The best money for drivers was always in driving for the the retail sector, or the old C licence traffic for older trucknet members, where the vehicles were hauling the companies own product and were just an end to a means in that they didn’t need to make a profit as such because the product itself was the revenue earner. Regarding ‘my’ old industry (construction) firms like Tarmac, Tilcon, RMC, ARC etc paid drivers well (usually a long waiting list for driving jobs!) and always kept a decent modern fleet, plus any of their outside hauliers got regular rate rises, but when the fleets went (to save money on truck’s, driver’s, fitter’s, workshop’s etc) and the haulage then became open season for private hauliers the rates either dropped like a stone when hauliers cut them to get work (or just didn’t get raised annually) and therefore the money wasn’t available to pay drivers the same. Whenever quarrying companies need to cut production costs they usually raise the price of their material and nearly always cut the haulage rate at the same time so the haulier and driver end up getting less again and have very little say in it as rates are not negotiable! General hauliers can usually negotiate their own rates but that will be a ‘Dog eat Dog’ affair no doubt! So I assume that nowadays (looking at postings on here) the retail side of haulage (supermarkets etc) is still the best payer for a driver?
I worked for a couple of private hauliers and neither of them had a particularly high lifestyle, they ran old vehicles and my car was usually newer than theirs, and I don’t think that they took much more money out of the firm than what they paid their drivers.
tango boy:
Stop paying Agencys who RIP OFF Companies & Drivers !!!
Thats the only way
Place where I used to work have just sacked their main agency supplied drivers mate. He got caught being “creative” with his timesheets. We knew he was likely penning a novel when filling them in (I’d often award a bonus to a decent mate) but he dropped himself in it apparently. He decided to pen his latest work of fiction at the end of the week and wrote the wrong driver and truck down. Claimed his “12 hour day” but the driver he wrote down had been on a night out and had been parked up and gone home hours beforehand.
Banned from the agency aswell too.
joe royal:
I was talking to the owner of a rock and roll trucking co and he costed the tours at cost plus 5%
Great if you have a 25 truck 3 month tour
Not so great if you only have a 2 week jobby
I read somewhere the ball park figure for rock and roll was 800 a day
So each truck makes 280 a week profit ,
Couple of flat tyres few mirrors and an accident can pretty much wipe out half the profit for that week.
Cost plus 5% ?, Joe you are right,one puncture job gone in to red,but how is this company going to replace trucks (just one example) running at this percentage ? I go for cost plus 30% and my lowest margin,year to date,is 22.4%, but this is own work no sub contracting involved
windrush:
The best money for drivers was always in driving for the the retail sector, or the old C licence traffic for older trucknet members, where the vehicles were hauling the companies own product and were just an end to a means in that they didn’t need to make a profit as such because the product itself was the revenue earner.
Its not just retail. In my experience every company I’ve been to where they haul their own products seems to run a better fleet and pay better than companies who run wagons to make money.
My money’s on a par with most tipper firms around here, except I get much easier days than them. We don’t have a fancy office with pointless managers to pay wages to, run from boss’ house (and his parents) and we have a shipping container to act as a mess room and stores. We don’t go on hire to the quarry firms (with all their h&s nonsense and rate cutting/tear arse day rates) preferring to work for other small hauliers or mostly all our own customers.
Never been told to get a move on, more likely get told to have a longer break or slow down (do too many and customers will want the rate cutting ).
windrush:
The best money for drivers was always in driving for the the retail sector, or the old C licence traffic for older trucknet members, where the vehicles were hauling the companies own product and were just an end to a means in that they didn’t need to make a profit as such because the product itself was the revenue earner.
Its not just retail. In my experience every company I’ve been to where they haul their own products seems to run a better fleet and pay better than companies who run wagons to make money.
Certainly the best jobs sadly many now contract out to the likes of DHL and it changes it for the worse
xichrisxi:
The trouble with HGV driving is HGV drivers,they seem to think HGV driving is some amazing skill that we should be able to command £20ph for…remember you can go from a normal car licenece to a class 1 licence in less than 2 weeks in theory and you don’t even have to have received a good education to get accepted into a training programme to learn.
I think some perspective of what HGV driving is wouldn’t go a miss with some drivers,it’s a semi skilled job at best ,if you want to earn 50k a year go learn a skill that will put you in a position to command it,it won’t happen driving trucks.
Chris,HGV driver for 12 years.
mmmm never done adr then try pumping feneol acid or v.a.m with a flash point of .7 give you a clue to flash point petrol is 12 but wot do i no only semi skilled for the last 34 yonks or more
Wages have not increased with inflation like other sectors.
I paid for my cat c & e ( 2003 )
ADR pay less p hr on OFF PEAK £8.75/9.75
Which is dog ###t !
xichrisxi:
The trouble with HGV driving is HGV drivers,they seem to think HGV driving is some amazing skill that we should be able to command £20ph for…remember you can go from a normal car licenece to a class 1 licence in less than 2 weeks in theory and you don’t even have to have received a good education to get accepted into a training programme to learn.
I think some perspective of what HGV driving is wouldn’t go a miss with some drivers,it’s a semi skilled job at best ,if you want to earn 50k a year go learn a skill that will put you in a position to command it,it won’t happen driving trucks.
Chris,HGV driver for 12 years.
mmmm never done adr then try pumping feneol acid or v.a.m with a flash point of .7 give you a clue to flash point petrol is 12 but wot do i no only semi skilled for the last 34 yonks or more
See,no one mentioned ADR…obviously you are worth a bit more than a standard HGV driver but again to do ADR work it’s only a weeks course on top of the rest of HGV stuff.
Yep maybe only a week’s course but after doing multidrop on 2.1 class for the last 5 years I still feel like I’m on a learning curve always come across new challenges,when I first started with the company the pay was less then my last job but its monday to fridays on days no nights out, now 5 years on it far out weighs what i could earn pulling a fridge trailer.
where the vehicles were hauling the companies own product and were just an end to a means in that they didn’t need to make a profit as such because the product itself was the revenue earner. Regarding ‘my’ old industry (construction) firms like Tarmac, Tilcon, RMC, ARC etc paid drivers well (usually a long waiting list for driving jobs!) and always kept a decent modern fleet, plus any of their outside hauliers got regular rate rises, but when the fleets went (to save money on truck’s, driver’s, fitter’s, workshop’s etc) and the haulage then became open season for private hauliers the rates either dropped like a stone when hauliers cut them to get work (or just didn’t get raised annually) and therefore the money wasn’t available to pay drivers the same. Whenever quarrying companies need to cut production costs they usually raise the price of their material and nearly always cut the haulage rate at the same time so the haulier and driver end up getting less again and have very little say in it as rates are not negotiable! 
General hauliers can usually negotiate their own rates but that will be a ‘Dog eat Dog’ affair no doubt! So I assume that nowadays (looking at postings on here) the retail side of haulage (supermarkets etc) is still the best payer for a driver?
).