Driver shortage

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
41

GasGas:
There’s no driver shortage at all

Only one in three of the people who hold a C or C+E currently work as drivers, because the wages are so low when compared to the responsibilities.

Offer £25 an hour and you’ll have em queuing around the block.

That may sound like commercial suicide, but offering more than twice the ‘going rate’ to workers transformed Ford from a minor car assembly company into an automotive giant (every other car factory in Detroit emptied when word got around that Ford was paying twice the going rate, some of Ford’s rivals went out of business straight away, others tried to match Ford’s rate and went out of business shortly afterwards).

Try it, I dare you!

If any agency started paying £25 an hour, then that would be enough to get experienced drivers chucking in full time jobs to go agency. It would revolutionise the entire industry, as has been depicted above. No one would be bleating about “Proper Jobs” anymore - the agency plum job would BE the good job!

If it were not for large employers being able to get away with fiddling liability insurance claims, then we might already have this rate.
After all, what price can you put on an experienced driver who doesn’t smash anything up - ever?
There’s no premium for premium drivers at present, because the insurance covers the liability of employing any old ■■■■■■■■■ as evident in the “6 points OK” culture. “No DD/DR” one sees… What about CD or IN codes? Killed someone? Fiddled your insurance? - “No problem bud, as long as you’re prepared to work for less than the next guy, we’ll take you on!” :angry:

When the insurance disappears, then with employers losing £1000’s from even some twit dropping a trailer on it’s nose, they are going to approach those agencies who have £25ph drivers who are fully self-insured for even own-fault damage. Even large firms will soon go under if regular damage outweighs the cost of simply hiring a premium driver to begin with. :sunglasses:

Endemic insurance fiddling, and of course firms being allowed to get away with it has more effect on driver pay than immigration ever did.
Even in Depots - How much stuff is trashed because the no speke English brigade can’t understand that “Cam parts” boxes don’t go on top of “Vending Refills” FFS! How often do you see crushed loads because of the firms insistance on employing cheap labour who can’t work out the simple solution of putting light on top of heavy, instead of the other way around?

  • ARRRGHHHH! :unamused: :open_mouth: :imp: :angry: :frowning:

“Do Not Bend” …folded in half to get it on the back.
“Fragile”… Loose rattly something that fell down the gap and smashed to bits inside it’s wrapper…
“Glass”… Crushed up against the headboard by an overzelous loader trying to get more on the wagon to please the firm!
“Heavy on top of Fluffy?” - Я не знаю на вашем языке.
“Delicate Precision Equipment”? - ‘Let’s just sling it over there on top of that pallet of bricks.’ Why? - ‘well so many items have that label on it, no one takes it seriously any more!’… “Caution Label Fatigue” you might call it…

If insurances no longer paid out no quibble, there’d soon be some changes I’m telling you! :astonished:
For starters, Quality Controllers might make a come-back! :grimacing:

42

Well…where do I start…I can see my post was very popular with most!

Thank you to those who were helpful. I am not going to try and change the mind of those of you who dislike employment agencies or recruitment companies.

I am not trying to revolutionise the industry and I think most people have the wrong idea about who holds all the power and dictates the terms. In most cases the client, i.e the supermarket or Haulier dictates the charge rate that the agency can charge and then the agency has that to use to pay the driver. So lets say the agreed charge rate is £10.75ph…

A pay rate to a driver is made up as follows…

Pay rate per hour + employers NI + holiday pay = actual cost + agency margin = charge rate
£8.00 £0.61 £1.04 £9.65 £1.10ph £10.75ph

So you see the margin that the agency has to play with is £1.10ph…they cannot increase the pay rate by huge amounts…to say £25ph as was suggested.

We are interested in new drivers and would gladly provide further training hours if necessary. I obviously didnt mean we would buy you a new house if you were relocating…we have guys who have been made redundant from the forces and we assist them in getting rented accomodation from reputable letters in nice accomodation in nice areas with preffered rental rates and often fully furnished.

Our pay rates are from £8ph to £12ph…average for the area. I did say in the last post that if people were struggling for work in certain areas of the country this may be appealing, obviously if you are already have a job or earning more then I am happy for you and you will not be interested in this post.

43

I don’t want to sound too negative here, but looking at items like the house prices, and the huge amount of local work available that such house prices implies,
I have to say that I see nothing inspirational about being “just another going rate firm” when it comes to digging the grabber into the local pot of work.

From the business point of view, getting a bigger share of that work “by offering a lower hourly rate to the client” means you’ll only get the newbies (that can be bluffed) and the dross (can’t get work elsewhere) signing up.

I ended up with my regular agency because they were inspirational enough in two main areas:
They paid the minimum rates I was prepared to work for
and
They do all the paperwork for free to employ me PAYE, whilst not charging me for it as many other firms do via an umbrella scheme.
I see this as getting the best of both worlds. A reasonable amount of cancellations is to be expected, but 3 times in the year to date I can live with.

If you’ve got an office in Stoke, then I’m guessing the client list is similar to where I’m working out of… :wink:

On top of all this, I’ve got more work offered than I am comfortable with, as I want to be part time rather than maxing out every week, the latter of which is occuring a little too often so far this year for my liking. Not enough people on the books doing night trunking/days 17t work it seems. I’m surprised there seems to be too many drivers on the books of inferior agencies, but not enough with the firm I’m with. Maybe it has a bad rep elsewhere in the country, and maybe they don’t use national payscales I don’t know. Do the same chain generally offer the same rates for the same clients, regardless of where in the country the depot is? - Answers on a postcard please. :slight_smile:

44

Trouble is most agencys, refuse to train inexperienced drivers they want off the shelf greatly experienced drivers, easy profit everything done for them, cost of license test, experience etc, I for one have been put into situations where, signing up and explaining my inexperience they send me straight for an assesment,with a set up ive never used only becoming aware once through the gates, instead of allowing me a couple of hours practice or familiarity with the set up. A lot of agency work is going into the unknown untill you get there. Its a dodgy game but often its the only chance you can gain experience and its a risky game to achieve the hallowed two year qualifier. The test should be real world and cover likely practices. my lack of experience is mainly often tight 90% restricted reverse bay docking, and I have never been trained or allowed practice, but was and am expected to be perfect every time.

45

Needdrivers:
'…Im after some help … finding available drivers … Is there an area … interested in re-locating …?

Yeah, the scabby bits of the EU with Turkey gagging on it’s leash :frowning:

I bet yo ■■■■ that ‘Call-me-Dave’ Cameron is working on the latter for your undoubted benefit - albeit to the likely detriment of society :frowning: :frowning:

46

Needdrivers:
We are interested in new drivers and would gladly provide further training hours if necessary

For the benefit of the new drivers on this board who may be interested could you please explain how the further training would work.

Are you talking about training at the companies you deal with or at a training school, either way is it going to cost the driver anything and if the training is work based will the new driver be expected to work for nothing or lower than normal rates whilst receiving the further training ?

47

The OP might be interested to know that, where I live in South Wales (arguably less prosperous than Cheshire), my wife earns £12.50 an hour tidying people’s gardens.

She has no horticultural qualifications, needs to provide only basic hand tools, can walk to her clients (no commuting costs) and has all the work she needs without advertising.

The OP’s clients need to man up and realise that they need to pay about £25 an hour to reflect the nature of the job that they expect people to do…or live with a transient, demoralised and ultimately unprofessional, workforce and take the consequences of this.

48

tachograph:

Needdrivers:
We are interested in new drivers and would gladly provide further training hours if necessary

For the benefit of the new drivers on this board who may be interested could you please explain how the further training would work.

Are you talking about training at the companies you deal with or at a training school, either way is it going to cost the driver anything and if the training is work based will the new driver be expected to work for nothing or lower than normal rates whilst receiving the further training ?

A mixture of the two…I would prefer at a driving school first, just so we can see whether it is training that is required or just a bit more confidence and experience, if its the latter then we can buddy the driver up with other drivers until they gain thier confidence. This will cost the driver nothing, but a bit of loyalty would be appreciated.

49

Needdrivers:
‘…we can buddy the driver up with other drivers until they gain their confidence…’

Hmmm, and if either is a Basket Case from Blair’s penchant of a Diverse Society in The Community, etc. :question:

Or is it intended to be a bit like the mythical & rose-tinted Golden Era of old whereby a young scallywag gets to pal-up with Sam Kydd for japes at the Greasy Spoon :question:

No problem or minefield in maintaining the Quality Assurance, Equal Opportunities & multi-lingual Risk Assessment (as & where legislated) for such a bold venture, 24/7 - and satisfying the paying customer there then :exclamation:

Needdrivers:
‘…This will cost the driver nothing…’

Including insurance for those upon whom their is no legal obligation for loyalty, training qual’s or Hi-Viz & non-slip, steel toed hats & condoms, etc :question:

Only asking, but best-o-luck, matey :wink:

50

Agencies can recite the Holy Bible & I’ll still call 'em all liars.

All this holding hands & relocating, training galore & easy £money talk is just that. Talk.

Who’s up for abandoning their roots & living in digs in any part of the country, when come Dec 31st you’ll be in the same position as 75% of established agency drivers, sat at home watching daytime TV, waiting for the phone to ring.

This is the silly season, is any driver who’s been qualified for more than 2yrs going to fall for the same old same old BS?

The agencies are desperately trying to fill their books with drivers to cover Xmas, my postcode search on Jobcentre is bringing up 30-40 jobs when last month it was only 5-10.

Same old agencies, same old promises, same old LIES.

51

Needdrivers:
Im after some help if possible, I own a small recruitment agency and have the opportunity to gain quite a bit of business but finding available drivers is very difficult in the Cheshire area.

Is there an area in the country that drivers are finding it difficult to gain employment and they may be interested in re-locating if we were to assist them?

Might be a long shot! Just looking at different ideas. Any other ideas of attracting drivers would be appreciated - apart from the obvious…paying higher wages than everyone else!

Thanks

We spoke over PMs and you seamed interested; then I rang you then you asked for my email address so I could send you a scanned copy of my licnece
I even sent you a PM with it on
but you never replied
(driver shortage) why :question:

52

well speaking from personal experience in the past for newbie drivers i have personally gone out on say a saturday with them to show them the ropes i have had calls at silly times of the day and night to assist them with things that if they had gone into the office and asked they may not have got any more work!
umbrella schemes should be scrapped and i always advise any driver who is this way to either ask to go paye or say your going to hire an accountant at a fraction of the cost.
the trouble with a great deal of agencies is they think that going on depoel etc gets them work all it does is make someone else look good.
too many agencies try the ‘oh we can beat that rate’ rather than give a quality service, that is why the rates are so low, too many use self employed as a way of fleecing drivers for example the rates you have just quoted for a s/e guy would be £9 pay end of.

finally drivers are becoming more and more aware of what they are worth and can now be a bit picky with who and where they want to work unlike before minimum wage when some companies were paying £3.62 per hour in the 1990’s!

53

Boss & Driver:

Needdrivers:
Im after some help if possible, I own a small recruitment agency and have the opportunity to gain quite a bit of business but finding available drivers is very difficult in the Cheshire area.

Is there an area in the country that drivers are finding it difficult to gain employment and they may be interested in re-locating if we were to assist them?

Might be a long shot! Just looking at different ideas. Any other ideas of attracting drivers would be appreciated - apart from the obvious…paying higher wages than everyone else!

Thanks

We spoke over PMs and you seamed interested; then I rang you then you asked for my email address so I could send you a scanned copy of my licnece
I even sent you a PM with it on
but you never replied
(driver shortage) why :question:

Boss & Driver in another thread:

kevchalluk:
so you’re proposing lying about living in Spain to get a fradulent Spanish licence to wipe the number of points you’ve got on your UK licence, and then lying about the date you passed your C+E so you can get around the 2 years experience dilemma?
:unamused:

Yes :exclamation:

Yes it is a puzzler isn’t it :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :grimacing:

54

billybigrig:

Boss & Driver:

Needdrivers:
‘…Im after…’

‘…We spoke …’

Boss & Driver in another thread:

kevchalluk:
‘…so you’re proposing …’

‘…Yes…’

‘…Yes it is a puzzler isn’t it…’

Good sleuthing, mate

55

Hi Boss & Driver, if you check your pm…I replied…the e-mail adress you gave me kept bouncing back and so I have pm my e-mail address to you.

If there are any new drivers looking for work I have class 2 work paying £9.91ph (paye) digi tacho not required, regular day work, Mon - Fri

56

Well agency i am with gives me all the hours i want being only hiab driver i am still making £8.50 an hour plus so i aint doing bad and good rates on a weekend so not all that bad thats in lincs too

57

Needdrivers:
Hi Boss & Driver, if you check your pm…I replied…the e-mail adress you gave me kept bouncing back and so I have pm my e-mail address to you.

If there are any new drivers looking for work I have class 2 work paying £9.91ph (paye) digi tacho not required, regular day work, Mon - Fri

Cannae grumble at those rates, :astonished: i would be happy class 1 work for that here in scotchland. :smiley: Bonus analogue tacho as well. :grimacing:

58

Needdrivers:
Hi Boss & Driver, if you check your pm…I replied…the e-mail adress you gave me kept bouncing back and so I have pm my e-mail address to you.

If there are any new drivers looking for work I have class 2 work paying £9.91ph (paye) digi tacho not required, regular day work, Mon - Fri

yes it has come through and thnakyou
i will try to find somewhere I can fax my documents to you

59

just make sure boss and driver has the right address :wink:

60

There must be a driver shortage, because I am turning work down…And I am really rubbish.