I remember years ago looking through a book with a title like ‘Arthur Daley´s Guide to life’ or something, an attempt at a ‘funny’ spin off of the Minder TV series. In the book was an Arthur Daley list of company type´s that he would start to turn a quick buck. Things like secondhand car dealer, secondhand furniture, small bike courier co etc; all low barriers to entry, low start up costs and the chance to screw someone over. I can´t help but think that ´employment agency` would be on that list these days. My landlord (and letting agent would definately be on the list as well 
) was talking about it “oh yeah, I could start up an agency. All you need is an office and a laptop. Put ads for drivers on the web, get a suit on and go and sell it to Morrisons and the rest and you´re away.” This guy is a property shyster and a former accountant who doesn´t know a tachograph from Taco Belle, but if you work for an agency it seems there is a good chance you are working for someone like him. And judging by the number of agencies around he´s not the only one thinking like that; there must be at least 40 agencies in the Northampton area alone and, whilst some are good, I´m sure most are the Arthur Daley type.
It´s made me think about the possibility of cutting out these middle men, after all what value do they bring? My current agency gets me work, sure, but they seem completely incapable of administrating pay right and seem to have almost zero knowledge of hours rules or working practices. So what me and the client pay £2-£8 for every hour of my time is the agencies ´marketing`skills, and I suppose the other thing is cash flow, for me at the moment I count on getting paid a week in arrears whilst the agency probably expect to use 30-90 day billing.
I already operate as a limited co so in theory all I´d need to do is market myself as basically a one man agency, and have enough cash to accept monthly billing. Then the client and myself could split the saving between us. I can´t see that the big blue chips would go for it because they would need several drivers at once and would need a bigger ´pool` to draw from but the smaller operators might go for it. Another way would be for self employed/ltd co drivers to form a kind of collective and then nominate one of them to do the marketing and to be point of contact, then billing and of course the work would be dealt with between client and driver.
Any thoughts from anyone, especially self-employed drivers and small operators?
, who is the pillock ■■?
