sparewheel:
There are very few permanent jobs in Scotland. Everything is through agency. Agency offered me 8.50ph for a sunday. We are going back to the good old days when people used to work on a day to day basis with no rights.
I hope you told them to go forth and multiply. Get yourself in the local hospital buffing floors, pays more than that at the w/e. Think I used to get £10 p/h, 12 years ago.
The hospital will have put that floor maintenance job out to tender now and the minimum wage will be the norm.
£8.50 per hour sounds brilliant if you are skint. Better than ■■■■ all!
Of course the real situation about the current state of Driver recruitment in the UK, wont properly materialise until this banker induced farce that we currently find ourselves in, goes away. I view it like this: At the moment drivers appear plenty, jobs appear few. We all apply for jobs when they come up, only to be disappointed or to get the job, and find ourselves… er disappointed. Only Occasionally will the sun shine. I have been truck driving for 6 months now, and find that 90% of the agencies around are only suitable as target practice for the US Air Force (They would prob miss…). There are good ones however. Now employers! Well you have to conceed most of them would appear only think about today - as employment goes. Im a relative newcommer, and my previous career (Agriculture) was in much the same state about 10 - 15 years ago. Things were never adressed in the bad years, and when things were good, farm workers had left the industry and there was no young or available blood to fill the gap. Crisis lead to change, things are a bit different now. the workers know it, so do the bosses.
Its my view Road Haulage is there now. Change will only happen when we all are hitting the road, toiling away (for little reward) yet all the work cant get done. Thats when the Driver shortage will materialise. I think every day, what am I doing leaving an industry where I was in demand, to start in a new industry where we are are not. I must be MAD!!! Its only the nice, polite, freindly drivers I have come accross that keep me going, and who was it that sang “… the sun always shines on TV!” They were Spot On!
We have the same problem in Ireland with eastern europeans driving for peanuts working for the likes of Nolans/Breens etc,There is a few decent companies left were you will get paid a decent wage but the only way to get into these companies is by doing agency work for them.
I have had plenty of discussions with other drivers&friends about the responsibility we have as drivers looking after tractor&trailer worth over £150k not including the load,Now how can you compare that to someone working in a local shop getting paid the same wage. 
The costs involved in getting trained up to class1&ADR is not cheap yet these greedy employers want you to work for nothing were also on a race to the bottom here we have a finance minister who has rightly f**ked up increased taxes then tell us that the cost of living is back to 2006 levels with deflation yet our living costs have risen 
,We also have spongers living off govt benefits there is a nigerian family living in a house paid for by the council accross from me they have two cars yet dont work yet if you question these people you get called a racist.
In general, the folk who moan about no work are the ones who think the country owes them a living.
Folk won’t graft and arent prepared to do shi**y jobs. There is ‘‘no work’’ when its anything less than 10 quid a hour and at least 30 odd days paid holiday blah blah blah…
As for the driver shortage thing, theres features in all the trucking mags this month
Silver_Surfer:
mickfly:
I have niece who has just had her 4th kid, has NEVER worked, nor is she likely to, her partner has never worked either. They, due to gov’t benefits are part of the reason that we are screwed, but even if they had their benefits cut to encourage them to work, I would rather employ a decent foreign driver than them.That is the reason this country has deteriorated so much over the past 30 years. How can they live where neither partner has a job? Their kids in turn will also think it’s ok not to work. All this BS about there being no jobs, when I was a youngster with no dependants I was still working 7 days a week, driving and mopping floors at the local hospital at the weekend. At one point when I think about it I had 3 jobs, Driving a forks and running a pallet yard in the day, doing a local HGV trunk in the evening and then mopping the floors at the weekend. When i’d hhad enough of the mopping, I used to go on the agency on the bread class 2 mulit-drop then bang in to Safeway’s on the class 1’s. Couldn’t do it now with the digi’s like. You do what you gotta do to make a better life for yourself. If i’d have had a family i’d probably have had 4 jobs.
I would be drunk with shame if I were living off benefits.
totally agree! ive worked in a garage 9 till 5, then done night trunks and weekend work driving class one as well. Then when I did get home I’d notice the neighbours, who dont work full stop, but can still afford to live, go on holidays, run cars, oh and go the pub every night without fail until it closes. How do they do it? it baffles me! Are benefits really good enough to sustain that kind of lifestyle?
I read the one in Truckstop news mentioning Warrington. I’m from Warrington and working from Portbury dock (tramping obviously). It’s a load of zb (or maybe I’m doing something wrong) 
The thing about Truckstop News is that it is given away for free, and so its income is derived solely from its advertisers.
If driving schools advertise, they run articles about what a good idea it would be to take HGV lessons. If a new chain of truckwashes opens, they run articles about the dangers of washing a truck down with a bucket of soapy water. I’m quite convinced that if McDonalds and Burger King started advertising, they would have an article on the front page about the risk of dying from food poisoning if you take a sandwich and a Kit-Kat to work.
They are pushing the (non-existent) HGV driver shortage at the moment because there are a number of people clutching modest redundancy cheques who are worried about the future and who can be persuaded to hand over their redundancy cheque pursuing the fairy tale that an HGV licence and the subsequent £40,000 a year, 35 hour a week job is just a phone call or two away.
There may indeed be a driver shortage pending as the DCPC deadline nears and drivers leave rather than shell out for the periodic training. It seems, according to the articles in T&D and Trucking this month, that people are hoping hauliers will hire young Brits and give them a chance, however we all know that any shortfall in the numbers will be made good by EU immigrants. This isnt a dig at anyone (except the socially and financially irresponsible labour government that allowed it to happen), but why are EU immigrants moving to the UK and and getting jobs whilst UK born citizens sit at home on the dole? Any warehouse now will have a majority of Eastern European workers, any one of those jobs could be done by a British layabout who is currently sat at home scrounging. And then the British layabout will probably support the BNP and whinge about “foreigners taking British jobs”, makes me sick.
If a household are living on benefits then a job becomes available at £7.00 per hour is there any point in having the job.Me being a mug I would take the job.Though when you factor in loss of benefits travel to work money maybe tools overalls etc.It makes sound financial sense not to try too hard.This sure is one ZB-ed country.
alamcculloch:
If a household are living on benefits then a job becomes available at £7.00 per hour is there any point in having the job.Me being a mug I would take the job.Though when you factor in loss of benefits travel to work money maybe tools overalls etc.It makes sound financial sense not to try too hard.This sure is one ZB-ed country.
This is what the coalition are trying to fix, if you have a job but it’s not quite enough to help make ends meet then you can still get some of your benefits. Im lucky enough to have always worked though so I’m hardly an expert on the benefits system, although I was at school with kids whose parents hadnt worked for years and they have never had any sort of job (I left in 99). My mother recieved benefits of some description whilst doing two part time jobs to do enough hours to get the lesser benefit rather than the one the people who didnt work got and my sister and myself have always worked. Coincidence? I think not.
Swampey:
Well I was having a butches look around the net these past few days and all I see is certain web pages and site, banging on about the fact that there is a shortage of qualified HGV drivers… yet I can’t see this to be true at all… I mean, Ive had my licence for over 2 years … have applied for countless number of jobs and nothing…No one wants to give a newbie a chance even if he is 35 and 18 years of road driving experiance… so whats its all about
I’ve said it many times before: Trade Plate work.
Large variety of vehicle type, gearboxes & axle layout. A very good grounding. Didn’t do me any harm.
Am I right in thinking that agency pay (particularly weekends) is now LESS than it was 10 years ago? Whilst the cost of living has more than doubled!
Hopefully the DCPC will remove some of the dross & get rid of a good few thousand drivers who are too lazy to do it.
I was on with an agency 12 years ago the pay was £10.00 made no difference wheather I drove Merc.Sprinter ,7.5.tonner or class2.Today I get £8.00 for class2 and £7,50 for anything else.Where is the progress?