Drivers hours regs pre 1985/ or pre EU era

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
21

robroy:
Mention a Union on here and you are looked upon and reacted to as if you are promoting paedophilia.
The word ‘union’ in terms of a Trade Union, is a dirty word to some, however I can see why up to a point btw.

I can see why it’s a dirty word too, and that’s why, when appropriate, I refer to the “union bureaucracy” as distinct from the “union members”, and to the fact that many union members (let alone the union bureaucrats) are not remotely socialists in the sense that their fathers or grandfathers would have been when solidarity first arose.

Unions today carry a lot of members who see the union as a kind of subscription to an insurance policy or their shop stewards as hired hagglers. They don’t have the class consciousness or the deep convictions, or therefore the strength to stand together, of men who before the war routinely had to take beatings on picket lines from gangster outfits hired by employers or even risk being killed, for fair pay, secure and just terms of employment, and safe working conditions.

Typically, such members are surprised at how little a union can achieve for them, or even how weak and twisted the bureaucracy has become from a lack of roots in and sustenance drawn from the ordinary membership. A union only has real power when its members are prepared to stand together and take collective industrial action.

Most have mortgages around their necks, so any form of defiance in terms of ind action is out of the window (Again sounding like Carryfast, :unamused: :blush: Thatcher was very clever with that one :bulb: )

People have always had rent and bills to pay. But I hear this is apparently how they’re now planning to break the train drivers. This is the big mistake in workers taking on large debts and barely affordable lifestyles - if they forfeit their bargaining power fatally, then they will ultimately pay for it with the loss of their pay and conditions and the closure of their pensions, and their children will pay for it too.

Others just bend over trouserless whatever they are told to do end of.

The high contingent of spineless ‘Yes men’ in the job do not help the rest of us by any means either.

So that’s it in a nutshell.
So as far as going back to time and a half, and finally stopping working bloody ridiculous long hours for next to [zb] all, we are all going to have to continue to smile and ■■■■ it up.

Unfortunately because of all this, the rest of us adapt the only other option, …a carry on with a ‘look after no.1 policy’ and we can (and do, trust me) gain respect. :bulb: … while taking the ■■■■ out of the others in the same co. that are [zb] about daily on a regular basis, and/or treated like schoolboys.

Indeed, but you’re not even really looking after number one, are you? You’re just doing the best for yourself immediately, whilst condemning yourself to a deteriorating income and living standards - like drinking seawater to satisfy your thirst, it never satisfied anyone’s thirst and merely advances the point of death. That’s the real point to recognise, that looking after number one doesn’t work for more than a moment - maybe 5 minutes for seawater, maybe 30 years for selfishness and lack of solidarity, but it comes back to bite, maybe only when you’re on the scrapheap in a hellish nursing home where nobody cares, maybe when your kids are living at home with you when they’re 50 and the house suddenly has to be sold to pay for your care, who knows?

22

robroy:

Bluey Circles:
They must have been fitting Tachos prior to 79. My very first truck that I bought in 1980 was a T reg (so 1978?) and that came with a Tacho

Think my first TK Bedford in 79 which was a R reg 77 had a tacho fitted, but we were using log books then.
I also got a brand new FIAT 190 30 which was 1980 T reg, that did not have a tacho fitted, so it all depended on the manufacturers at the time reckon.
I remember taking a course on Tacho use at National Carriers in 81, and the first tacho I used was on one of their Sed Atk units.

The one I had bought was also a TK I guess many people our age started off with these things, I had been using a 3.5 ton luton and needed something bigger and the 7.5 ton TK was as big as I could get without an HGV, I was only 20 at the time so too young for an HGV, I ran it for about 4 months not knowing about operators licences or tachos so never used one, the dealer that sold me it told me the tacho was just for continental work and I genuinely believed him - LOL
It was a bit of a panic to get legal when we learned the truth, but it all worked out in the end, both me and my girl friend both sat the CPC in hope one of us would pass, we both did, it was a pretty simple multiple choice exam then.

23

Rjan:

robroy:
Others just bend over trouserless whatever they are told to do end of.

The high contingent of spineless ‘Yes men’ in the job do not help the rest of us by any means either.

So that’s it in a nutshell.
So as far as going back to time and a half, and finally stopping working bloody ridiculous long hours for next to [zb] all, we are all going to have to continue to smile and ■■■■ it up.

Unfortunately because of all this, the rest of us adapt the only other option, …a carry on with a ‘look after no.1 policy’ and we can (and do, trust me) gain respect. :bulb: … while taking the ■■■■ out of the others in the same co. that are [zb] about daily on a regular basis, and/or treated like schoolboys.

Indeed, but you’re not even really looking after number one, are you? You’re just doing the best for yourself immediately, whilst condemning yourself to a deteriorating income and living standards - like drinking seawater to satisfy your thirst, it never satisfied anyone’s thirst and merely advances the point of death. That’s the real point to recognise, that looking after number one doesn’t work for more than a moment - maybe 5 minutes for seawater, maybe 30 years for selfishness and lack of solidarity, but it comes back to bite, maybe only when you’re on the scrapheap in a hellish nursing home where nobody cares, maybe when your kids are living at home with you when they’re 50 and the house suddenly has to be sold to pay for your care, who knows?

:open_mouth: Christ mate you paint a depressing picture of how you perceive my potential future, you make suicide look an attractive option. :unamused:

So what’s the alternative to me looking after no.1 and trying to make life in the job easier for myself?
Rely on solidarity from the guys up to their necks in hock, along with the yes men and the guys bending over with their kecks around their ankles? …yeh right :unamused: …I think not.
.
Or.

Attempt to make a one man stand/crusade a la desypete?
I aint that naive or stupid mate, I would be told to go forth and reproduce, and somebody else’s arse would be sat in my truck seat before it had a chance to cool down.

So no, there is no prospect of the job going through any radical changes in terms of t.s and c.s, so I will just keep my head down, keep speaking up for myself, do my job to the best of my ability and to satisfaction, and keep looking after your’s truly. :bulb:

24

robroy:

Rjan:

robroy:
Others just bend over trouserless whatever they are told to do end of.

The high contingent of spineless ‘Yes men’ in the job do not help the rest of us by any means either.

So that’s it in a nutshell.
So as far as going back to time and a half, and finally stopping working bloody ridiculous long hours for next to [zb] all, we are all going to have to continue to smile and ■■■■ it up.

Unfortunately because of all this, the rest of us adapt the only other option, …a carry on with a ‘look after no.1 policy’ and we can (and do, trust me) gain respect. :bulb: … while taking the ■■■■ out of the others in the same co. that are [zb] about daily on a regular basis, and/or treated like schoolboys.

Indeed, but you’re not even really looking after number one, are you? You’re just doing the best for yourself immediately, whilst condemning yourself to a deteriorating income and living standards - like drinking seawater to satisfy your thirst, it never satisfied anyone’s thirst and merely advances the point of death. That’s the real point to recognise, that looking after number one doesn’t work for more than a moment - maybe 5 minutes for seawater, maybe 30 years for selfishness and lack of solidarity, but it comes back to bite, maybe only when you’re on the scrapheap in a hellish nursing home where nobody cares, maybe when your kids are living at home with you when they’re 50 and the house suddenly has to be sold to pay for your care, who knows?

:open_mouth: Christ mate you paint a depressing picture of how you perceive my potential future, you make suicide look an attractive option. :unamused:

So what’s the alternative to me looking after no.1 and trying to make life in the job easier for myself?
Rely on solidarity from the guys up to their necks in hock, along with the yes men and the guys bending over with their kecks around their ankles? …yeh right :unamused: …I think not.
.
Or.

Attempt to make a one man stand/crusade a la desypete?
I aint that naive or stupid mate, I would be told to go forth and reproduce, and somebody else’s arse would be sat in my truck seat before it had a chance to cool down.

So no, there is no prospect of the job going through any radical changes in terms of t.s and c.s, so I will just keep my head down, keep speaking up for myself, do my job to the best of my ability and to satisfaction, and keep looking after your’s truly. :bulb:

But you’re still drinking seawater! What’s your long-term plan to get back onto fresh water which sustains life rather than brings forward its end?

I’m not any less cynical than you are about the yes-men and the bootlicks, but even they will succumb to the seawater eventually - they are in the same position, the same class, as you are. How low will your wages go? How high your rents? How poor your old age? How little economic security? How miserable your children’s prospects?

The future, if you do nothing about it, will become bleak and depressing. Look after number one to avoid death, certainly, and to avoid being pushed under the water by other guys who are looking after themselves, but don’t pretend just avoiding death is enough of a life, except in its most bleak and depressing form.

You just haven’t looked far enough forward to realise that’s where we were headed all along when we chose to compete to the bottom, while men pretended they were doing well looking after themselves, but that’s because they were living high on the hog by selling more and more pieces of their own future.

Perhaps at 30 they said to themselves “I’ll be dead before I have to worry”, and then at 60, unless their life really has been bankrupt of meaning except self-worship, they finally realise that somebody or something they care about won’t be gone as soon as themselves, and that they are about to bequeath a world very different, for the worse, from the one they entered - it’s hardships more efficiently inflicted, its competitiveness meaner, it’s future bleaker and more depressing, and with only the assurance of further deterioration.

25

All you have done there mate is the same as your last post, an over dramatic, over exaggerated account of how crap the job really is.

Surprise surprise …I know this :bulb:
I’ve watched a constant decline over all the years I’ve done it.
Ok the trucks are better but the most important part of the job (well to most of us apart from the cab happy among us) is the wage, which has not kept up in the same proportion, as well as the pitfalls of over regulation, and the amount of monitoring.

So you have criticisised how I deal with it, what is the alternative exactly?
I have already given you 2 options, is there a third? and if so have you adopted it, and is it sucessfull…are you in transport heaven.

26

Has anybody else noticed that a thread can be active, but when somebody comes on and criticises…

Those that boast about their ‘good wage’ , then someone points out they are making next best thing to ■■■■ all when you work out the hours they have worked to achieve it.

Those that are a victim of their own spinlessness and get turned over on a daily basis as a matter of course.

Those that are brown nosers and Yes men.

There is a deafening silence for a while.
Is it down to a bit of self realisation and not wanting, to face up to home truths with many, and a bit of head in the sand, or am I way off here.

27

And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

28

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

But was it only if you were pulling two trailers?

29

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

Don’t recall that at all mate.
I remember the 40 on dual carriageways, which was a ballache on long stretches like the A1 and A74, but 20mph for trucks must have been well before my time.

30

axletramp:

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

But was it only if you were pulling two trailers?

there was a 20mph speed limit for agric tractors that rose to 25mph when the HGV limits rose last year. (the ones round here all do about 40 but thats another story) they were also allowed to increase their gvw from 24 to 31t, hopefully they have brakes on the trailers?

31

robroy:

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

Don’t recall that at all mate.
I remember the 40 on dual carriageways, which was a ballache on long stretches like the A1 and A74, but 20mph for trucks must have been well before my time.

Obviously not the specific limit Eric is referring to, but I certainly remember the 40 mph limit on dual carriageways for rigids and artics; a motor pulling a trailer (dragon and wag) was restricted to a 30 limit. Two trailers (fairground etc) the limit was 20mph.

32

robroy:

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

Don’t recall that at all mate.
I remember the 40 on dual carriageways, which was a ballache on long stretches like the A1 and A74, but 20mph for trucks must have been well before my time.

33

robroy:
All you have done there mate is the same as your last post, an over dramatic, over exaggerated account of how crap the job really is.

Surprise surprise …I know this :bulb:
I’ve watched a constant decline over all the years I’ve done it.
Ok the trucks are better but the most important part of the job (well to most of us apart from the cab happy among us) is the wage, which has not kept up in the same proportion, as well as the pitfalls of over regulation, and the amount of monitoring.

So you have criticisised how I deal with it, what is the alternative exactly?
I have already given you 2 options, is there a third? and if so have you adopted it, and is it sucessfull…are you in transport heaven.

My main point was not to criticise how you deal with it, it was simply to make the point that you haven’t dealt with it, any more than the drinker of seawater has “dealt with” his thirst.

He’s satisfied his urge to drink for a moment, he’s not satisfied his need for water (and in fact he creates a greater underlying need, which foreshadows the return of the urge with a vengeance, its onset delayed only by the time needed for the life-sapping salt to circulate in the body).

The alternative, since you ask, is to be willing to stand together, to want to stand together, to be ready to stand together when other people are also willing, in order to meet our needs which can only be met through collective action and mutual concern for others.

The real crisis in the Western world is that the masses are persuaded that they’re each looking after number one, by each looking after number one. Yet it does not work, because everything you gain for yourself by renouncing your obligations to others or turning your blind eyes to them, is lost again by falling victim to those who renounce their obligations to you or turn their blind eyes to you, and other people become not just unreliable friends but reliable and ingenious enemies ready to strike at every weakness you have.

It’s like being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, and someone declares the big idea “we can all stay afloat if each simply stands on the shoulders of another”.

With such a policy, it is very unlikely that more than one person will survive (unless a much-reduced group eventually agree to stop trying to mount each other’s shoulders), and whoever is not forced under the water may still not live to tell the tale due to being badly exhausted or fatally wounded in the initial struggle.

It is obvious that this defect of thinking still exists widely, because we still regularly hear on this board that truckers need to be “more competitive” and so on. Even Carryfast was on about buying work from rail freight at one point!

34

robroy:
Has anybody else noticed that a thread can be active, but when somebody comes on and criticises…

…

There is a deafening silence for a while.

Hasn’t there just! :laughing:

35

I started in 1973 …log books mine were always correct ,when I was young I thought what the hell can you do in 12 .30 spread ,and what could I earn in a miserly 281 miles that came later.ho for a 15 hour spread and as many miles as I could do as fast as I could.

36

Evil8Beezle:
It’s hard to disagree with the whole pay structure now being geared towards having to work silly hours to get a decent wage, and for that I blame the culture today of working overtime for anything other than time and a half… But it’s not only the transport industry, it’s just the way things are now! :imp: Personally I’d like to have overtime rigidly set at time and a half, as I think that alone would help bring down a lot of drivers hours. Firms will happily work an employee almost to death, as those extra hours don’t really cost them any extra. But I’m sure they’d have a different opinion if the overheads were higher…

You don’t have to work silly hours. I rarely worked more than 50 a week in all my years as a driver. Of course, I had to listen to the guys in the digs talking about how they earned two hundred quid a week after tax, when I was taking home barely half that, but I earned enough for me, and I never really believed them anyway (They always added their NO money in plus a bit for boasting).

For the final few years of my career, I did locals so that I was home every night. Before that I worked four days a week on agency, with a couple of nights out. The problem is not the employers, or the lack of unions, but the greed of silly men who want to ‘work’ all the hours they can so that they can go to the Costa del Wotsit and get bladdered for two weeks every year.

Any job is what you make it. Driving has more opportunities than most for maxing the hours, but there is no law that says you have to.

37

robroy:

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

Don’t recall that at all mate.
I remember the 40 on dual carriageways, which was a ballache on long stretches like the A1 and A74, but 20mph for trucks must have been well before my time.

I certainly was a ballache for me the day I got done at ecclefechan by plod in an unmarked sd1 rover.possibly circa 1977 ish during either the coal strike or some other union blockade pish, flat out 24/7…he said 84 as I was going downhill.instant ban as over double the limit…i said he was talking out of his ■■■,then did some serious bowing and scraping…after a degree of haggling we settled on 78 as that was what I was sitting at going uphill earlier.nice man…not a chance of that nowadays… :smiley:

38

Rjan:

robroy:
All you have done there mate is the same as your last post, an over dramatic, over exaggerated account of how crap the job really is.

Surprise surprise …I know this :bulb:
I’ve watched a constant decline over all the years I’ve done it.
Ok the trucks are better but the most important part of the job (well to most of us apart from the cab happy among us) is the wage, which has not kept up in the same proportion, as well as the pitfalls of over regulation, and the amount of monitoring.

So you have criticisised how I deal with it, what is the alternative exactly?
I have already given you 2 options, is there a third? and if so have you adopted it, and is it sucessfull…are you in transport heaven.

My main point was not to criticise how you deal with it, it was simply to make the point that you haven’t dealt with it, any more than the drinker of seawater has “dealt with” his thirst.

He’s satisfied his urge to drink for a moment, he’s not satisfied his need for water (and in fact he creates a greater underlying need, which foreshadows the return of the urge with a vengeance, its onset delayed only by the time needed for the life-sapping salt to circulate in the body).

The alternative, since you ask, is to be willing to stand together, to want to stand together, to be ready to stand together when other people are also willing, in order to meet our needs which can only be met through collective action and mutual concern for others.

The real crisis in the Western world is that the masses are persuaded that they’re each looking after number one, by each looking after number one. Yet it does not work, because everything you gain for yourself by renouncing your obligations to others or turning your blind eyes to them, is lost again by falling victim to those who renounce their obligations to you or turn their blind eyes to you, and other people become not just unreliable friends but reliable and ingenious enemies ready to strike at every weakness you have.

It’s like being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, and someone declares the big idea “we can all stay afloat if each simply stands on the shoulders of another”.

With such a policy, it is very unlikely that more than one person will survive (unless a much-reduced group eventually agree to stop trying to mount each other’s shoulders), and whoever is not forced under the water may still not live to tell the tale due to being badly exhausted or fatally wounded in the initial struggle.

It is obvious that this defect of thinking still exists widely, because we still regularly hear on this board that truckers need to be “more competitive” and so on. Even Carryfast was on about buying work from rail freight at one point!

I’ve got to admire your Parable like analogies mate :open_mouth: you have a knack of painting pictures with words.

I’ve already covered the solidarity sticking together as one option. It won’t happen…end of, for the reasons I have already pointed out.

If you don’t like my ‘‘looking after no.1’’ label, look upon it as ‘‘making the best out of a bad job’’ or even ‘‘damage limitation’’

Does that sound better to you, or are you now going to give me your transport themed version of The Good Samaritan or The Sower of the seeds. :laughing:

39

dieseldog999:

robroy:

Eric Rambler:
And don’t forget there was a 20mph speed limit for trucks until 1998.

Don’t recall that at all mate.
I remember the 40 on dual carriageways, which was a ballache on long stretches like the A1 and A74, but 20mph for trucks must have been well before my time.

I certainly was a ballache for me the day I got done at ecclefechan by plod in an unmarked sd1 rover.possibly circa 1977 ish during either the coal strike or some other union blockade pish, flat out 24/7…he said 84 as I was going downhill.instant ban as over double the limit…i said he was talking out of his ■■■,then did some serious bowing and scraping…after a degree of haggling we settled on 78 as that was what I was sitting at going uphill earlier.nice man…not a chance of that nowadays… :smiley:

Got pulled on the A1 near Selby in the 40mph days (think it changed to 50 mid 80’s)
Copper, in same Rover sd said he’d clocked me at 63 mph I gave him the whole sob story about how I would lose my job cos I already had points and kids would starve etc and bless him he let me off with a warning !!
He had already written the producer and he tore it up I very politely thanked him and told him I would change my ways.
So I drove at about 45 the rest of way home and went back to my old ways next day.
Ps that was the beauty of the CB in them days we used to tell where cops were sat or rolling.
Jim

40

To get back to the terms and conditions, and everything achieved by previous generations being handed back by drivers.
My mate went for an interview with an own account firm delivering their own goods.
I pulled trailers for them many years ago as a owner driver, and briefly worked for them when I finished about 21 yrs ago.
We were on 40 hours plus time and a half, maybe about 6 quid an hour I think then, so after about Wednesday to Fri/Sat you were on overtime rate, a good screw, good job and the overtime looked after the take home pay…job sorted.

I asked him what the rate today was, he said 10.70, I said ‘‘spot on after Weds you will be on excess of 15 quid an hour’’

He said ‘‘Oh no that is right through’’
Ok 10.70 aint bad, but it is an own account operator.
btw.

So …at what point between 1995 and 2016 did the boss say ‘‘right lads things are changing, no more time and a half, and hourly rate increased (as a sweetner) right through".
And at what point instead of a resounding ‘’ yeh, and ■■■■ you’’ did the drivers say ‘‘Yeh, that sounds great, bring it on’’

Drivers = Thick = own worst enemy. :unamused: