Winseer:
Are we not still missing the point here - There is this culture in the entire transport industry that "Customer always wants it cheaper, and will NEVER pay more - whilst 100% of a haulier’s overheads is that pesky need to pay wages… FFS that’s not the only bloody overhead in the industry!If a customer wants something done enough - they can go to a cheaper firm, and risk getting their delivery trashed more over the long term, because that undercutting firm can only take on “halfway house” drivers or “9 points OK” agency.
A firm paying a fair wage will still have a high turnover of MANAGERS I suggest, but the drivers are going to be a lot more happy with their lot - providing the managers don’t actually start managing, and running the drivers ragged instead of themselves…
The firms paying top dollar - you don’t get to hear about, because it’s dead man’s shoes to get in there.
The notion that a haulier can’t possibly afford to pay higher wages without increasing costs to customers or running bent to aid their undercutting - smacks of defeatism within the driver community itself.
If a job is easy to fill - firms can get away with paying low wages.
If the same job later becomes bloody hard to fill - you might not even get the actual staff you want by raising those wages, because it’ll almost certainly be “too little, too late.”Firms with a good reputation - want to keep it. Drivers will go there even if they are not the highest payers (assuming they’re not near the lowest either
) - because the reputation suggest that "you’ll have a good time working there, relaxed atmosphere, decent managers who are experts at managing human nature rather than penny pinching, - and of course the little perks that the particular employer might have, like staff discounts, subsidized travel, etc.
The immigrant driver in all this is like the salt in the sea. If you evaporate enough of the water - that salt tends to become more concentrated, and if you evaporate too much water - the salt starts precipitating out all over the place, becoming a nuisance and hazard when it wasn’t originally intended to be. Foreign drivers, like it or not - are going to run into language barrier problems, misunderstanding of instructions, sat nav ■■■■-ups - but not necessarily “more actual RTAs”. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Brit driving a Milk artic like Arla…
No one has ever suggested we “remove the salt from the sea” any more than anyone would dare suggest “not allowing immigrants to drive trucks”. It’s a self-defeating notion.
What we CAN do though - is “avoid being forced to drink the seawater” in this little analogy… It’ll get you in the end if you do!
Firstly your analogy seems to miss the point that the choice as it stands is either drink the seawater of cheap East Euro competition and over supply.Or desalinate the water supply.There is no third option of not drinking the sea water in just the same way that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a fresh water supply. 
As for the idea that,at current fuel costs,as a proportion of potential revenues and overall costs,there is very little room for wage rises,that’s a fact not a notion.Bearing in mind that wage costs are then just about the only potential variable which can be cut to compensate.Which effectively means that we’re being subjected to downward pressure on wage levels,including by way of East Euro immigrant labour,and the East Euro international fleet,in large part to compensate for the government’s punitive fuel cost regime.As for drinking the seawater assuming we don’t cut our ties with the EU totally just wait until the issue of the lifting of cabotage restrictions gets added to the equation.On that note even Corbyn now seems to be waking up and smelling the coffee.
, I wouldn’t lie to you Mr Muckles!
