I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.
yourhavingalarf:
Here’s a link to PBA contract…citizensadvice.org.uk/work/ … contracts/
The best way to get an agency to stop calling you is to let them down. Arrange a job and don’t show up, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.
The sooner these money grubbing sharks are outlawed the better we’ll all be.
From reading that, here’s my reading of the liabilities if you sign on…
(1) If you finish one job five hours in with the general contract paying “minimum 8 hours” - then because you are now obliged to inform the agency that “you’ve finished” at the depot of the day, - they can send you to another place just around the corner to do another 3 hours - for no extra pay. “Making time” is squeezed.
(2) If you are working somewhere over christmas, you don’t go onto parity pay by the time you’ve done the normal 12 week period. This means someone like RM can get you in on Christmas Pressure Duties earlier than the usual November, and keep you on well into January - without having to worry about the agency standing you down “to get out of paying you parity pay”.
This affects the agency. Those hours worked at somewhere like RM cost RM the same as always, as far as I know. Obviously, if the Agency are getting paid by RM say, £18ph and the agency can palm you off with £10ph instead of the parity pay rate of £17ph (for example) - then they are going to try and get upto and exactly 12 weeks out of every mug they send in there - and not a day longer. NO one ends up getting parity pay if everyone can be convinced to sign the PBA contract then.
Even if you don’t sign it, you’ll be “managed” so you still get stood down at the end of week 11, and you won’t be put in there until November rather than the moment people start coming back from Summer Holidays, which is when people I’ve spoken to “got put on regular contracted agency work”.
I wanted to get onto parity pay, but always got “managed” so I didn’t get it of course. 
The last compete year I did with agency had me refusing to be put in there at all - if I wasn’t there by the end of September. Guess what? - Got passed over completely. One of the reasons I ended up ditching the agency, and taking a full time job at with a depot I was getting on alright with. 
I’ve got the regular work now, and the regular pay - but my quest for overtime continues. Paid overtime at least.
(3) You cannot work for other agencies. If you are on the way to a job, not only can you get cancelled upon arrival and send home unpaid - the agency will dangle the “possibility of another nearby instant assignment” (does that happen if you get paid) which is supposed to compensate you for your wasted time, and warn you off phoning other agencies you might be on the books of, thus allowing yourself to be poached when left idle by agency one. I’ve not actually seen a “Exclusivity Contract” at any agency I attempted to sign up with - but I’m guessing they are either out there as separate things or included in these PBA contracts. 
(4) If your contract has “minimum 8 hours” again, and you’ve done your bit at the say, 5 hour mark - the client can “put you to other use” as they are paying you 8 hours. A crackdown on making time again.
(5) Maximum Hours - Tescos used to always plan you for 15 hour shifts. That meant that you HAD to be totally rested when you went in for a shift. Whilst I accept the H&S reasons behind this, I don’t accept that people should be forced to do 15 hour shifts. Not everyone is up to that - let alone up FOR that. F&W would also plan you for 15 hours if you were with a “right through hourly rate” agency. If you got OT after 8 hours - guess who gets managed to always be back at base by 9 hours in, and sent home by that point?
(6) Pay between assignments just means that you won’t be given a second job miles and miles away. If you were, then you could stop halfway at a MSA for lunch, and still be getting paid half your normal rate for the 2-3 hours you take to get to assignment B. 
This is why in practice it would be a “second assignment around the corner”. If it was less than 15 minutes drive away - you would not be getting any “book through time” at all of course.
(7) Swedish Derogation of any previous contract is pegged onto the end. They were bad enough of course, already encompassing some of the stuff above. It could be said that a PBA contract is a kind of “Super Swedish Derogation Contract” that encourages inefficient client management to stick with your agency, because there will always be drivers managed to get to that client and encourages efficient management of client firms - to run you ragged with solid content at short notice (aka the “Japanese Just In Time Business Model”)
The period where drivers worried about being employed in January, or getting only flat shifts miles and miles from where they lived - is coming to an end (All this pressure to sign PBS contracts tells me… 
)
This could be turning out to be an interesting Christmas coming up… Hmm… 
commonrail:
I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.
What about night tramping?
peterm:
Nah, he’s got a speech impedeimpedimement in his fingers.
Yeh, The agency don’t think much of him - but his girlfriend loves him.
Winseer:
yourhavingalarf:
Here’s a link to PBA contract…citizensadvice.org.uk/work/ … contracts/
The best way to get an agency to stop calling you is to let them down. Arrange a job and don’t show up, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.
The sooner these money grubbing sharks are outlawed the better we’ll all be.
From reading that, here’s my reading of the liabilities if you sign on…:
What a bunch of lying ■■■■■ Pertemps are then. I’m not surprised as they bully all their drivers into going limited for an extra pound an hour.
If you have been a driver who “worried in January” each year so far - then you might jump at the chance to sign a contract that effectively guaranteed you got paid - work or not.
Think about it though. If you are going to be paid “work or not” from now on - you’ll be run absolutely ragged to fulfill not only the terms of the new contract, but to give the firm their moneysworth as well.
If you left it until January without pressing people to sign these fancy new contracts though?
…A driver might wise up to the notion of "Hey, I’m not short of work this year. Now I can start picking and choosing which assignments I take, and which agencies (as I’m signed up with several) I get to pick and do as well.
This would be a serious nightmare for agency A should they put you into Blogg’s Haulage for 8 hours (you’ve done it before, and it takes about 9) then agency B that pays £1ph more PAYE to boot, offers you a better job and one that’s closer to home… With a multiple agency sign-up you’ve always got that ability to turn down Agency A and take up Agency B’s assignment - when you have NOT signed any PBS style contract…
Cut-throat competition for talent is coming. No more “undercutting rates to get the clients on board”…
Let’s ask Clint here, who not only ended up in a TV studio because some dyslexic type mis-read their name as “Client”, but also it would appear the bod who produces out the name badges might have a spot of bother with dyslexia as well…
Don’t be like Clint. - Don’t sign the PBS contract.
Winseer:
commonrail:
I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.What about night tramping?
■■■■ night tramping
I’ve got random agencies in Manchester texting & phoning me several times a week at the moment. I uploaded my CV to Total Jobs when I was ■■■■■■ off after a bad week about 3+years ago and haven’t even logged into my account since, this is where they are getting my information from so are clearly having to dig pretty deep to fill up the suckers list at the moment.
Anybody fancy Thursday-Monday night shifts at Stobarts Trafford Park?
commonrail:
Winseer:
commonrail:
I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.What about night tramping?
[zb] night tramping
I was thinking that with Night tramping you get paid a higher rate than day tramping, you get to be parked up asleep when the rat race runs ragged around you, and you get to drive about at night when it’s quiet.
Less stress. More money. You’re still gone from home the same blocks of hours over the whole week - so not going home each night is no different from not going home each day.
What’s not to like? 
Next time they phone, tell them you will be happy to take their assignment but the rate has gone up to £69 per hour plus VAT as they have to pay for your own unit too. It worked for me.
yourhavingalarf:
Here’s a link to PBA contract…citizensadvice.org.uk/work/ … contracts/
The best way to get an agency to stop calling you is to let them down. Arrange a job and don’t show up, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.
The sooner these money grubbing sharks are outlawed the better we’ll all be.
Just another poxy agency racket. These schemes just wouldn’t exist if there was a driver shortage…
commonrail:
I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.
Round here they’re more likely to offer you bog standard local delivery or (if you’ve got the card) HIAB work, after advertising class 1 long haulage work.
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Winseer:
commonrail:
Winseer:
commonrail:
I phoned an agency about some tramping work… the other day.
Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.What about night tramping?
[zb] night tramping
I was thinking that with Night tramping you get paid a higher rate than day tramping, you get to be parked up asleep when the rat race runs ragged around you, and you get to drive about at night when it’s quiet.
Less stress. More money. You’re still gone from home the same blocks of hours over the whole week - so not going home each night is no different from not going home each day.What’s not to like?
I like to be in the pub for 6
Email them and tell them you have changed your mobile number,I’m sure there are enough numbers to give them in the back of the Sunday Sport 
robroy:
Do what I do with unwanted calls say…
‘‘Ok, I will get him, can you hold’’
and just keep them waiting until they get sick.
Do it everytime until they get the message.Or alternatively…do as Pat said. [emoji38]
My father in law gives the phone to my two year old son when it’s a nuisance call. This is both hilarious and effective.
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Imagine my surprise when they asked if i’d be interested in night trunking,instead.
I like these sort of games.What about night tramping?
[zb] night tramping
I was thinking that with Night tramping you get paid a higher rate than day tramping, you get to be parked up asleep when the rat race runs ragged around you, and you get to drive about at night when it’s quiet.
Less stress. More money. You’re still gone from home the same blocks of hours over the whole week - so not going home each night is no different from not going home each day.What’s not to like?
I like to be in the pub for 6
Ahh. That’s where we part the ways then. There are no pubs within walking distance of where I live any more (20 years ago there were about 70-odd…) and in any case - in over a quarter of a century of driving by this point, - I don’t consume alcohol on a day I’m working later on in.
I’ve never had a problem with the agencies I work for now (driver hire and pertemps) they keep me so busy with work, it was quiet for a couple weeks before joining pertemps but now both agencies call to offer work like they are competing, I’ve told them the work I’m willing to undertake and even though I may have been a bit picky they just keep coming back with more for me, and thanks to that I’ve got a few places that ask for me by name, not entirely sure how I managed that. Compared to everyone else’s stories on here I seem to be quite lucky.
And to answer your question I got into an argument with my first agency and they never called me again, but maybe as a last resort I’d suggest it