Milk Man:
Cut the agency out, go straight to all your local companies offering your driving services you sound experienced enough to get a decent rate.
Where’s that to be had?
Firms around here all pay less to full timers than agencies pay to work in the same places doing the same jobs…
“Try before you buy”?
Carryfast:
Ironically if you really want to do ‘industrial’ type haulage work you’d be limiting your options by stating no nights out.In which case do the job properly by saying you’re only looking for full load distance preferably international work preferably driving ‘proper’ draw bar outfits and if they can’t provide it don’t bother.Which is more or less how I gave up on agencies around 30 years ago.
I have a nice home in a country village and a good woman that shares my bed. Somehow the attractions of sleeping in a litter strewn layby just don’t appeal somehow. 
On a more practical basis I run a small internet business, so need to be home every night to ship orders out. 
Winseer:
Milk Man:
Cut the agency out, go straight to all your local companies offering your driving services you sound experienced enough to get a decent rate.Where’s that to be had?
Firms around here all pay less to full timers than agencies pay to work in the same places doing the same jobs…
“Try before you buy”?
I’m working at a firm whose drivers tell me they’re on £1 less than me (agency), so it’s not just round your way. Unless you’re from round my way… 
att:
Called agency, told them the rates advertised were a carrot to dangle and get others in…They were true to their word, the rate advertised was the rate paid and I have turned down work from them!
There is a driver shortage around here (South Lincs) and the rates are good
Where abouts? All the agencys I’ve been trying have nothing but multidrop.
LIBERTY_GUY:
Carryfast:
Ironically if you really want to do ‘industrial’ type haulage work you’d be limiting your options by stating no nights out.In which case do the job properly by saying you’re only looking for full load distance preferably international work preferably driving ‘proper’ draw bar outfits and if they can’t provide it don’t bother.Which is more or less how I gave up on agencies around 30 years ago.I have a nice home in a country village and a good woman that shares my bed. Somehow the attractions of sleeping in a litter strewn layby just don’t appeal somehow.
On a more practical basis I run a small internet business, so need to be home every night to ship orders out.
Which realistically limits the options to just trunking if you don’t want multi drop distribution zb.
Much of that will involve night work and these days will probably involve long hours because of the slow limited speeds and/or sitting around in RDC’s/Hubs.Because in most cases the idea of direct distance trunking was killed off by those slow speeds amongst whatever other reasons.Even that type of work will be in relatively short supply on agencies compared to the type of local/medium distance multi drop zb which most drivers don’t want.
As was always the case the fact is agencies are more about filling the type of jobs that most drivers don’t want than providing drivers for good jobs involving holidays and sickness cover etc.IE in general the best jobs won’t be covered by agencies at all.
Although there are plenty of dreamers who really do think that agencies can provide a choice of whatever anyone chooses to do.Which in most,if not all, cases is as much bs as chalk being used by VOSA/law to stop a truck being driven off a loading dock because the driver has run out of hours. 
Radar19:
att:
Called agency, told them the rates advertised were a carrot to dangle and get others in…They were true to their word, the rate advertised was the rate paid and I have turned down work from them!
There is a driver shortage around here (South Lincs) and the rates are goodWhere abouts? All the agencys I’ve been trying have nothing but multidrop.
I think the post was referring to wage rates not type of work on offer.See above post.
peirre:
They will initially attempt to make all newly signed up drivers go outside their comfort zone, its just the way it is.
After a while they (and you) will get the measure of each other and eventually put you in positions which suit you.
But there may be times you WILL have to bend over and take some crap to make a wage.
I don’t think it’s the multidrop aspect of “rigid multidrop” that gets up our noses - it’s the constantly being lied to about it.
After all, who is advertising in the mainsteam press for things like “Rigid drivers urgently wanted. London multidrop. £18ph Midweek Nights. Immediate Starts” I applied for an agency with just such an ad - delivering to Boots shops in central London…
The agency would instead say £18ph - which then turns out to be only for sundays & bank holidays. Midweek it was £9.75ph. You get lied to yet again for what is already an unpopular job.
The comfort zone has thus been breached by commuting into the big smoke for the anticipated crappy job - but for a whole lot less money than you’ve been led to believe at the start… Lied to & misled!!
If I’d got the anticipated £18ph - I would have got on with the job with a skip in my step FFS… Why don’t they just tell the truth, pay the money, and get on with it - working WITH us rather than against us?
I’d go back and do London Multidrop tomorrow - if the money was right.
All the lies and deceit are about getting people to work in London AND commute there for the same old wages you can get across the road from where you live…
I understand DHL contractors get paid well for this kind of work. Then they sub it out to agencies. The agencies then think they can shave 50% off it as their cut.
I reckon DHL must be one of the block bookers of drivers that pay the agency around £20ph for the drivers - thinking the agency will pay on the driver £12-£18 only to see numerous attempts to palm drivers off with a lot less instead…
So… you end up with a local ex-minicab guy doing the job - and no one asks any questions when half the load disappears! The firm are happy he’s picked up the job for £7.50ph which they think saves them a fortune in the long run - because the “shrinkage” is all covered by insurance…
Insurers - Wake up!
Winseer:
peirre:
They will initially attempt to make all newly signed up drivers go outside their comfort zone, its just the way it is.
After a while they (and you) will get the measure of each other and eventually put you in positions which suit you.
But there may be times you WILL have to bend over and take some crap to make a wage.I don’t think it’s the multidrop aspect of “rigid multidrop” that gets up our noses - it’s the constantly being lied to about it.
After all, who is advertising in the mainsteam press for things like “Rigid drivers urgently wanted. London multidrop. £18ph Midweek Nights. Immediate Starts” I applied for an agency with just such an ad - delivering to Boots shops in central London…
The agency would instead say £18ph - which then turns out to be only for sundays & bank holidays. Midweek it was £9.75ph. You get lied to yet again for what is already an unpopular job.
The comfort zone has thus been breached by commuting into the big smoke for the anticipated crappy job - but for a whole lot less money than you’ve been led to believe at the start… Lied to & misled!!
If I’d got the anticipated £18ph - I would have got on with the job with a skip in my step FFS… Why don’t they just tell the truth, pay the money, and get on with it - working WITH us rather than against us?
The reason why they lie is simply because in most cases no one with any sense wants the work they have on offer at any rate.In which case they have to lie about the job and/or the rate to make it attractive enough to the type of mugs who think if something looks too good to be true then it must be true in order to survive.The same applies in the case of the bs multiple choice papers which I remember with questions like would you be prepared/capable to do distance/international haulage/trunking work if/when required.Which is obviously all part of the scam to make naive mugs think that if they accept all the local multi drop zb they’ll eventually be given some decent work.Which in fact doesn’t exist because in most cases those types of jobs rarely,if ever,use agency drivers because they don’t need to and/or prefer to cover the job internally,especially in the case of international.
Winseer:
I’d go back and do London Multidrop tomorrow - if the money was right.
All the lies and deceit are about getting people to work in London AND commute there for the same old wages you can get across the road from where you live…
The inconvenient question then being why would the same/similar lies need be put out in the case of agencies and drivers who are actually based in or close to London where commuting isn’t an issue.The usual rule being that if you’re lumbered with living in the area then that’s too often the only main type of work available with a resulting even larger disproportionate demand for the ‘right’ type of work because of that.
When was the last time you walked down a london district street - and looked at everyone else around you?
These bods are the local workforce now. It’s just the guys like ‘the rest of us’ that will “not be living in the area” and will thus be tricked into commuting in…
You don’t need to lie to someone on housing benefit about the low wages - minimum wage pays when you’re on the full raft of benefits.
Winseer:
When was the last time you walked down a london district street - and looked at everyone else around you?These bods are the local workforce now. It’s just the guys like ‘the rest of us’ that will “not be living in the area” and will thus be tricked into commuting in…
You don’t need to lie to someone on housing benefit about the low wages - minimum wage pays when you’re on the full raft of benefits.
Assuming it was all about money then the agencies wouldn’t have needed to lie about the work they had to offer even during the down turn during the 1980’s.The reality in my experience was that everyone was ( rightly ) looking for distance,preferably international,work.While no one wanted to do all the local/multi drop type zb.
Then,just as now,it was no surprise that it was the latter which was all the agencies had to offer and usually had to resort to their usual typical better work tomorrow bait tactics to find drivers.The money usually being a lot further down the list of priorities in the case of drivers looking for the right type of work.IE it isn’t always what the money is it’s what you have to do for it which matters.With local/medium distance multi drop usually being one of the worst ways to earn a living ‘driving’ a truck and it taking a special type of driver to be happy doing it at any rate.
The thing is though, if agencies tell a pack of lies before they even register someone with them, then that is hardly the basis for a good working relationship.
In my case I was specifically looking to do the heavy dirty work that is general haulage, steel deliveries and muddy construction sites where trucks regularly sink up to their axles, the type of work many drivers simply wouldn’t do and was completely upfront with them about not wanting to do any shop deliveries. I wasn’t asking for a new truck, or uniform or any training etc. These agencies are advertising tippers, steel and general haulage on a weekly basis but mention you don’t do shops and it’s like you have committed some kind of unspoken sin.
In the past I used to regularly do local multi drops, whether that be shifting steel between stockholders and factories, or driving tippers between quarries, sites and waste sites. Shops though - nah I’ll give that one a wide berth… 
LIBERTY_GUY:
The thing is though, if agencies tell a pack of lies before they even register someone with them, then that is hardly the basis for a good working relationship.In my case I was specifically looking to do the heavy dirty work that is general haulage, steel deliveries and muddy construction sites where trucks regularly sink up to their axles, the type of work many drivers simply wouldn’t do and was completely upfront with them about not wanting to do any shop deliveries. I wasn’t asking for a new truck, or uniform or any training etc. These agencies are advertising tippers, steel and general haulage on a weekly basis but mention you don’t do shops and it’s like you have committed some kind of unspoken sin.
In the past I used to regularly do local multi drops, whether that be shifting steel between stockholders and factories, or driving tippers between quarries, sites and waste sites. Shops though - nah I’ll give that one a wide berth…
You’ve answered your own question with that post.The fact is agencies make their living from the contradiction between the driver demands of the retail/building distribution sector and the job search criterea of what most drivers choose/prefer to do which in most cases aren’t compatible with each other.In general none of the specialised sectors which you’ve described would be a large,if any,part of the agencies’ business in addition to the distance trunking/haulage sector.
Having said that I didn’t think there was much difference between the local/ medium distance construction steel/general haulage sector,which I did for a while,and seemed easily available in full time regular employment,when compared to the type of local retail/building supplies distribution sector which made up most,if not all,of the agency work which I was given during the short time I worked with agencies.IE more or less as zb work as each other involving lots of inner city and other urban driving and multi drops.
As for tippers maybe that would have been just about tolerable depending on area and distances between loading and drops like the type of work I did as a County council driver doing plant haulage and bulk refuse transport with a multi lift.Which again was a job which was only covered internally and never by agencies during holidays or sickness periods.
Perhaps the tastes in all this is actually about just two camps -
One: “I want domestic runs, and to be home every night & decent money. I don’t mind working hard if I get the first three here…”
and
Two: “I want distance work, tramping, overseas. if the money is decent…”
Thing is, if the money is NOT decent - we all end up settling for an easy life as the lesser of various evils here don’t we? (Well, I don’t, but there’s plenty of others that would take a pay cut in exchange for “regular hours”!)
Agency is telling me they might want to stick me in MJD next week… Not done that, been there before etc. I go to it with an open mind. I might love it, I might hate it. Worth giving it a go though, since I’ve been told they “do starts around the clock” apparently, which suits someone like me straight out the gate… So far! 
Firms don’t use agencies for industrial work if they can help it as most lads aren’t trained up like you. Shop deliveries generally ■■■■ unless they are actually big enough to take an artic properly.
agency people have a knack for lying, we have so many variations of our job so its what someone prefers like liberty guy you do niche work i myself dont like stores as too much hassle which im not paid for so i do docks fridges etc, but these rats try and play big boss- you need to do what we require? huh, only this week they ripped me yet again so i went to the director of the company im assigned to, i told him sorry mate im going home your company is sound but these rats have been paid from you then rip my wages, he got straight on the blower to tell them that he wouldnt give them any more work if my money wasnt straight within the hour, guess what: it was wired into my bank there and then, parasites, and i will have no nonsense from them, they rang me to tell me im somewhere next week so i rang the director and asked if id done a bad job as no work for me, you guessed, im back there next week ooppss,sorry agency 2 nil to me, LIB stand your ground with them theres loads of work
Maybe it’s just me, but if agencies were to try to put the right drivers into the right companies there would be far less negatives both from drivers and the companies they get placed into. Trouble is many ‘recruitment consultants’ just see the pound signs flashing in front of them and ultimately end up wasting lots of people’s time.
To me there is no such thing as a generic truck driver where one size fits all. Better to put the people with the right skills sets into the right jobs that suit their personal circumstances. You end up with a far happier driver, a much more contented client and the agency shown in an extremely professional light (for a change).
as said the agency probably don’t have much of that type of work. Tippers are mainly covered by the companies that run them and not agency.
The one I work for have mostly Hiab work over the summer they were saying over 50% of there bookings is to builders merchants. Through the winter its gas, coal and oil. They have a regular need for food cages eg P&H. Also cover tesco and some other similar jobs.
Pallet work seams to be constant for different companies too. Then the odd bit of this and that.
So if you turn up and say I’m only doing this type of work and they dont have it, then why would they take you on when someone else is willing to do a bit of everything.
m_attt:
as said the agency probably don’t have much of that type of work. Tippers are mainly covered by the companies that run them and not agency.The one I work for have mostly Hiab work over the summer they were saying over 50% of there bookings is to builders merchants. Through the winter its gas, coal and oil. They have a regular need for food cages eg P&H. Also cover tesco and some other similar jobs.
Pallet work seams to be constant for different companies too. Then the odd bit of this and that.
So if you turn up and say I’m only doing this type of work and they dont have it, then why would they take you on when someone else is willing to do a bit of everything.
The fact is if the local Hiab zb type building distribution jobs and retail distribution work is subtracted by driver choice the agencies wouldn’t then have enough work to employ anyone.Which then leaves the question why is it no problem for agencies to be used for Hiab type work but not tippers.It’s my guess that’s one of the dividing points between a just about tolerable job in many cases and the type of local,urban,round the houses local multi drop zb that no driver with any sense wants to do and it’s bridging that dividing line which is what agencies are all about and is how they make their living.So it’s no surprise that lying to drivers to get them in the door is an essential part in meeting that criterea and need in the industry.
IE driving a tipper could potentially be the difference between a relatively few loads and drops per day with a reasonable amount of rural/semi rural distance and driving between them.
As opposed to a typical Hiab type job on agency which inevitably means spending all day in the towns and suburbs of Greater London or similar and as much,if not more,time loading and unloading and working in the yard as navigating a truck through zb built up areas.
As I’ve said the fact is agencies are all about providing drivers for the zb jobs that most/all drivers don’t want.Within that there ‘might’ ‘possibly’ be ‘some’ better more tolerable type jobs like trunking etc.However they are so few and far between as to make it unviable to take on drivers who don’t want to do the zb type work and even if they did you can bet that all those who might ‘say’ that they are ‘happy’ with doing the zb would then complain.Being that there’s very few,if any, people who enter the industry to drive anything larger than a four wheeler who then want to spend their working life doing zb multi drop rounds in town.
