Torkey:
& remember, there’s more chance of your partner/Spouse receiving a call from the Police to say that you’ve been killed at work than in any other industry…
Are you sure? I think the army and probably the police are more dangerous?
You will probably find that a lot of truck drivers earn more money than a lot of police officers out on the street & soldiers.
In the grand scheme of things, lorry drivers are just one group out of many complaining about being underpaid. Our case though is probably one of the weakest - I barely sweat at work, get through plenty of books, play many a game on my phone & drink many a cup of tea whilst being underpaid.
Torkey:
& remember, there’s more chance of your partner/Spouse receiving a call from the Police to say that you’ve been killed at work than in any other industry…
Are you sure? I think the army and probably the police are more dangerous?
You will probably find that a lot of truck drivers earn more money than a lot of police officers out on the street & soldiers.
In the grand scheme of things, lorry drivers are just one group out of many complaining about being underpaid. Our case though is probably one of the weakest - I barely sweat at work, get through plenty of books, play many a game on my phone & drink many a cup of tea whilst being underpaid.
Just trying things into perspective. How can we really bleat about not all being paid £30-40K+ given what a lot of us do in RDCs etc. day to day when their are police officers out there fighting crime, soldiers fighting wars & nurses saving lives for much less It’s actually pretty laughable if you think about it. Many many people are underpaid & undervalued in their professions in this country & we are just one of them but hardly the worst off.
Fact is so far as low skilled jobs go, which is what most truck driving jobs are, there are extremely few other options which offer you the same money making potential. You might have to work 60+ hours a week, but it’s better taking home 4-500+ to your family than stacking shelves at Aldi or cleaning toilets and taking home 300 just because the hourly rates higher. The cost of obtaining the license pays for itself after a short while. Call that ‘rolling over and taking it up the ring’ if you want, but when you are low skilled and in need of work you simply can’t be that picky. Therefore, its understandable in my eyes why so many do it.
For the record, I don’t work 60+ hours a week or tramp & earn good money so suppose i’m one of the lucky ones. I have the skills to get out of this industry if I needed to, but clearly not everybody has that option & they just need to crack on.
When I first got my hands on a lorry 15 years ago I thought that I had really landed a very good job.The pay was £7.50 and the gaffer often handed out bottles of wine if there was a broken case we also had a subsidised canteen .The public sector seem to get an annual pay rise.
My brother is in the Royal Artillery. Yes their hourly pay isn’t great, but I have never ever met anyone with more disposable cash, because they have zero outgoings unless they are daft enough to have knocked someone up! He has done his pilots license and is looking to buy a second hand plane. He is a Lance Bombardier so not exactly shot up the ranks.
He loves his job though so doesn’t mind long hours for ■■■■ pay, and his perks are good.
Was a job for a fully qualified paramedic on nhs job site the other day,the wage was 21000 to 28000 a year.
Now don’t want to devalue truck driving but that’s got to make you think transport is not the only industry with wage issues…
One valuable thing you have to remember, whilst nursing, policing, protecting are very admiral jobs, they are in fact a straight cost to whomever employs them, a nurse, policeman, whatever the rank do not make any money, they just cost money.
A truck driver in the chain, do at least make money for their employer, be it probably nowadays not as much as they should, hence the lower wages.
A good broker for example of any description, be it Freight, banking etc. can earn his employer a lot of money, hence he may well get paid more than all of the above. if he makes his employer say 300 grand in a year and his cost to company is 100 grand, he didn’t really cost his company anything in reality.
Yes, that’s the point I was trying to make, I could employ somebody and pay them £500 a week into their bank, but I know they would just be on here moaning about whatever the hourly rate was. Even Rikki joined in with the Coombe Valley Transport bashing thread.
So why give a bloke a job when I might, if I was lucky, make £100 profit with all of the aggro of running a second truck?
The point is that you made a profit. The real issue would appear to be that you didn’t make enough profit?
To put things into perspective, I have seen a productions operative’s job working 12 hour shifts, four on and four off including weekends and bank holidays, rotating between days and nights with production targets to meet, at the grand sum of £6.31 hour flat rate for all hours covered.
I guess we all have our own perspectives of what a professional driver should earn, but for myself I would put it at £380 week minimum for rigids on local work up to £500 plus for artics on distance work. Say what you will. but you can get a hgv or psv license with as little as a weeks training and there aren’t many ‘trades’ you could become ‘qualified’ within such a short time scale.
Incidentally, I have seen vacancies for driving class two vehicles, mauling dragging cages into local convenience stores at just £7 hour with a fixed 40 hour week. Personally I would rather shovel sheep dung for minimum wage, but as long as people are dumb enough and all that… ■■?
There is no other industry that is so heavily regulated as far as individual employees are concerned than the transport industry … take a look at the fines that VOSA will implement at the earliest opportunity!.. in which other industry would a worker be fined £60 for forgetting to sign a piece of paper?(referring to a tacho irregularity printout ) The penalties are 'kin endless…
Add to that the need to fund medicals, DigiCards, licence renewals and DCPC and you wonder why we ■■■■■ about poor wage offers - Jeez…
Who else goes to work with the risk of such financial penalties hanging over their head for doing their day to day duties? …and also death for that matter…it’s a high risk industry! I’ll tell you now…no one!
If you’re willing to work for £7.30 an hour to be Professional driver with all of the above risks associated (and I’ve missed a few out) then i suggest you become a Post Man who earns £8.78 an hour without fear of fines for putting the letters in the the wrong post box.
And before anyone starts asking about my abilities to do other jobs i HAVE been a Postie and was also a Certified Network Engineer who then went on to manage an IT Helpdesk earning £18+ an hour before taking VR…
The people that are accepting these low wages really need to start drawing comparisons and have a rethink… & remember, there’s more chance of your partner/Spouse receiving a call from the Police to say that you’ve been killed at work than in any other industry…
Are there any statistics to back up these claims about it being the most dangerous industry, what about commercial divers for instance?
According to an Oxford University study a few years ago (2002), lorry drivers come in at number 10 in the UK, after Fishermen, Seafarers, Aircraft Flight Deck officers, Railway workers, Scaffolders, Roofers & Glaziers, Forestry workers, Quarry & Mine workers and Dockers. They were only looking at deaths, not injuries though.
In looking at these things though, you have to remember that although a fair few lorry drivers are killed at work each year, there are quite a lot of us to start with (hence the somewhat surprising appearance of pilots etc on the list - not many are killed, but there are relatively few of them anyway.
I suppose to add some perspective I have just taken delivery of a new Kenwood food processor it cost £30.00 from an e-bay outlet.My parents bought a Kenwood Chef in the late 60s it cost about £35.00,so there are some swings and roundabouts out there.I still wont drive to work for less than £8.50 per hour.
So here, according to HSE data, are the top most dangerous (i.e. carrying the highest risk of death or injury) civilian occupations in the UK.
Agriculture, forestry and fishing: the riskiest industry sector, which despite its relatively small size, accounts for about one in five of all fatal injuries to workers. Almost half of the workers who were fatally injured were farmers and 21% were farm workers.
Construction: remains a high risk industry. Although it supports only about 5% of the employees in Britain it still accounts for 22% of fatal industrial injuries and 10% of reported major injuries. Over 5, 000 occupational cancer cases are estimated to arise each year as a result of past exposure to asbestos in the construction sector.
Manufacturing Industry: represents about 10% of the British workforce but is responsible for 25% of fatalities and 16% of reported injuries to employees. About 2,000 occupational cancer deaths each year result from past exposure to toxic substances in the manufacturing sector.
Waste and recycling: may employ only about 0.6% of the workforce in Britain, but is responsible for 2.8% of reported injuries to employees. Almost a third of the fatalities in this sector are due to employees being struck by vehicles and 35% of reported major injuries are due to slips and trips.
Coming out of farming and into driving i can say the pay is much better. Thats why i’m coming into the industry. As has been pointed out before truck drivers do earn a fair wage. More than most people i know including a barrister and a solictor… but then no one on here seems to care as it doesnt suit with the ■■■■■■■■.
Harry Monk. If you wanna put another truck on the road. Give me a shout. I’ll drive for that… thats almost double what im on now on the farm!
