There have been many ideas and suggestions put forward about various ways newly qualified drivers can get the 1st foothold into employment following the expensive process of passing the test.
Sports stars, actors and musicians are some of the groups of people that have a personal agent. Why should it only be the highly paid that has someone looking for work for their clients? What if the ordinary person also had his/her own agent.
This is different from an agency, this is an individual working directly for you whose job it is to find you regular work.
Of course the agent would expect payment for his services. My idea is a fee of £1 per hour for each hour worked. The agent would prepare and update your CV and make contact directly with driving agencies and other employers trying to arrange interviews, trial drives etc.
The driver earns the full wage on offer and pays £1 per hour directly to his agent.
The contract between the driver and the agent would obviously allow the driver to end the arrangement after perhaps a certain period of time.
The plus for the driver is he only pays when he is actually working. The agent who has contacts in the industry that perhaps the driver does not is motivated to try his best for you because he only gets paid on results.
The idea will need some adjustments and fine tuning but do the members think the idea has some merit in principle.
I have put the idea forward to some recent and not so recent trainees and almost all have said they would certainly have considered it when the time came to start looking for work.
Good idea, i would sign up to it once i passed my tests. In a way it sounds similar to an agency but with less commision, but there is still the problem of minimum driving experience which all companies and insurance companies are looking for, but still a good idea all the same, us newbies need all the help we can get.
Great Idea, im just about to do my class 1, well ive got the money, just deciding who to go with, ive been lucky in finding class 2 work, was a different story when i passed tho, the old no experiance came into play. Now im back to square 1, my boss shut the company down 2 weeks ago just like that, i do see his reasons but that doesnt help me, so yes i would sign up, any help for a newbie is a good thing.
cheers
Sounds a good idea in principle. I’m signed up with a few agencies, and have been knocking on doors to no avail. I know January - March is quiet and there’s the whole “we need 2years experience” issue, but darn it I’m plenty old enough, plenty sensible enough, been driving accident free for longer than I can remember, not afraid of a hard days work and countless other irrelevant things, so a leg-up wouldn’t go a miss.
I can see the reasoning. For myself, I’ve always put drivers wanting a start into agencies. I have agencies crying out for new drivers so there is no shortage of work. Personally, I think the idea is more trouble than it’s worth when, for the sake of giving a newbie a phone number, they’ve got work.
But I totally agree that anything helping a newbie into work should be seriously considered.
Honestly, the lack of intelligence displayed on this forum as a whole never ceases to amaze me.
Of course you’re going to get all the noobs saying it’s a brilliant idea because it gets them working (theoretically) and they don’t pay owt til then. But what about the agent? Who exactly is going to fill this exclusive £1/hr role? Would you do it? No. Would I do it? No. Would anyone else do it? NO! “But!” you will say, “If you can get 15 clients then you’re making some nice cash!” which would be true, but how is that any different from a… driving agency? You don’t pay anything to them unless they find you work and guess what, they only take £1/hr commission on some jobs as well! Plus you don’t have an extra middleman relieving you of a further £1/hr hour for finding you the work in the first place.
The simple facts are that it doesn’t matter whether you engage a proper driving agency or some random bloke on commission, you are still up against the “2 years experience” barrier and no amount of “personal agents” is going to change that.
In principal sound a good idea to the newbies but would it not just then become another agency & how would they know you have done “x” amount of work for them so you could be paid
Most employers want 2 years experience but now agency are asking for at least 6 mth proven experience ( or they are up here )
You find work and the driver does it, how is this different to any other agency apart from the fact that it’s aimed at new drivers who will be expected to pay for work rather than the agency getting paid by the company
Agencies only get paid on results which is their incentive to find work for the drivers and find drivers for the available work, but the fact is that at the moment there are more drivers than jobs so unless you’re going to get the new drivers working for less than the full or usual rate of pay (you indicate that’s not the case) or working in the jobs that no-one else wants I fail to see how the driver is any better off work wise.
One question though: how long would you envisage the driver paying the agent £1 per hour ?
Thanks as usual to Rob K for his highly positive slant on an idea.
One thing you are correct on though Rob is that an agent looking after say 20-25 drivers at £1ph has the incentive to look for and find those elusive 1st starts for newbies.
If EVERY agency and employer insisted on the 2 year experience rule nobody would ever get their 1st job driving. The jobs are there with less than 2 years they are just harder to find.
The agent as suggested in the initial post would devote his entire working time to finding those jobs. There would be no shortage of potential clients for him because most trainers would recommend him once the candidate had passed.
At the moment a guy passes the test and takes some knockbacks from agencies who keep saying “Sorry but see you in 2 years time”. This way the agent would only send his man to see employers that were prepared to offer a start.
To answer tachograph
tachograph:
One question though: how long would you envisage the driver paying the agent £1 per hour ?
I guess this might be a problem but perhaps an agreement and contract could be reached for say 100 hours minimum.
Anything that gets a newbie 1 step up the ladder is a good thing.
LGVTrainer:
Thanks as usual to Rob K for his highly positive slant on an idea.
One thing you are correct on though Rob is that an agent looking after say 20-25 drivers at £1ph has the incentive to look for and find those elusive 1st starts for newbies.
If EVERY agency and employer insisted on the 2 year experience rule nobody would ever get their 1st job driving. The jobs are there with less than 2 years they are just harder to find.
The agent as suggested in the initial post would devote his entire working time to finding those jobs. There would be no shortage of potential clients for him because most trainers would recommend him once the candidate had passed.
At the moment a guy passes the test and takes some knockbacks from agencies who keep saying “Sorry but see you in 2 years time”. This way the agent would only send his man to see employers that were prepared to offer a start.
To answer tachograph
tachograph:
One question though: how long would you envisage the driver paying the agent £1 per hour ?
I guess this might be a problem but perhaps an agreement and contract could be reached for say 100 hours minimum.
Anything that gets a newbie 1 step up the ladder is a good thing.
If it’s such a good idea and money earner then why don’t you - as someone who is always telling us how you’ll do everything you can to help noobs - show us how it’s done? The answer is you can’t, as you know as well as the rest of us that your idea isn’t workable due to the very limited number of companies that would take on a 0 experience noob.
You also know that the driver market is ridiculously saturated at the moment so if you had anything about you, you would be advising trainees-to-be not to bother instead of gleefully extracting their hard-earned cash knowing full well that their chances of securing permanent employment afterwards are slim to zero.
Probably around 50% of candidates that I meet already have a clear idea of what they are going to do after passing the test. Some are going to work for their existing employer, some already have a promise of a job, some aren’t even doing the LGV for a job (ie private horsebox driving). For the other 50% we do exactly what you suggest. We arrange interviews with companies and agencies that have taken on newbies in the past.
Obviously we can’t cover the whole country in this respect where students come to us from hundreds of miles away, but as the majority are from Essex, London and the home counties we do endeavour to get them started. I do not claim 100% success rate but we do try. I do think somebody that had the time to fully commit to this job and that knew the workings of the industry could make it work.
Rob K:
If it’s such a good idea and money earner then why don’t you
Because I am out training each day from 8am - 4pm. Because I don’t have the time does not mean the idea is not sound.
Rob K:
if you had anything about you, you would be advising trainees-to-be not to bother instead of gleefully extracting their hard-earned cash knowing full well that their chances of securing permanent employment afterwards are slim to zero.
As this forum is aimed at people that want advice about passing the test and about work prospects afterwards perhaps you should come up with something original and (dare I say) constructive instead of the usual rubbish you spout.
Rob K:
if you had anything about you, you would be advising trainees-to-be not to bother instead of gleefully extracting their hard-earned cash knowing full well that their chances of securing permanent employment afterwards are slim to zero.
As this forum is aimed at people that want advice about passing the test and about work prospects afterwards perhaps you should come up with something original and (dare I say) constructive instead of the usual rubbish you spout.
Typical defensive reply from you. No surprise really because you know I’m right and the truth is hurting…
Jesus, do you ever stop thinking of ways to fleece drivers?
First you wanted them to work for nothing and now you want them to operate for an agency, which apart from only using inexperienced drivers is also different in that most agencies charge the client for providing the driver whereas you want to charge the driver. Presumably they would be working directly for the company and paying you, or whoever, the £1 an hour when they receive their wages. If that is the case it will be costing them more than £1 an hour because they will be paying it from their nett wages so you need to add the tax and NI onto that £1 to get the true cost to the driver. If existing agencies struggle to provide work for newly qualified drivers what makes you think an agency that only has inexperienced drivers on it’s books would do any better.
You call this person fixing the new driver up with work an Agent. I think a better and more truthful name would be Pimp.
You want some constructive ideas on solving the problem of too many drivers, particularly inexperienced drivers, and not enough work? Simple solution, severely limit the number of people who can train for and acquire the licence(s) each year unless they have a job lined up. That will improve the chances of finding work for the existing inexperienced drivers and reduce the heartache for people who spend their hard earned on getting the licence(s) only to find they would have been better spending the money on a decent holiday instead of wasting it.
There are plenty of Nigerians who would love to meet you people who think this is a good idea because boy have they got some schemes you would love.
lightning:
That idea from john sounds a really good idea.
There’s a business opportunity for you then
Line up plenty of companies who will employ new drivers on full pay, then you can charge the training companies for registering their trainees with you, being able to put new drivers in touch with companies who will take on new drivers would be an excellent selling point for training companies so it’s only fair that they pay for the service.
Perhaps the best thing you could do would be to come to camp Flair and meet the team
Talk is cheap but results talk…and so I make this offer
Rob K and TachographSo that you can both advise the people here I make this offer. I will pay for you guys to come and meet with me. I will pay your travel and even overnight expenses. Lets get this this issue finally sorted.
I hope that both you guys PM me to sort a meeting out.
Not only that Rob K and Tachograph I will pay you each £100 just to listen.
Perhaps the best thing you could do would be to come to camp Flair and meet the team
Talk is cheap but results talk…and so I make this offer
Rob K and TachographSo that you can both advise the people here I make this offer. I will pay for you guys to come and meet with me. I will pay your travel and even overnight expenses. Lets get this this issue finally sorted.
I hope that both you guys PM me to sort a meeting out.
Not only that Rob K and Tachograph I will pay you each £100 just to listen.
PM me tomorrow or shut up you 2 idiots.
Am I missing something here? Why do you want to pay me and Tacho to come and meet you? What is this pressing “issue” that you wish to get “finally sorted”? And why do you want to “shut us up” ?
You dont get out of bed most days because you cant or wont work but you have been invited into a world where you can advise the other people on this board…
Rob you hide behind a keyboard, but no more my lazy Rob K, take up my offer, meet me then report back.
& how would they know you have done “x” amount of work for them 
