The Boys Own:
Well that should answer your question
or is it me can any one survive on £320 day rate for 320/360 miles ■■?
The OP did say it was “years ago”. I work on the basis of £1.70-£1.80 per loaded mile for long runs, more for shorter runs but if the OP phones Gregory’s traffic office at North Tawton they will email him sample rates as well as the phone numbers of a couple of existing subbies and tell him he’s welcome to phone one of them for a chat.
Well Gergorys only replaced Turners in the last couple of years
Well, I’ve said it before, Harry gets on well with them so would be looked after, no offence H but you do have rose tinted spectacles for this reason.
Everything Harry has said about Gregs is true but if you’re a “new face” I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s a pecking order obviously. The work is heavy & although decently rated you will cover a lot of empty mileage unless you are “in” which kills the job, send their truck empty 50 plus miles for a load or you?
Having said all that, I would use them for one way back loads on own trailer, no probs, they basically own the south west.
Silver_Surfer:
Well, I’ve said it before, Harry gets on well with them so would be looked after, no offence H but you do have rose tinted spectacles for this reason.
Everything Harry has said about Gregs is true but if you’re a “new face” I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s a pecking order obviously. The work is heavy & although decently rated you will cover a lot of empty mileage unless you are “in” which kills the job, send their truck empty 50 plus miles for a load or you?
Having said all that, I would use them for one way back loads on own trailer, no probs, they basically own the south west.
I think you have said what I felt when I did some work for them and I was a new face. I do recall being sent to a service station out of cullompton and was told to wait for twenty mins for a swap over. The swap over took over two hours and the load had to get there. It came of one of their units and was now passed to me. It was thus, now up to me to get it to the drop on time. I told Gregs I maybe late for the drop as i’d had to wait for so long for the swap over. Their response?. You better make it, it needs to get there on time…lovely. So now it was my problem I would get the crap thrown at me now, not Mr Gregory. Well, I got it there on time burnt all the fuel I had going full out and as usual I was maxed out to the 42ton range.
Oh and the drive to the services and the waiting for the load wasn’t calculated into my rate for this run so I did this for free. I wouldn’t recommend them.
OVERLOAD:
I think you have said what I felt when I did some work for them and I was a new face. I do recall being sent to a service station out of cullompton and was told to wait for twenty mins for a swap over. The swap over took over two hours and the load had to get there. It came of one of their units and was now passed to me. It was thus, now up to me to get it to the drop on time. I told Gregs I maybe late for the drop as i’d had to wait for so long for the swap over. Their response?. You better make it, it needs to get there on time…lovely.
I don’t know who you were dealing with but all I can say is that I have never been told that a load “has to be there at such-and-such a time”, if I say I can’t make a booking on time then that has never once been questioned, the most they have ever done is to ask me what time I think I will be there. And that’s not because I’m an “old face”, probably I’m still in the 10% of newest faces.
Occasionally I will have to wait two hours for a trailer swap, but then I’ve probably had to do that as an employee two or three times a year, every year, for the last 25 years. It just goes with the territory.
Probably the best advice I could give to the OP is to try it for a week and then take it from there, there would be nothing to stop him pulling off after a week and going on for someone else. I realise that on TruckNet you are “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”, and I won’t go into specifics about my load or customer but I will say that today I started at 0630 and finished at 1830 and did a job worth £472.50 which cost me £200 in diesel. The OP can do his own maths according to his own daily standing charges.
OVERLOAD:
I think you have said what I felt when I did some work for them and I was a new face. I do recall being sent to a service station out of cullompton and was told to wait for twenty mins for a swap over. The swap over took over two hours and the load had to get there. It came of one of their units and was now passed to me. It was thus, now up to me to get it to the drop on time. I told Gregs I maybe late for the drop as i’d had to wait for so long for the swap over. Their response?. You better make it, it needs to get there on time…lovely.
I don’t know who you were dealing with but all I can say is that I have never been told that a load “has to be there at such-and-such a time”, if I say I can’t make a booking on time then that has never once been questioned, the most they have ever done is to ask me what time I think I will be there. And that’s not because I’m an “old face”, probably I’m still in the 10% of newest faces.
Occasionally I will have to wait two hours for a trailer swap, but then I’ve probably had to do that as an employee two or three times a year, every year, for the last 25 years. It just goes with the territory.
Probably the best advice I could give to the OP is to try it for a week and then take it from there, there would be nothing to stop him pulling off after a week and going on for someone else. I realise that on TruckNet you are “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”, and I won’t go into specifics about my load or customer but I will say that today I started at 0630 and finished at 1830 and did a job worth £472.50 which cost me £200 in diesel. The OP can do his own maths according to his own daily standing charges.
I think your having a laugh pal. Your in haulage and have never been lent on hard to get it there on time??.Granted it hasn’t happened alot to me but this time it did. I Say as I find.
I think your missing the point with the tralier swap over. Yes ive sat many times for a swap over that took longer then it should but with one major difference, I was getting paid to wait as a employee. As a subbie for gregs I didn’t. And as you know, time is money.
It’s plain to see you love working for Gregorys and are being treated better then I when I ran for them perhapes times have changed but I doubt it. You don’t like anything bad to be said about gregorys and thats fine. But the question asked at the start of this topic was has anybody subbed for gregs and how are they to work for and my answer is they were a shower of … to work for and i’m glad I cut ties with them when I did.
With all due respect, here’s OVERLOAD’s fatal mistake…
OVERLOAD:
If it is any help to you this is what I was paying through Scania Rental (truckeast).
For a 18 mnth old topline R470 (at the time this was a 06) I was paying £380 per week VAT included. All services done (ha ha) MOT and prep work. Road tax.
This was going back 4 years odd. My scania was one hell of a motor but because it was a rental everytime it went into the dealership it was treated as if it had the plague!. The work was shoddy at best. The amount of arguments I had with them is to many to list.
If you are going to pay out £1,600 a month for a truck which does the job no better than a £600 a month truck, and where the dealer support is appalling, then you are destined to fail.
Still, at least it had a Scania badge on the front.
Although we are given a schedule, we are never held by the short and curlies if we can’t make a drop on time.
I am in direct contact with the Planners at Avonmouth and North Tawton and they have no issue with time constraints so long as they can see that you are putting the graft in.
Harry Monk poking fun at someone’s vehicle financing… how ironic that is
There are other ways to do things than the Harry Monk or Overload way you know
Harry is happy at Gregorys, Overload wasn’t. It is possible that there is no right or wrong answer, so why not stick to the facts and let people make their own minds up
It could be argued that unless you can afford to run a new motor at the work the work is ■■■■.
Its should be the owners choice to run a new motor and change it evey few years or run something older and balace lower payments or no payments agsinst the bigger likleyhood of bigger repair and maintence bills.
newmercman:
Harry Monk poking fun at someone’s vehicle financing… how ironic that is
There are other ways to do things than the Harry Monk or Overload way you know
Harry is happy at Gregorys, Overload wasn’t. It is possible that there is no right or wrong answer, so why not stick to the facts and let people make their own minds up
I’m not “poking fun” but I’d say you would be hard pushed to make any sub-contracting work pay buying the most expensive truck in the most expensive way. Perhaps you should be able to but the fact is than I looked at all options, including buying a near new truck with full R & M and I couldn’t get the figures to add up.
But I agree with the second point, the only way for the OP to find out is to try it for himself for a week or two, at least he’s going to be certain of getting paid.
There’s no doubt that you need good paying work to make the payments on a brand new lorry. In the same way you can make decent money from low rates with a cheap lorry.
A happy medium is the best place to be, a two/three year old lorry with decent work, that way if work drops off, you can still pay the bills.
Like I said, it seems to be working for both Harry Monk and Overland, what they’re saying is fine, everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but it’s the way they’re saying it that will turn this thread into a gong show
Jeez thought the re-hashed o/d ‘controversy’ had long since been put to bed,the only way to make money…is with a telehandler (fleet) then get Gregorys to haul em for you!
kr79:
It could be argued that unless you can afford to run a new motor at the work the work is [zb].
Its should be the owners choice to run a new motor and change it evey few years or run something older and balace lower payments or no payments agsinst the bigger likleyhood of bigger repair and maintence bills.
In an ideal world, maybe and it’s certainly true that an older truck will have bigger repair bills, although in 13 months the repair bills I’ve had (August 2012, alternator & tensioners, October 2012, clutch, July 2013 new discs and pads on front two axles) have only come to around £6,000 which is far less than first-year depreciation on a brand-new truck. I know depreciation is written off against tax but it is still an expense to the operator.
I don’t know what your future plans are Kev but if you did put a truck on the road again and asked me whether I would recommend Gregory’s to work for then I’d say yes, and I wouldn’t knowingly give anyone on TruckNet a bum steer. Yes, it is sub-contracting, and no, you’ll never earn as much subbing as you will with your own work, but there is enough in it to make it worth doing. Dean said above that he is employed by a Gregory subby, so presumably he earns a fair wage and his employer will also be making enough profit to make it worth his while- which is fair enough- I just get both of those elements for myself.
Anyway, on a lighter note, look who I bumped into at Fleet services today, a fellow TruckNet member, busy fool and onion box driver
truckertang:
0
And he even gets time to fuel up…the driver did look in a rush tho
You must have taken that photo about five minutes before I took mine, I was just walking back from paying when Baz turned up. We had a long chat, Renault Magnums, TruckNet, Life, the universe and everything etc. About six this morning I’d guess?
You should have stopped, with three of us we could have “cancelled” and had a party instead, like the old days!
Yes if i was looking at going down that road id speak to gregorys as you and others have said good things. Yes others have been negative but its the same when people ask on the other forum about whats a firm like some say yeah great job others its the worst job ever.
Id say gregorys are no better or worse than many other subbie firms its down to what suits you.
then get Gregorys to haul em for you!
