Rhythm Thief:
But then if you think about it some more, you realise that these “exclusive” outlets (I’ve never been excluded from them) are in the local community just like any other shops. We’ve got two Eastern European shops in Ross on Wye and I use both of them on a fairly regular basis. (I love Polish lager and kabanos!) Being local small businesses, they put money back into the community, unlike, say, Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s, which hoover most of the money they make away from the town…
Ah so it’s true that not everyone is welcome in those type of shops huh:lol:, I must admit I like their products but I’m reluctant to go in because of their attitude to people who aren’t one if them:( The bit I struggle to see is how they contribute to the local economy much, they don’t employ locals, they don’t source their products locally/nationally (which goes further down the supply chain affecting you & I) etc!?
I think what RT is driving at is they employ someone who then fuels his car generally at a garage employing locals , buys a telly from a shop employing locals, buys stuff at Clothes shops who then employ locals.Perhaps gets his car services at a local garage and so on.
Oh and while we’re sort of on the subject Polish food is amazing especially the bread and mayonnaise
I know 2 polish guys who drive ‘home’ regularly for mots and obviously car repairs that aren’t affecting its road worthiness(servicing, light body repairs etc)
When they get home they bring more and more cigarettes etc back into the country, 1 does it every 3 months. He got a quote for repairs on his bora, can’t remember exactly what was wrong with it but was quoted £500. He called a polish garage couple of minutes later for a quote & parts availability then drove home in 20ish? Hours and got the repair done for less than £100 and brought thousands of his favourite L&M’s back with him.
Now I probably only know 10? Polish guys really well and 2 of them do that kind of thing regularly. The others? Well haven’t had the topic crop up, but il mention it when I see them, how can that be good for our ‘local’ economy?
You lefties can keep making up excuses, doesn’t matter what people say. You only believe the most PC and multi-culti ‘facts’.
Having taught English to Poles and Slovaks for the last 3 years I assure this is far from the norm. Most travel home at Christmas and perhaps once in summer. Whilst your “friend” might travel home for car repairs and somehow an MOT (which they don’t have in Poland) he probably doesn’t for fuel, shopping, utilities, telephone service, broadband, household furniture, clothing, activities and a host of other things where he’s spending his hard earned money in this country just like we are.
To call me a lefty is so inaccurate it almost doesn’t bear mentioning
Then they use cheap polish garages to get their vehicle upto British mot standard
Rhythm Thief:
But then if you think about it some more, you realise that these “exclusive” outlets (I’ve never been excluded from them) are in the local community just like any other shops. We’ve got two Eastern European shops in Ross on Wye and I use both of them on a fairly regular basis. (I love Polish lager and kabanos!) Being local small businesses, they put money back into the community, unlike, say, Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s, which hoover most of the money they make away from the town…
Ah so it’s true that not everyone is welcome in those type of shops huh:lol:, I must admit I like their products but I’m reluctant to go in because of their attitude to people who aren’t one if them:( The bit I struggle to see is how they contribute to the local economy much, they don’t employ locals, they don’t source their products locally/nationally (which goes further down the supply chain affecting you & I) etc!?
I think what RT is driving at is they employ someone who then fuels his car generally at a garage employing locals , buys a telly from a shop employing locals, buys stuff at Clothes shops who then employ locals.Perhaps gets his car services at a local garage and so on.
Oh and while we’re sort of on the subject Polish food is amazing especially the bread and mayonnaise
I know 2 polish guys who drive ‘home’ regularly for mots and obviously car repairs that aren’t affecting its road worthiness(servicing, light body repairs etc)
When they get home they bring more and more cigarettes etc back into the country, 1 does it every 3 months. He got a quote for repairs on his bora, can’t remember exactly what was wrong with it but was quoted £500. He called a polish garage couple of minutes later for a quote & parts availability then drove home in 20ish? Hours and got the repair done for less than £100 and brought thousands of his favourite L&M’s back with him.
Now I probably only know 10? Polish guys really well and 2 of them do that kind of thing regularly. The others? Well haven’t had the topic crop up, but il mention it when I see them, how can that be good for our ‘local’ economy?
You lefties can keep making up excuses, doesn’t matter what people say. You only believe the most PC and multi-culti ‘facts’.
Having taught English to Poles and Slovaks for the last 3 years I assure this is far from the norm. Most travel home at Christmas and perhaps once in summer. Whilst your “friend” might travel home for car repairs and somehow an MOT (which they don’t have in Poland) he probably doesn’t for fuel, shopping, utilities, telephone service, broadband, household furniture, clothing, activities and a host of other things where he’s spending his hard earned money in this country just like we are.
To call me a lefty is so inaccurate it almost doesn’t bear mentioning
Then they use cheap polish garages to get their vehicle upto British mot standard[/quote
Then they go to a UK garage to get the MOT paying for said MOT and keeping the person at the MOT centre employed so that he might spend his hard earned money in our economy
I’m not sure of the legal standing but I assume because the car has a UK MOT it must therefore be a UK car which they will of bought from someone in the UK thereby allowing then to spend that money in our economy
I know some immigrants bring a vehicle over from home but usually not
I used to work with a bloke that thought truck drivers should be on doctors wages because we are more important,seriously he was that convinced,was always asking other people what wage they were on and moaning about money…
Me personally think we should be looking at £10 an hour now but not likely here in yorkshire any time soon.
Iv just left a job paying £8 an hour straight through to one that pays overtime after 8 hours a day and that’s the first time in 13 years of driving iv had a job that does so…
DrivingMissDaisy:
Most of you are paid what you’re worth!
Agreed. Seeing the standards of driving I have over the years coupled with the kind of stuff posted on here, many of those on £7/£8 an hour may even be overpaid.
yorkshire terrier:
Me personally think we should be looking at £10 an hour now but not likely here in yorkshire any time soon.
The last job I did in haulage in East Yorks five years ago was £10.50/hr
Iv just left a job paying £8 an hour straight through to one that pays overtime after 8 hours a day and that’s the first time in 13 years of driving iv had a job that does so…
Where do you live? There’s a class 2 job in my town just pottering around doing deliveries to their store which pays £7.50/hr. Must be going on for 9 years since I’ve been on less than £8/hr in East Yorkshire.
Rhythm Thief:
But then if you think about it some more, you realise that these “exclusive” outlets (I’ve never been excluded from them) are in the local community just like any other shops. We’ve got two Eastern European shops in Ross on Wye and I use both of them on a fairly regular basis. (I love Polish lager and kabanos!) Being local small businesses, they put money back into the community, unlike, say, Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s, which hoover most of the money they make away from the town…
Ah so it’s true that not everyone is welcome in those type of shops huh:lol:, I must admit I like their products but I’m reluctant to go in because of their attitude to people who aren’t one if them:( The bit I struggle to see is how they contribute to the local economy much, they don’t employ locals, they don’t source their products locally/nationally (which goes further down the supply chain affecting you & I) etc!?
I think what RT is driving at is they employ someone who then fuels his car generally at a garage employing locals , buys a telly from a shop employing locals, buys stuff at Clothes shops who then employ locals. Perhaps gets his car services at a local garage and so on.
Oh and while we’re sort of on the subject Polish food is amazing especially the bread and mayonnaise
Exactly! There may be the odd Polish bloke who takes his car to Poland for its MOT, even if he’s had to go to an immense amount of time and trouble to get a Polish garage somehow certified to issue a UK MOT, but no one can live in a community without contributing something to it. I have far more of an issue with the big Morrison’s down the road: the local community sees very little of that money, since most of it is hoovered away to head office and distributed to shareholders.
there’s quiet a few joker’s out there who are only paying £6.31 per hr( nat min wage before tax &ins ) Not that £7.70 per hr is a brilliant rate it at least is considered to be at least a livable hrly rate outside the london area, apparently ,
The area that live in can dictate what wage you can earn to large degree, as well as some luck as you has to be in the right place at the right time ,as the saying goes, As well as it sometimes being a case of it’s not always a case of what,but who you know, that could land you a good well paid job
Well the real answer is, in a free market economy you are paid what you’re worth. Down to supply and demand, it what you get when you totally embrace capitalism, I suppose its no surprise after over 30 years of brain washing by a right wing media, if the economy picks up and there are fewer truck drivers than jobs then wages go up. I don’t think you can really blame it on the shiny truck brigade except the fact that many of them would keep working as truck driver regardless of pay and conditions while other of us would go and find something else.
Blaming migrant workers is to simplistic, all they are doing is what many others have done, go to where the work is, I’d do the same if I got a good offer to work somewhere else, but the influx of Poles and others from Eastern Europe did skew the supply of truck drivers, just at a point the industry was getting desperate.
But making them your scapegoat lets the real culprits off the hook, that those with the power and money to influence politicians, so they could make even more obscene amounts of money by reducing wages.
As for migrants not shopping in UK supermarket, you should go into the ones in Thetford on a Friday night, I think the only people who are British are the staff and me. and taking your car back to Poland to save £400 on maintenance seems a bit daft, how much do you think it’s costs to drive a car from UK to Poland? Maybe they are going back to visit relative and the same time get the car done by somebody they know?
You’re not paid what you’re worth, you’re paid what the industry tells you you’re worth.
One of the things that annoys me is that here am I with fifteen years of C+E experience under my belt and no accidents of any sort in the last seven or eight years, being paid exactly the same rate as someone who got their C+E yesterday. If we had some sort of scheme whereby there was, say, ten quid a week extra for every year’s experience, that’d be a good start. At the moment, Freightroute are getting the benefit of my experience for nothing, as would be any other company I worked for.
As for economic migrants, my dad worked abroad purely for financial reasons from the mid '70s right up until he retired earlier this year, so I’m hardly in a position to castigate someone from Poland who chooses to do exactly the same. It always strikes me that anyone who has the initiative and drive to get themselves over to a different country in order to improve their lot is exactly the sort of person we need.
Here’s J B Priestley writing in 1934, but it’s still just as relevant today.
… the leader-writers in the cheap Press began yelping again about Keeping the Foreigner Out. Apart from the miserable meanness of the attitude itself – for the great England, the England admired throughout the world, is the England that keeps open house, the refuge of Mazzini, Marx, Lenin — history shows us that the countries that have opened their doors have gained, just as countries that have driven out large numbers of their citizens for racial, religious or political reasons, have always paid dearly for their intolerance … Bradford is really more provincial now than it was twenty years ago. But so, I suspect, is the whole world. It must be when there is less and less tolerance in it, less free speech, less liberalism. Behind all the new movements of this age, nationalistic, fascistic, communistic, has been more than a suspicion of the mental attitude of a gang of small town louts ready to throw a brick at the nearest stranger.
Rhythm Thief:
You’re not paid what you’re worth, you’re paid what the industry tells you you’re worth.
One of the things that annoys me is that here am I with fifteen years of C+E experience under my belt and no accidents of any sort in the last seven or eight years, being paid exactly the same rate as someone who got their C+E yesterday. If we had some sort of scheme whereby there was, say, ten quid a week extra for every year’s experience, that’d be a good start. At the moment, Freightroute are getting the benefit of my experience for nothing, as would be any other company I worked for.
I see your point and its probably not particularly just, but you are paid what you’re worth, in a free market, if it was economically advantages for a company to pay more for good experienced driver then you’d be on a higher rate.
Some companies do look for experienced driver, and therefore might have to offer something to attract those drivers, but for most it doesn’t matter if you’ve 5 minutes experience or 30 yeas without an accident you get the same, because the company gets the same rate regardless of the driver.
That’s a good point. I suppose before we’re paid what we’re worth by the companies, the companies we work for need ot be paid what their service is worth by the customers. And that will never happen as long as you’ve got one company prepared to do the job for a bit less by cutitng a few corners or even making a loss on it just to get the business. My old gaffer at CFT, to his credit, used to often run us back empty instead of doing a job at a rate he considered insultingly low. As he rightly pointed out, that does no one any favours in the long term.
Sadly the mindset in haulage is that drivers must work overtime to make a living wage. I retired 3 years ago and this was the case even in my fathers day. How often have we heard the expression “Not the greatest rates but plenty of overtime”. I think drivers shot themselves in the foot (again) with the introduction of the 48 hour week, there should have been NO POA, Other work but a 48 hour week
excluding breaks of 1 hour per shift. Who else needs to work a week and a half to make a weeks wage?
oldmannie:
Sadly the mindset in haulage is that drivers must work overtime to make a living wage. I retired 3 years ago and this was the case even in my fathers day. How often have we heard the expression “Not the greatest rates but plenty of overtime”. I think drivers shot themselves in the foot (again) with the introduction of the 48 hour week, there should have been NO POA, Other work but a 48 hour week
excluding breaks of 1 hour per shift. Who else needs to work a week and a half to make a weeks wage?
I don’t think drivers had any say in the POA scandal tbh, we just get told what we’re doing and which loopholes we’re using to earn a decent wage.
I say a decent wage, not a liveable wage, because I know people who work in factories who don’t take 250 quid home per week and their partners don’t work and they live, so when we’re taking 50% more than that home, can’t really complain can we? Yes we’re doing 50-100% more hours, but that’s not forced upon us, there are jobs out there that do 40hrs per week, but we all go ‘can’t live on that’…
Shred It in Manchester were advertising a few weeks ago, 4 on 3 off with a difference, every weekend off + 1 weekday off, 10hr days, but it was about 9.50 per hour (don’t quote me, can’t remember) and I’d have loved to have gone for it and worked those shifts but I just couldn’t afford to now, not because it’s a low earning level but because my lifestyle is now based on a higher earning level.
Rhythm Thief:
That’s a good point. I suppose before we’re paid what we’re worth by the companies, the companies we work for need ot be paid what their service is worth by the customers. And that will never happen as long as you’ve got one company prepared to do the job for a bit less by cutitng a few corners or even making a loss on it just to get the business. My old gaffer at CFT, to his credit, used to often run us back empty instead of doing a job at a rate he considered insultingly low. As he rightly pointed out, that does no one any favours in the long term.
It’s not just about the rate that’s paid to the haulier even. If you have Mr Newbie doing a trailer swap each night successfully, why should the haulier want or need a more experienced driver? They don’t. Driving a wagon is not what it was. As easy to drive as a Ford Focus, little roping and sheeting needed, and as long as the goods get from A to B in one piece, it matters not how many years experience the driver has. I have done jobs myself when other drivers have had 20 years on me and unless there is a problem I can’t solve but they can, no one would know!
An old driver told me that all drivers are worth the same, irrespective of actual experience, as long as they are delivering the goods (literally).
Personally, I feel that drivers are short changed (again, literally) but some seem to think you’re more of a trucker if so! To me, it’s all about getting the job done well and earning a decent coin for it. Coin not decent? Then I leave it for the mug that will work for daft money.
Truckulent:
It’s not just about the rate that’s paid to the haulier even. If you have Mr Newbie doing a trailer swap each night successfully, why should the haulier want or need a more experienced driver? They don’t. Driving a wagon is not what it was. As easy to drive as a Ford Focus, little roping and sheeting needed, and as long as the goods get from A to B in one piece, it matters not how many years experience the driver has. I have done jobs myself when other drivers have had 20 years on me and unless there is a problem I can’t solve but they can, no one would know!
An old driver told me that all drivers are worth the same, irrespective of actual experience, as long as they are delivering the goods (literally).
Personally, I feel that drivers are short changed (again, literally) but some seem to think you’re more of a trucker if so! To me, it’s all about getting the job done well and earning a decent coin for it. Coin not decent? Then I leave it for the mug that will work for daft money.
I don’t think many drivers would go back to the days of roping and sheeting, however much they may view them trough rose tinted specs. I know I wouldn’t: admittedly I only did a little of it, right at the end of that particular era, but it was hard work and took a lot longer than zipping up the side of a tautliner. And when it rained, or was blowing a gale … no thanks. However, experience still counts when you’re up against agency drivers who have to ask how to hook up a trailer … Maybe attitude is more important these days: we get a lot of agency drivers in who think it’s acceptable to park up for four hours in order to ramp up their pay, or damage tractor units and don’t tell anyone.
I agree with your last point. I don’t like working long hours, so I went onto nights. Now I take home £350 for a 35 - 40 hour week. If you don’t like something, change it. And if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
DrivingMissDaisy:
Most of you are paid what you’re worth!
Agreed. Seeing the standards of driving I have over the years coupled with the kind of stuff posted on here, many of those on £7/£8 an hour may even be overpaid.
yorkshire terrier:
Me personally think we should be looking at £10 an hour now but not likely here in yorkshire any time soon.
The last job I did in haulage in East Yorks five years ago was £10.50/hr
Iv just left a job paying £8 an hour straight through to one that pays overtime after 8 hours a day and that’s the first time in 13 years of driving iv had a job that does so…
Where do you live? There’s a class 2 job in my town just pottering around doing deliveries to their store which pays £7.50/hr. Must be going on for 9 years since I’ve been on less than £8/hr in East Yorkshire.
Was based in Leeds mate they are quite a few firms paying sub £8 an hour here, paying less than £7 aswell I’m led to believe
Was a lad at my last firm who needed every hour possible just to pay bills his life was based on over £500 a week take home so on £8 an hour straight though you had to put the hours in, he even didn’t take any holidays because he didn’t want to lose any money.
The bottom line is that we live in a free market economy and £7 per hour is all an employer needs to pay to get an artic driver in many parts of the country. So that’s what the job is worth. If an employer couldn’t find drivers at that price then he would need to increase it, but he can so he doesn’t.
All arguments along the line of “We are in charge of £100,000’s worth of truck” are irrelevant.
However, experience still counts when you’re up against agency drivers who have to ask how to hook up a trailer … Maybe attitude is more important these days: we get a lot of agency drivers in who think it’s acceptable to park up for four hours in order to ramp up their pay, or damage tractor units and don’t tell anyone.