scottishcruiser:
I bet people who have answered NO are ENGLISH… LAzy bunch of [zb]. It only seems to be the Irish/Scots & Dutch who want to do hard graft, half the tw@ts on this forum want to lie around doing sweet FA and get paid for it, LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD… People say why do 90hrs+… Well why not? Surely the more you do the more you get paid? Not ■■■■■■ rocket science? Because of this 90hrs a fortnight I lose out on money, yet I have a family, mortgage etc same scenario for probably 95% of people on here, and id be willing to do more if the LAWS allowed it… one of the few rules I agree with is the weekend breaks. Nowts better coming home knowing youve hard grafted over the week and come home to the family to spend time with them and chill out… CIInts on here want money for nothing…
I couldn’t agree more. Excellent post! I’m English (well, half German) and now drive in Canada/USA and do far more hours and miles per day that I could dream of in the UK/Europe and I’m far less stressed out as my job is about the job and not worrying about conforming with the level of nonsense that is the EU driving hours/WTD/DCPC/H&S etc etc etc. Here I can quite legally drive for 13 hours without a break, I wouldn’t do so and nobody expects it but it puts things in to perspective. British drivers do NOT work long hours and they’re no safer than anyone who works double the amount. All this talk of safety is nothing other than a poor work ethic hiding behind the rule book.
One thing I will say though is that this lack of work ethic is not limited to England alone, it just seems more prevellent there due to the much larger population. I’ve met plenty of English drivers who resent the current restrictive working times and I’ve met an equally large amount of Scottish drivers who behave exactly the same way as their English counterparts in moaning about long hours while sitting in Tesco’s for 7 hours, on full pay, with the tacho on other work, only to pull on to the road and have a 45 minute break.
I’m glad I’m no longer living in a country where I worry myself sick for going 3 minutes over my driving time and then have a finger waggled in my face by some self riteous prick when tries to berate it and tell me how unsafe I am and liken me to a criminal.
One thing I dont understand is the people who scream and cry that we’d have a free for all and work 24 hours a day if the current regulations weren’t in place. No we wouldn’t, we’d simply work to another set of rules that weren’t so restrictive. When I leave home tomorrow and head towards Toronto before crossing the border bound for Indiana I will drive 13 hours in one shift and cover over 1200km, all quite safe and legal. I will take breaks when I feel like it, for as long or as short a time as I say. This week I will drive 4000-5000km and feel more relaxed and less stressed out than most of the work shy institutionalised regulation men on here. I will have to contest with traffic just as horrendous and parking oppertunities that can be 60 or miles apart, but I will certainly not be worrying about a 48 hour average, POA, 90 hours driving in two weeks or if vosa anally ■■■■ me for going over my time by a minute or two.
I’m glad theres still a few lads left in the UK who dont bend over and accept this nonsense and who would rather crack on with the job, get it down and park up for the night/week than attend DCPC courses and whinge about their already easy jobs and low hours in comparison to the rest of the world.
If a driver on domestic can do 10 hours driving a day for 7 days a week, every week, then why is it more dangerous to do 10 hours driving per day for 11 days out of 14 on EU regs?
Being able to do 56hrs a week every week, rest breaks permitting.
It is a bit of a stupid rule TBH.
Flip that, Im doing 3x 15 and 2x 13 a week and I’m knackered enough thanks. What is it with drivers trying to be hero’s
If your jobs not paying take it up with the boss. It’s always the minority that ruin it for the majority.
Definitely. The secret being financially successful as a driver is to work the minimum amount of time/effort combination for the maximum money. Plenty of drivers think the other way round is the best method, but TBH it’s a mug’s game…low pay and long hours are the scurge of this industry.
Winseer:
You can’t do multiple 56 hour driving weeks back to back. Thus, a full timer would have to do something different every other week to “comply”.
Since the 90 hour fortnight means an average of 45 hours driving per week, any driver limited by driving hours is going to merely find themselves not being paid for all those wasted hours when one is in a layby, occupied, away from home, but not being paid.
As agency though, you’d be paid by the hour right through, so there’s not a jolly lot of use you’d be on a 90 hour fortnight, but if you did say, 56 hours driving, 40 hours POA in one week, and took the second week off outright, then you’d be within the rules AND get fully paid. Firms hate the idea of paying drivers in laybys, hence very little or maybe zero tramping jobs get given out to agencies, except on a varied contract specifying they don’t get paid POA or something.
It would make more sense of the “90 hour limit” therefore applied to “duty time” rather than “driving time” as it would mean more pay for drivers, less hours, and most importantly - less rear-ending on motorways because one has pulled too many long shifts every fortnight!
where are all these jobs you keep banging on about the don’t pay POA?
The 90 hour fortnightly driving limit is a big bugbear of mine and is especially difficult for international drivers,pre digital tachos few international drivers kept to this silly stupid rule but now with digital tachos and having to produce 28 days records at the roadside if stopped nobody can go a minute over-in fact i know a driver who was recently fined £60 by vosa for going 7 minutes over the 90 hours!
Dont get me wrong road safety is paramount but it seems to me that the people who write the rules have never driven a truck in their lives and have no understanding of the industry.
Personally i think 98 to 100 hours a fortnight would be a sensible limit and is not a lot to ask for in fact it would be benificial in helping international drivers get home sooner to their families instead of being weekended in a lousy service area.
As an international driver i am regularly away from home for 8 to 10 weeks at a time and if i had the power to change any rule it would be to scrap the 90hours a fortnight driving limit.
I have a lot of pride and passion for truck driving and although money is important job satisfaction comes first for me,if i could legally drive more hours i happily would.
What were we put on this earth for, to read most of this it would apear to be to drive a truck all day so the boss can get a bigger boat, house holiday home,merc ect ect,when I was young I would have drove all day as long as I was a trucker,then I grew up.
CALUM:
The 90 hour fortnightly driving limit is a big bugbear of mine and is especially difficult for international drivers,pre digital tachos few international drivers kept to this silly stupid rule but now with digital tachos and having to produce 28 days records at the roadside if stopped nobody can go a minute over-in fact i know a driver who was recently fined £60 by vosa for going 7 minutes over the 90 hours!
Dont get me wrong road safety is paramount but it seems to me that the people who write the rules have never driven a truck in their lives and have no understanding of the industry.
Personally i think 98 to 100 hours a fortnight would be a sensible limit and is not a lot to ask for in fact it would be benificial in helping international drivers get home sooner to their families instead of being weekended in a lousy service area.
As an international driver i am regularly away from home for 8 to 10 weeks at a time and if i had the power to change any rule it would be to scrap the 90hours a fortnight driving limit.
I have a lot of pride and passion for truck driving and although money is important job satisfaction comes first for me,if i could legally drive more hours i happily would.
500k drivers in the uk, how many do u think will agree with you? I say max, 5%. Why anyone would want an excuse for there boss to have them working harder I don’t know.
CALUM:
Personally i think 98 to 100 hours a fortnight would be a sensible limit and is not a lot to ask for in fact it would be benificial in helping international drivers get home sooner to their families instead of being weekended in a lousy service area.
do you not think that more work would be planned / expected? so the same drivers will be in the same lousy service area, but having driven 8 / 10 more hours to get there
CALUM:
Personally i think 98 to 100 hours a fortnight would be a sensible limit and is not a lot to ask for in fact it would be benificial in helping international drivers get home sooner to their families instead of being weekended in a lousy service area.
do you not think that more work would be planned / expected? so the same drivers will be in the same lousy service area, but having driven 8 / 10 more hours to get there
BOOM, Right there, that is exactly what would happen.
New style tachos have been out a few months, our office is already planning them wagons harder.
I tell you we live in the dark ages, most folk now are on 37,40 hours a week,wages ect in most cases are set around long hours ,yes I know the silly WTD sayss 48 av but this is nothing but a boss fiddle clock on to clock off will be more like 58 or even 68,when those sort of hours are worked £1000 or£1200 a week would be fair, where are all the safety twits why are they not up in arms over a 15 hour spread ,12 is to long but get it down to that would be a start
scottishcruiser:
Deepinvet - Stick with it, not far off the same earnings and keeping legal, what my problem is with this 90hr a fortnight crap is if I were LEGALLY allowed to do more then I would EARN more… Im more than happy with what I earn just now, its live-able on easily with a small bills each month easily covered but if I were allowed to LEGALLY do more then I would earn more thus making life even more easier, maybe retiring at an earlier age? Maybe being able to over-pay my mortgage more than I do now? Putting more money by for my boy than I already do? I could buy a better car than I already have? Get what im saying yet? Im more than happy with the wage im getting now for the hours I do which are 110% legal but if this 90hr rule was scrapped and you could do your max 56hr driving a week 52 weeks of the year I would be better off than I already am!
we are drivers, that’s what drivers do.
go and work in another industry and stop being a bunch of militant pricks.
leave the driving those that have diesel in their blood.
if some of you wonder why we have a recession.
look in the [zb]ing mirror.
limeyphil:
we are drivers, that’s what drivers do.
if some of you wonder why we have a recession.
look in the [zb]ing mirror.
At the sleepy drivers leaving carnage behind them, trucks down bankings, into bridges, drifting all over the hard shoulder, into the back of one another,
I’ve been thinking for quite a while now they really need to remove the word ‘professional’ from this forums title because a large chunk of the bollox spouted on here is playground level.
I’d drop your working week to a max 5 hrs to prevent your attention span of a goldfish from running into the truck in front.
As someone posted above you need to work smarter not harder, if you think running with a magnet to get the work done rather than employing more trucks & drivers you must be thicker than I thought or just greedy & selfish
fuse:
I tell you we live in the dark ages, most folk now are on 37,40 hours a week,wages ect in most cases are set around long hours ,yes I know the silly WTD sayss 48 av but this is nothing but a boss fiddle clock on to clock off will be more like 58 or even 68,when those sort of hours are worked £1000 or£1200 a week would be fair, where are all the safety twits why are they not up in arms over a 15 hour spread ,12 is to long but get it down to that would be a start
Most folk dont have a job that involves travelling great distances so its hardly relevent what they are doing. There’s no avoiding the fact that Distance = Time and unless we’re going to up the speed limit for trucks to 90mph or ship pallets attached to a V2 rocket it needs time to get where its going. I dont know why so many truck drivers in this country resist the esssence of their job and try and bend it to the rules and conditions of working in an office or a supermarket. To be a coal miner you have to go underground, theres no getting around it. To be a sailor you have to be away on the ship, no clocking off after office hours and taking a helicopter ride back to blighty to have a drink with your office/tesco working pals and to drive a truck on any thing other than local or trunking work you need to be prepared to travel it and see it through. But no, we cant have that can we, we must kick and scream and cry bloody murder when we have to work more than 8 hours a day and if we earn less than a doctor or airline pilot. Its no wonder so many Poles have replaced British workers in transport and every other industry. The work ethic (lack of) of British drivers on this forum is appaling. All this talk of professionalism, safety, dark ages, long hours is nothing other than hiding behind rhetoric to disguise bone idleness and institutionalism that has caused industry after industry to collapse to any foreign competitor that challeneges it with even an ounce of willingness to work.
British drivers already work some of the shortest hours in the world of transport. Certainly a heck of a lot less than in North America and even we here do nothing compared to other parts of the world. Typical British victim mentality though, wanting money for nothing. Whinging British drivers who sit in RDC’s all day on hourly pay and then pull outside for a 45 minute break and then have the audacity to moan about “long hours” and being undervalued are only one step up from dole scroungers who also think they’re owed a living for no effort. Both are parasites.
fuse:
What were we put on this earth for, to read most of this it would apear to be to drive a truck all day so the boss can get a bigger boat, house holiday home,merc ect ect,when I was young I would have drove all day as long as I was a trucker,then I grew up.
It isn’t often I comment on a post by fuse, but in this instance, he is absolutely on the money.
Read some of the comments on this forum about drivers who refuse to reduce their rest period because they are too tired, it isn’t just one or two, it is the majority.
Being able to do 56hrs a week every week, rest breaks permitting.
It is a bit of a stupid rule TBH.
Flip that, Im doing 3x 15 and 2x 13 a week and I’m knackered enough thanks. What is it with drivers trying to be hero’s
If your jobs not paying take it up with the boss. It’s always the minority that ruin it for the majority.
Definitely. The secret being financially successful as a driver is to work the minimum amount of time/effort combination for the maximum money. Plenty of drivers think the other way round is the best method, but TBH it’s a mug’s game…low pay and long hours are the scurge of this industry.
limeyphil:
we are drivers, that’s what drivers do.
if some of you wonder why we have a recession.
look in the [zb]ing mirror.
At the sleepy drivers leaving carnage behind them, trucks down bankings, into bridges, drifting all over the hard shoulder, into the back of one another,
I’ve been thinking for quite a while now they really need to remove the word ‘professional’ from this forums title because a large chunk of the bollox spouted on here is playground level.
I’d drop your working week to a max 5 hrs to prevent your attention span of a goldfish from running into the truck in front.
As someone posted above you need to work smarter not harder, if you think running with a magnet to get the work done rather than employing more trucks & drivers you must be thicker than I thought or just greedy & selfish
so you think it’s viable to send someone to meet up with another driver?
you’ve never run a business have you?
sleepy drivers?
who?
not us pal. we work for 3 to 6 weeks, then go home and take 1 or 2 weeks off.
if i had the attention span of a goldfish, then i wouldn’t be doing the job.
funny though, most of the bad accidents involving trucks have a truck owned by a large company that employs day/night drivers. they never seem to involve the so called dinosaurs,cowboys, or trampers.
