time.
When the £1 per hour came in 77/78 the milage was adjusted to 25 for a hours pay and one and half hours for tipping and loading.
cheers Johnnie
P S the bonus system was very similar to the one which Smith and Robinson used
I remember the BRS rate being 22mph.
We had a firm of “Time & Motion Engineers” in to assess the possibility of a bonus system to improve productivity. They sent three or four of their chaps to “shadow” us drivers for a week which involved riding with us and keeping an accurate account of the time we took to complete each task. This ranged from - and this is where you’ll have to make allowances for the memory cell-
Clock on at depot and examine delivery/collection notes…8 mins
Walk to vehicle…2.5 mins
Load cab with personal items & documentation…2.00 mins
Daily check of vehicle…9.5 mins
Daily check of trailer…7.00 mins
Start engine & proceed to road junction…6.00 mins
Drive from depot to Windrush Café for refreshment…1.25 hrs
Drive from Windrush to delivery point at Pembry…3.20 hrs
Enter delivery point & report to Goods Inward department…1.75 mins
Leave cab & release tailboard securing devices…2.00 mins
Return to cab, engage tipping gear & raise body…2,50 mins
This is how it was supposed to continue for the whole week. By the time we had completed our first round trip we had come to an agreement with our observers, especially concerning where we were “supposed” to be parked up that night and where we were actually parked. My nearsider realised it was better to leave his car at my house for the entire week and fill in his clipboard under my instruction!
The outcome of this million-pound exercise was that we were awarded an extra sixpence for every hour that we managed an extra one mph. We subsequently booked our speed at 24mph, giving the depot a lift in the profitability stakes. We had been averaging around 40mph anyway, although obviously not on paper!
Retired Old ■■■■:
I remember the BRS rate being 22mph.
We had a firm of “Time & Motion Engineers” in to assess the possibility of a bonus system to improve productivity. They sent three or four of their chaps to “shadow” us drivers for a week which involved riding with us and keeping an accurate account of the time we took to complete each task. This ranged from - and this is where you’ll have to make allowances for the memory cell-
Clock on at depot and examine delivery/collection notes…8 mins
Walk to vehicle…2.5 mins
Load cab with personal items & documentation…2.00 mins
Daily check of vehicle…9.5 mins
Daily check of trailer…7.00 mins
Start engine & proceed to road junction…6.00 mins
Drive from depot to Windrush Café for refreshment…1.25 hrs
Drive from Windrush to delivery point at Pembry…3.20 hrs
Enter delivery point & report to Goods Inward department…1.75 mins
Leave cab & release tailboard securing devices…2.00 mins
Return to cab, engage tipping gear & raise body…2,50 minsThis is how it was supposed to continue for the whole week. By the time we had completed our first round trip we had come to an agreement with our observers, especially concerning where we were “supposed” to be parked up that night and where we were actually parked. My nearsider realised it was better to leave his car at my house for the entire week and fill in his clipboard under my instruction!
The outcome of this million-pound exercise was that we were awarded an extra sixpence for every hour that we managed an extra one mph. We subsequently booked our speed at 24mph, giving the depot a lift in the profitability stakes. We had been averaging around 40mph anyway, although obviously not on paper!
Not surprising that BRS went “down the tubes”,well on general anyway ! 
Bewick.
These agreed hourly speeds were common on most companies of any size and originally were based on the old BRS system with some individual tweaking to suit the company and union. Suttons had such a system in place and Turners (Soham) Ltd. also worked in this way. Even as recently as 2005 when I left Turners the bonus scheme was based on the 'so many miles in an hour, so many hours allowed for tipping / loading, trailer changes, start / finish allowance, multi-drop rate etc. etc.
gingerfold:
These agreed hourly speeds were common on most companies of any size and originally were based on the old BRS system with some individual tweaking to suit the company and union. Suttons had such a system in place and Turners (Soham) Ltd. also worked in this way. Even as recently as 2005 when I left Turners the bonus scheme was based on the 'so many miles in an hour, so many hours allowed for tipping / loading, trailer changes, start / finish allowance, multi-drop rate etc. etc.
Tilcon (at the Ballidon and Kevin quarries at least) had much the same system as well. Twenty eight mph, 11/4 hours per load for loading/tipping stone and 13/4 for tarmac, slightly longer for asphalt. Tankers also had longer. Quarter of an hour daily for fuelling, an hour per week for wash. The mileage slowly crept up over the years though, usually when a pay rise was instigated, so what was given with one hand was partially taken away by the other! 
Pete.
We had it, it was not official but us drivers ran to IIRC 20mph, 1hour tip, 3/4hour load, and management never put up much resistant. It worked well for many years.
Of course, later in life you came across some “superstar” young fellas who were always ready to wreck the job. I could never understand how an hourly paid driver wanted to get the job done as fast as he could.
Yes, it was also 28 miles in an hour at Turners. When I first went there in 1990 I did a spell as first a driver and the yard foreman to learn about how the company operated. The foreman’s job was on the three shift system and on nights in those day s,when there were only about 80 drivers at Fordham depot (ex-BRS depot), and then we moved to the new depot at Newmarket, we had to work out the daily pay sheet for the drivers who had made it back home that day. They had a new time sheet every day. It was a hellishly difficult pay scheme to explain to a new driver, but quite easy to calculate drivers’ earnings when you got the hang of it. A driver was guaranteed 9 hours pay (8 hours basic plus one hour overtime) even if he never got out of the yard that day. Say a driver actually worked a shift of 9 hours from booking on to booking off, and with his bonus increments it worked out to 11.5 hours work, then he would have earned him for that day 8 hours basic, plus 3 hours overtime plus half an hour at bonus rate, which then was £2 per hour. More typically the average “total hours” - that is all the mileage and tiping / loading allowances etc, - usually came to about 16 or 17 hours, so if the driver had done a 12 hour duty he would have earned 8 hours at basic, plus 4 hours at overtime, plus 4 or 5 hours at bonus rate. The actual duty hours was subtracted from the “total” hours to give the bonus earnings hours. Confusing isn’t it? 
When I was driving and it was a couple of days before Christmas that year I managed to get in an extra run to Hackbridge and my total hours for that day came to 26, which I thought was quite good.
It’s surprising how accurate 30 mph could be, I could just make Trowell services in my 5 1/2 hrs driving time with a 2am start from Goudhurst (near Tunbridge Wells) going via the Blackwall Tunnel. This in a 5 pot Atkinson which would reach 47mph flat out. The return from Hulland Ward during the daytime and once again crossing London needed 6 hrs+. A faster AEC Marshall didn’t make that much difference; only about 20 minutes for the M1 stretch.
At Tilcon it worked quite well, we were given mileages to jobs (Sheffield was 68 mile round trip, however, due to our shrinking planet it got lowered to 60 miles after a few years) Lichfield was 66, Fradley 70, Burton 54 etc. I once did three loads to Ripley, Derbys, which was around 36 miles, however they paid me for three loads to Ripley, Surrey, at 314 miles each trip! I was honest and told wages about it and the excess was deducted. Usually they were not far out. Those running six loads a day to the concrete works at Hulland Ward got 11/4 hours for loading each trip plus 1 hours pay for the journey, 13 1/2 hours and anything over 8 at rate and a quarter (or half, cannot remember really?) whereas those on the long runs lost out a bit! Of course it all finished eventually and we were put on hours payed off of the tacho plus loading time so it encouraged drivers to hang the day out, I jacked in then and went on earnings for a local haulier which I much preffered as I could do my work and clear off home!
Pete.
When I was on Suttons the Trunkers were paid @ 20 mph ( the legal limit on lorry and trailers except on Motorways which were just being built and had no limits at all) this was reckoned to be 16 mph average speed and a clock ( an early version of the tacho) on the back of the cab kept a record of how long the lorry was running and every now and again the general manager at St. Helens would take the milometer readings before the Trunkers left and then drive down to London Depot and check the milometer readings to make sure none of the trunkers had gone swanning around the Midlands to put time on the clock. The peculiar thing was that St. Helens to the London Depot was much more than 176 miles which was 16 mph X 11 hours which was then the legal driving time. Shunters of course took no notice of the clocks as we were on tip and turn and finish i.e:- start at 07.00 tip your load which could be 1, 2, 3, 4 or more drops and then load so I have finished at 10.00 in the morning and occasionally 11.00 at night ( log sheets were wonderful fiction then ) we were paid 68 hours per week regardless. The four London based Trunkers who did a changeover at Bobs at Streatham also ignored the clocks though management tried to get them to put more time on the clocks. When I joined BRS at Cressy Road, Hampstead on Trunk i was paid 10 hours per night on change over at Rowley Road, Coventry or Bromford Depot, Birmingham and this was based on 30 mph and an average of 24 mph I think, shunters also got paid a minimum of 10 hours per day. The speed limits in those days was 30 mph for artics and rigids and 20 mph for lorry and trailers ( there were no speed limits on Motorways )…Tony