Hay, was hoping someone on here might know what creeds food delivery is like in Gloucester ? Pay, conditions, avarge hours worked, type of work ? If anyone knowswould really apricate any feed back. Thay say max of £10.40 an hour sounds alrite for local lgv 2 work. Thanks
I worked there for 18 months until about 2yrs ago. Average hours 65. They wouldn’t pay for anytime before 4am but the routes i was given to the centre of London everyday meant i had to go in early and normally leave the place before 4am. It meant you had to try and stop later on for an extra hour on the way back if you could but that still meant you were at work longer.
Most of the time it was card in when you leave the industrial estate and card out the moment you returned to keep the hours down, then you had to unload the empty cages+pallets and fuel+adblue for the next day.
They will tell you that the average hours is 45. They pay 45 minimum and some drivers do less blah blah blah. Maybe one driver a week. Depends on the 2 routes you get basically. You might get Gloucester and Cheltenham every day or you might get Plymouth one day and Devon the other. In my case my routes were always centre of London (As in Trafalgar Square, Tower of London not just inside the M25) so you spent just under 3hrs in the morning getting to the first drop in the centre and maybe 4hrs on the return.
I could go on. Pay was good as you get the hours, they pay some made up driving bonus where i was getting maybe £100 a month.
The straw that broke my back was a phone call from London to tell my boss if i did the 2 deliveries i still had on i would run out of time on the way back but if i left them on i would make it. He said they had to be delivered, so i said get something sorted for me later. Phoned him in Oxford from a layby after 15hr day ran out. Basically know one could get me but the lorry must be returned to be unloaded and loaded for my next day. So out came the card. Drove it back and i was gone within weeks when i had the new job lined up.
They might have sorted the routes out better now but when i left it was basically one driver a week leaving even after putting the pay up twice in 2 months.
mrginge:
I worked there for 18 months until about 2yrs ago. Average hours 65. They wouldn’t pay for anytime before 4am but the routes i was given to the centre of London everyday meant i had to go in early and normally leave the place before 4am. It meant you had to try and stop later on for an extra hour on the way back if you could but that still meant you were at work longer.Most of the time it was card in when you leave the industrial estate and card out the moment you returned to keep the hours down, then you had to unload the empty cages+pallets and fuel+adblue for the next day.
They will tell you that the average hours is 45. They pay 45 minimum and some drivers do less blah blah blah. Maybe one driver a week. Depends on the 2 routes you get basically. You might get Gloucester and Cheltenham every day or you might get Plymouth one day and Devon the other. In my case my routes were always centre of London (As in Trafalgar Square, Tower of London not just inside the M25) so you spent just under 3hrs in the morning getting to the first drop in the centre and maybe 4hrs on the return.
I could go on. Pay was good as you get the hours, they pay some made up driving bonus where i was getting maybe £100 a month.
The straw that broke my back was a phone call from London to tell my boss if i did the 2 deliveries i still had on i would run out of time on the way back but if i left them on i would make it. He said they had to be delivered, so i said get something sorted for me later. Phoned him in Oxford from a layby after 15hr day ran out. Basically know one could get me but the lorry must be returned to be unloaded and loaded for my next day. So out came the card. Drove it back and i was gone within weeks when i had the new job lined up.
They might have sorted the routes out better now but when i left it was basically one driver a week leaving even after putting the pay up twice in 2 months.
Wow, sounds like a nightmare ! Thanks for your replying. That dose not sound like somthing I want to get mixed up in. Althow the pay dose seem quit good. Do you remember the hourly rate you were on when u were there ? Tay say £ 10.40 an hour at the moment. Seem to always need people, so proberly working conditions are still alot like when you were there. Thanks again for your reply.
Who told you it was local work?
Seen them all over the place and most wagons don’t have a tail lift so assume it’s 90% hand ball
They all have tail lifts on the things bigger then 7.5T.
The Gloucester depot does up to Birmingham, south i suppose Plymouth, Southampton, Dover. East is centre of London and west is Swansea iirc.
They have another depot in Ilkeston which serves further north.
The pay was i think just under £9 when i started and it was made £10 when i left pretty much nearly 2 yrs ago.
It was a bit of a poor job but i got a bit of experince out of it, the lorries were mostly only a couple of years old, and you could close to£2,000 a month on max hours. If you did more then 15hrs they paid you for example 16hrs and even put your start/finish times onto a database after every shift - Didn’t seem to phase them. I finished at about 9pm on one occasion after being in since 6am, said to the boss i wont be able to leave the yard at 4am can i have something later. Sure, come in for 6am, get in and whilst there are ■■■■■■■■ leaving the yard for a cafe in Cheltenham he had me 7 drops down Plymouth region, i think that took another 15hrs so it buggered me again for 4am start.
Another classic week i managed 15hrs Mon,Tues, Wednes. So he was nice enough to let me have locals Thurs and Friday. The mentality there was definitely your paid hourly so quit complaining.
One plus, i got done for speeding and banned for 14 days and he let me be a drivers mate till i could drive again 
To be honest i started when they had a massive expansion in work and i don’t think the people in charge were qualified enough to run all the wagons properly. They had never done the centre of London before and the amount of arguments when they would ring you up asking why you have moved less then a mile in a hour and your reply is “Thats London for you” and they just think your ■■■■■■■■■■■. The first week was a disaster where they would give me 10+ drops in the centre and then give you Chippenham Garden Centre as it was “On your way back”. Then you here those customers complain that “the other driver normally gets here at 10am why are you here at 5:30pm?”, well i bet the normal driver doesn’t have his first drop in the Bank district in London!.
I worked from the Ilkeston depot and lasted 7 months. I dont know where you heard local but we had daily runs up to newcastle, hull, all over Lincolnshire etc. Loads of drops, handball at every drop, pretty much every driver tipped on break to be done earlier. All I gained from it was the knowledge to never do foodservice again and a bit of class 1 experience doing the trunk run which helped get me out of there and on artics full time. Imo theres better and easier out there paying similar.