There is NO shortage of drivers, there is too many big/medium size firms treating drivers like idiots with silly rules and monitoring,if your not a yes man you won’t want to work there…
It’s funny that my company hasn’t had a driver leave for nearly 5 years and nearly 10 before that and they were due to retirement.we gave blokes ringing all the time for jobs and it’s not great money just a nice place to work with no politics and monitoring,and because the lads are trusted to just do the job then they don’t mess around and give 100%…when I worked for a firm with all these silly rules and office chasing you I used to get dragged down and would not give my best for them.
In my view they is a shortage of drivers not willing to put up with company BS and until these company’s change I hope they suffer…
Good firms don’t need to look for drivers if you notice it’s all the “logistics” firms that cry the shortage problem
yorkshire terrier:
There is NO shortage of drivers, there is too many big/medium size firms treating drivers like idiots with silly rules and monitoring,if your not a yes man you won’t want to work there…
It’s funny that my company hasn’t had a driver leave for nearly 5 years and nearly 10 before that and they were due to retirement.we gave blokes ringing all the time for jobs and it’s not great money just a nice place to work with no politics and monitoring,and because the lads are trusted to just do the job then they don’t mess around and give 100%…when I worked for a firm with all these silly rules and office chasing you I used to get dragged down and would not give my best for them.
In my view they is a shortage of drivers not willing to put up with company BS and until these company’s change I hope they suffer…
Good firms don’t need to look for drivers if you notice it’s all the “logistics” firms that cry the shortage problem
The companies answer to a driver that questions them is “well if you don’t want to do it we’ll get a driver that will”
There’s no holding companies to ransom threatening to leave, they know they’ll get a replacement and the driver knows how hard it will be to get another job.
If Consumers want things cheaper, are they not forgetting that without workers with less spending power taking the pay stagnation on the chin to permit such cheapness - we’ll eventually reach the point where all the currently highly paid non-jobs all disappear in the next round of our country’s managed decline?
…In an empire, the doers rise, and the won’t and can’ts - fall.
In a democracy we try and improve public services bought and paid for out of our own taxes.
In a Liberal Defeaticy - we try and pretend that someone else more productive than us will continue lending us money forever, as we cannot afford the lifestyle ourselves otherwise.
I think I raised the issue in a another thread:
Why is there still a stigma about debt default, when people are happy to be godless, deviant, wretches in just about every other way?
Our future as it stands is one with ever more consumer debt.
There are plenty these days who can’t even afford to put “cheap everything” on the table, because their job just doesn’t pay enough wages without practically moving into the workplace outright.
The consequences of debt default are currently that you cannot get further credit once it’s done for six years (unsecured) and 12 years (secured).
Therefore, if it’s currently looking like you’re going to spend more than six years paying the current lot of debt off - what the hell is everyone waiting for?
Back to the headline topic - Has anyone thought that the reason there is so little agency work around in January - is because when consumers are skint after Christmas - so are the employers?
We need a return to some kind of Fordist society I reckon.
Wages rise until they meet the falling cost of ever-improving producer goods. If productivity then falls, the price of those goods rises, so people can only get into debt - because of their own falling productivity.
Leave the welfare system for those who geunuinely cannot work due to genuine disabilities, failing health, etc. rather than “It’s best not to work for less than £520pw when you can get £520pw on benefits”, which must fill the dole queues up with fit young people who’ve chosen the lifestyle just as older folk that should have long since retired - are forced back to work by failing pension management not providing a proper pension for all that money they paid in over the years.
Grumpy Dad:
yorkshire terrier:
There is NO shortage of drivers, there is too many big/medium size firms treating drivers like idiots with silly rules and monitoring,if your not a yes man you won’t want to work there…
It’s funny that my company hasn’t had a driver leave for nearly 5 years and nearly 10 before that and they were due to retirement.we gave blokes ringing all the time for jobs and it’s not great money just a nice place to work with no politics and monitoring,and because the lads are trusted to just do the job then they don’t mess around and give 100%…when I worked for a firm with all these silly rules and office chasing you I used to get dragged down and would not give my best for them.
In my view they is a shortage of drivers not willing to put up with company BS and until these company’s change I hope they suffer…
Good firms don’t need to look for drivers if you notice it’s all the “logistics” firms that cry the shortage problemThe companies answer to a driver that questions them is “well if you don’t want to do it we’ll get a driver that will”
There’s no holding companies to ransom threatening to leave, they know they’ll get a replacement and the driver knows how hard it will be to get another job.
Not so sure mate. I reckon it’s one big game of ’ mortgage chicken '.
Firms give it large because they know the average driver will ■■■ his pants at the prospect of losing their job.
Until drivers start to use " Stiffus Spinus ", they will continue to be taken the ■■■■ out of. Call the bluff people, call the bluff…
kyk:
You sound like representative of the old dumb soon to die driver category so we - the rest can only be happy about the fact you don’t have much left and we’ll get rid of you to maybe make world a better place.Statement that You have been in each and every DHL site across Europe and claim that toilets for drivers are available in all of them simply proves lack of basic brainpower.
You’re just a horrible and dumb wee ■■■■■
Rjan:
iomex:
That’s interesting… I usually find van wages to be better than HGV /shrugMy agency struggles to cover van work as the other HGV drivers refuse to do it. I don’t know why, it’s a nice break - no panicking everytime you see a 7.5t sign, no nervous watching the tacho when you hit town-centre traffic, no worries about load security…
Cab’s not as comfy, and not as interesting. That’s before considering how many drops are likely to be involved.
I drive Ford Transit… as comfortable as driving a car! I do mainly home counties & central London, with frequent Birmingham,
Manchester and sometimes Scotland runs, and also the odd European trip on very rare occasions!
Perhaps a few times a week I’ll need to deliver or collect a full van load from just one place, but I generally run around with
no more than 2-3 items in the back and in 7 years I’ve NEVER had more than 8 drops!
NO silly tachos or drivers hours, stop when I want, drive as long as I want, no concerns about height, weight or width limits!
What’s NOT to like… apart from the crap wages £18k for a, admittedly for only a 37.5 hour week… but realistically
I work around 50 hours a week! 
So my odd HGV days on the agency are just icing on the cake and I like to keep my hand in in case a great HGV job comes up!
I have hardly worked this November, December, because where I usually work, they have enough drivers, so no shortage in this part of Lincs.
I usually do spuds and there is no money in them at the moment, so not many being moved around, it has been nice though, not having to put up with the rude and ignorant Eastern Europeans at the processing centres, not to mention the lack of English language and all the problems that brings.
I doubt this will get past the censors on this website 
att:
it has been nice though, not having to put up with the rude and ignorant Eastern Europeans at the processing centres, not to mention the lack of English language and all the problems that brings.
Are they actually being rude though or do they just not speak English (or have the confidence to engage in small talk with it)? I’ve dealt with many EEs - most are friendly, some have a better command of English than the natives, and I can only faintly recall an odd case or two where I’ve come across someone rude (which in this game is common enough amongst natives too). Many who can speak English, nevertheless don’t have a great deal of the confidence necessary to engage in conversation.
Truth be told, I’ve seen rudeness the other way around far more often - people kicking off or speaking in an obviously aggressive way just because they don’t like the accent they’re hearing, often the same sort who wouldn’t say boo to a goose if it was a native boss telling them they’re getting a paycut or something.
Sorry but where you can see undelivered load?Empty store,not received parcel or stoped factory who run out of row material???Where you can see standing truck for while because no drivers??
eagerbeaver:
Grumpy Dad:
yorkshire terrier:
There is NO shortage of drivers, there is too many big/medium size firms treating drivers like idiots with silly rules and monitoring,if your not a yes man you won’t want to work there…
It’s funny that my company hasn’t had a driver leave for nearly 5 years and nearly 10 before that and they were due to retirement.we gave blokes ringing all the time for jobs and it’s not great money just a nice place to work with no politics and monitoring,and because the lads are trusted to just do the job then they don’t mess around and give 100%…when I worked for a firm with all these silly rules and office chasing you I used to get dragged down and would not give my best for them.
In my view they is a shortage of drivers not willing to put up with company BS and until these company’s change I hope they suffer…
Good firms don’t need to look for drivers if you notice it’s all the “logistics” firms that cry the shortage problemThe companies answer to a driver that questions them is “well if you don’t want to do it we’ll get a driver that will”
There’s no holding companies to ransom threatening to leave, they know they’ll get a replacement and the driver knows how hard it will be to get another job.Not so sure mate. I reckon it’s one big game of ’ mortgage chicken '.
Firms give it large because they know the average driver will ■■■ his pants at the prospect of losing their job.
Until drivers start to use " Stiffus Spinus ", they will continue to be taken the ■■■■ out of. Call the bluff people, call the bluff…
Right on Beaver.
Indentured slaves of debt ■■■■■■■ of the bigger machine that is capitalism, I am not saying there is anything wrong with the system, I have done well out of it. But it does let itself to prey upon those with less confidence or ones who have made poor financial decisions and let themselves be exploited.
I have taken on some of the worst jobs imaginable but always made sure I was getting my end to make up for it. People have tried to take the ■■■■, and like you, this is when I chuck the keys back at them and tell them its now their problem.
Sometimes its “get out and never come back” other times is a groveling climb down, either way my head is held high and keep my nerve. Plenty more fish in the sea.
Yes, there maybe a line of drivers ready to take your job for less money, but if your the boss, your truck aint earning anything laid on its side in a ditch. Some need reminding of this when trying to drive down costs.
AndieHyde:
Indentured slaves of debt ■■■■■■■ of the bigger machine that is capitalism
The problem with most people is they live pay cheque to pay cheque… If you could somehow amass a couple of years worth of
salary in the bank, ( enough to pay your bills for a while! ) you would have what I like to call ‘f**k off money’… you could tell any
boss to F off knowing you have enough to live without a job for a while and at least two years to find another before your money
runs out!
The reality is many people don’t have this ( safety net! ) money and won’t rock the boat in case they get fired and can’t meet next
months mortgage and other outgoings, so they have to eat sh*t and your boss exploits your fear!
Lennoxtown:
AndieHyde:
Indentured slaves of debt ■■■■■■■ of the bigger machine that is capitalism
The problem with most people is they live pay cheque to pay cheque… If you could somehow amass a couple of years worth of
salary in the bank, ( enough to pay your bills for a while! ) you would have what I like to call ‘f**k off money’… you could tell any
boss to F off knowing you have enough to live without a job for a while and at least two years to find another before your money
runs out!The reality is many people don’t have this ( safety net! ) money and won’t rock the boat in case they get fired and can’t meet next
months mortgage and other outgoings, so they have to eat sh*t and your boss exploits your fear!
You also get it my man.
Morgage paid off, owned cars on the drive and a big ole bank balance to boot right here. Dont get me wrong, I have done the hard yards aswell but there is a comprimise of doing a fair days work for a fair days work right up to the tipping point of taking the ■■■■, which many companies seem to be doing these days. Britain has some of the most indepted populice in the world today, and big business are praying on this big time(whilst paying little to no tax I may add) to further their own end, enabled by our own government.
I wouldnt fight anyone for a £9/hour job, sadly plenty do because they have bought into the consumer lifestyle and forced themselves to live hand to mouth and this time of year, the consumerist holiday that it has become, really brings the worst out in people.
Now, if its was me, I would be working my ■■■ off for the highest bidder in this current “shortage” knowing full well I have the fortitude to find something else when things get lean in January.
Oh wait, thats what I did 10-15 years ago and probably why I find myself comfortable now.
You can choose to be a victim or you can walk tall and be a freeman.
Rjan:
att:
it has been nice though, not having to put up with the rude and ignorant Eastern Europeans at the processing centres, not to mention the lack of English language and all the problems that brings.Are they actually being rude though or do they just not speak English (or have the confidence to engage in small talk with it)? I’ve dealt with many EEs - most are friendly, some have a better command of English than the natives, and I can only faintly recall an odd case or two where I’ve come across someone rude (which in this game is common enough amongst natives too). Many who can speak English, nevertheless don’t have a great deal of the confidence necessary to engage in conversation.
Truth be told, I’ve seen rudeness the other way around far more often - people kicking off or speaking in an obviously aggressive way just because they don’t like the accent they’re hearing, often the same sort who wouldn’t say boo to a goose if it was a native boss telling them they’re getting a paycut or something.
Yes, it is rudeness…I have seen a few places go from all natives to EE over the last 5 years.
I get on with most people and like having a laugh and have many times asked EE people why they want to live in such an awful country (I have a house in Portugal) Most of them tell me they are just doing it to make some money and then return in 10 years.
Once the places become all EE, most of the banter stops and they seem to close up and do as they like, when they like, the communication becomes difficult and sparse and it has dawned on me that I do not like going to these places any longer.
I have had conversation with English, about how they feel they are being forced out etc. I have witnessed it in many places and it is unfair on the English.
I am not racist, I just say it how I have experienced it and it has been mostly negative.
I have given up on the UK anyways and will soon be off permanently, there is no camaraderie left, people are mostly greedy, inconsiderate, brainwashed consumers and lack the social skills that go a long way to making it a polite society…It really is that bad in my experience, society has failed in the UK. I do not want to live amongst spineless humans any longer.
I think another thing that puts younger lads off from having a go is when they are told by companies they will have to be away for 4 or 5 nights with the 6th day being a regular thing. Let’s face it when your only at home 2 nights a week and your back in at 3am Monday morning your work/life balance is non existent. Times have changed and the younger generation don’t want to be away the whole week.
Rowley010:
I think another thing that puts younger lads off from having a go is when they are told by companies they will have to be away for 4 or 5 nights with the 6th day being a regular thing. Let’s face it when your only at home 2 nights a week and your back in at 3am Monday morning your work/life balance is non existent. Times have changed and the younger generation don’t want to be away the whole week.
As a younger guy what puts me off is the lack of compensation.
Most are on like £20 a week more then night trunkers and once they pay for their food all week are usually worse off.
Also this day rate Bs is another issue for me they only ever pay day rate when it ■■■■■ the driver over.
Rowley010:
I think another thing that puts younger lads off from having a go is when they are told by companies they will have to be away for 4 or 5 nights with the 6th day being a regular thing. Let’s face it when your only at home 2 nights a week and your back in at 3am Monday morning your work/life balance is non existent. Times have changed and the younger generation don’t want to be away the whole week.
I agree completely. I was told that as a Monday to Friday tramper I would be expected to “occasionally” run-in on Saturday. It turned-out to be every other week, and I would be told on the Thursday or Friday when it would be required. Because they had you on a Saturday, they’d always squeeze in more jobs they had at a premium rate. You’re run-in would often be a 15-hour day. So that would be my Friday evening and Saturday daytime plans gone. Obviously I left. Four nights a week away from home is enough for anybody, never mind a young person in the prime of their life. Especially when unscrupulous planners are constantly trying to squeeze that extra night out from you.
Another thing that struck me was a lack of day shifts, especially Monday to Friday. Where I live, Monday to Friday day shifts are like hen’s teeth. The majority of jobs are tramping, nights, or weekend days shifts. None of those shifts agree with young people. You might get the odd mercenary who wants to earn as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, but the majority want a work-life balance. Tramping, nights, or weekend shifts just don’t work with a typical young person’s social life.
adam277:
Rowley010:
I think another thing that puts younger lads off from having a go is when they are told by companies they will have to be away for 4 or 5 nights with the 6th day being a regular thing. Let’s face it when your only at home 2 nights a week and your back in at 3am Monday morning your work/life balance is non existent. Times have changed and the younger generation don’t want to be away the whole week.As a younger guy what puts me off is the lack of compensation.
Most are on like £20 a week more then night trunkers and once they pay for their food all week are usually worse off.
Also this day rate Bs is another issue for me they only ever pay day rate when it [zb] the driver over.
Agreed. I used to get about £150 per week more for kipping in the cab four or five nights per week, as I did to working days. That mostly consisted of night-out money, and the few extra hours. Social life was non-existent. But even day shifts meant I worked fifty or so hours per week. Ten or fifteen more than most of my mates. The extra few bob a week over having a reduced work-life balance just didn’t seem worth it.
ItsJoe:
I wonder how many kids grow up wanting to be working in an industry where you’ll get bullied by your planner, expected to work 15 hour days, spending nights out away from your family and friends, having to put up with security on power trips and getting a wash in facilities that should be condemned? Not many.The industry is just pure dross and the people to blame aren’t customers that want to cut costs, it’s the successive generations of drivers that have allowed themselves to be walked over. When I read threads talking about drivers unions I just laugh because that should have been something that was talked about in the 70s.
Anyway, nothing will change. Drivers wages will continue to fall, working conditions will get worse when we leave the EU and less people will want to get in the job which will lead to the necessity of bringing in automation, better rail networks and the rise of the what van for localised distribution. In the next 25 years lorries will be off our roads for good.
When I was starting out most new and prospective drivers actually looked on Middle East work as the pinnacle of the industry and those doing it as the elite.We weren’t under any illusions that even eatable food or drinkable water,let alone top grade facilities,or a 40 hour week,would be guaranteed as part of that.
While the road transport industry being slaughtered in favour of the rail lobby, because of the stereotypical prejudice of political zealots among the Socialist rabble and their big business allies,is nothing new.While yes on the other hand we also know that historically solidarity among drivers could have been better.
As for working conditions falling when we leave the EU that isn’t what Tony Benn or Kate Hoey obviously thought/think.While you’ve obviously got such notables for the working class struggle as Callaghan,Thatcher,Blair,Cameron and May on your side.Corbyn being an even bigger Soviet style liability.While you do know that the ‘15 hour days’ in question are facilitated by EU hours regs not to mention East Euro race to the bottom competition.Good luck with the removal of cabotage regs added to that now that the remainers have got what they wanted in the form of May’s remain stitch up.As for rail union solidarity that worked well in the case of of support of Southern Rail train guards.
Winseer:
We need a return to some kind of Fordist society I reckon.
Wages rise until they meet the falling cost of ever-improving producer goods. If productivity then falls, the price of those goods rises, so people can only get into debt - because of their own falling productivity.
How will that work without import and labour market controls to make sure the higher wages earn’t get spent on products made by the domestic workforce and that the resulting jobs don’t get taken by immigrant workers when we’ve done it.IE trying to increase wages without first sorting out free market economics is just putting the cart before the horse.Meanwhile more productivety for more money isn’t a wage rise nor fits the Keynesian model.We need more wages for the same amount of work from each worker and the employment of more workers to share the workload and thereby buy more stuff than less workers can buy and have the leisure time to enjoy using those fruits of their labour.
att:
Yes, it is rudeness…I have seen a few places go from all natives to EE over the last 5 years.
I get on with most people and like having a laugh and have many times asked EE people why they want to live in such an awful country (I have a house in Portugal) Most of them tell me they are just doing it to make some money and then return in 10 years.
So far so good.
Once the places become all EE, most of the banter stops and they seem to close up and do as they like, when they like, the communication becomes difficult and sparse and it has dawned on me that I do not like going to these places any longer.
But that is not rudeness, it is probably just a function of the fact that in a predominantly EE environment, you start to get workers drawn in who speak little or no English but can get by in their job without it, which you wouldn’t get in a mostly English environment because such workers wouldn’t be able to operate effectively.
There is also, as I say, a category of worker who can speak English when put on the spot to do so, but don’t feel confident enough about it to enjoy conversation with strangers. The perceived stakes are raised, of course, when you’re around people who might react harshly to poor English rather than being indulgent.
I’ve certainly seen EE guys given a hard time about their (truly) poor English for no good reason - an example I have in mind stands out to me because, even in plain English, it was often difficult to communicate with office staff who seemed to think that because they understood the situation themselves that everybody else automatically would through telepathy.
I have had conversation with English, about how they feel they are being forced out etc. I have witnessed it in many places and it is unfair on the English.
I am not racist, I just say it how I have experienced it and it has been mostly negative.
I don’t personally have anything “positive” to say about speaking to people who don’t have good English, since there is nothing good about struggling to communicate, although at times I do find it amusing to hear unusual turns of phrase that are clear in meaning but which native speakers wouldn’t use.
But I haven’t generally encountered any of the rudeness or interpersonal negativity you describe - certainly not out of proportion to what is the norm for natives, including snotty office staff in general, and also the fact that sometimes doing long hours in crap jobs leaves people in a bad mood (without implying anything about their normal character or their views about the person stood in front of them).
More often than not, if people are a bit quiet to begin with but can speak English, once they realise you’re friendly and not there to give them a hard time, people loosen up and become a bit more sociable, which probably doesn’t happen if they can see irritation or exasperation written over your face from the outset, similar to how most toddlers learning to talk would probably keep out of your way if you tried to talk about War and Peace and then became visibly ■■■■■■ off when they couldn’t immediately understand.
And nobody is forcing the English out except the bosses themselves. You seem to think, as many do, that somehow just being from a foreign country means that you get to hire yourself into a job - forgetting that British bosses make decisions about hiring foreign workers in the same way they do about natives, and that a business owner with likely a solid British ancestry has decided to hire someone with broken (or no) English over someone with good English, generally because someone with good English would expect to be paid more.
The influx of EEs has nothing to do with any malign agenda on the part of EEs, and everything to do with bosses who know they can force down wages, and the answer is to turn against bosses who operate on that thinking and resist any constraints, not against other workers who are just earning a living and certainly didn’t devise any scheme to force down the wages of Brits in the way that bosses devise such schemes.
You can tell the difference between whether a person is scheming or not because if you said to EEs that bosses had to hire them on the same rate as a Brit, they wouldn’t object, and certainly wouldn’t bring any political power to bear against it, because they don’t have any appreciable political power in Britain.
Whereas if you tell bosses that the low-pay gravy train is over and that they can’t undercut wages with foreign workers, there’ll be howls of anguish from employers’ associations, and the Tory party which represents them will refuse to enact any such change. That’s how you identify where the real problem lies, by the fact that those with power are willing the situation to stay as it is.
Rjan:
You can tell the difference between whether a person is scheming or not because if you said to EEs that bosses had to hire them on the same rate as a Brit, they wouldn’t object, and certainly wouldn’t bring any political power to bear against it, because they don’t have any appreciable political power in Britain.Whereas if you tell bosses that the low-pay gravy train is over and that they can’t undercut wages with foreign workers, there’ll be howls of anguish from employers’ associations, and the Tory party which represents them will refuse to enact any such change. That’s how you identify where the real problem lies, by the fact that those with power are willing the situation to stay as it is.
It’s clear that the whole scam is a race to the bottom and East Euro foreign aid scam in return for West Euro employers to make quick short term profits out of it and in which East Euro workers are just as complicit in it as their own governments are.
While if it’s all supposedly about the Tories the obvious question is why no calls from Labour for an EU wide minimum wage and an aligned taxation regime so no state’s workers have to subsidise others as part of its obvious remain agenda.As opposed to Labour having form for dealing with price led inflation by imposing wage increase limits and doing nothing to interfere with the same race to the bottom that you rightly say the Cons are all about.In addition to transferring what reasonable paying jobs still exist to German workers at the expense of Brits.