Was just wondering I anyone else one here has to pay for damages or insurance excesses if they have an accident.
In 21 and passed my class 2 in may last year, finally got a job in November tramping in a 7.5t doing nationwide home delivery (gotta start somewhere) The company I work for makes us pay for damages such as if we take wing mirrors off, or if we have a accident and its ‘our fault’ we pay half the excess. For me if I have an accident I have to pay £300 of the £700 pound excess. Just wondering if any other company’s make you pay up for this sort of stuff?
Shocking mate !
Never worked for a company that has that policy and don’t think I could BUT like you say your young and on the start of your career you put up with a lot when you start off.
Best thing I can say is be extra carefull and don’t break anything and find another job ! Because any employer who has this policy isn’t the place you want to be with ,
Accidents happen that’s why they are called accidents !
Fallmonk:
Shocking mate !
Never worked for a company that has that policy and don’t think I could BUT like you say your young and on the start of your career you put up with a lot when you start off.
Best thing I can say is be extra carefull and don’t break anything and find another job ! Because any employer who has this policy isn’t the place you want to be with ,
Accidents happen that’s why they are called accidents !
+1
It’s a tool, would they make you buy a new hammer if it got scratched??
Absolutely disgusting! My employer tried this on a few years ago. My mate solved it when he returned to the yard one evening with considerable (and I do mean CONSIDERABLE) damage to his tractor unit. Turned out later that it cost £4,500+ to put right.
When he was called “upstairs” for the inevitable inquisition, he told the managing director that he had accidentally bent the bumper but reasoned that he felt that he may as well make a “decent” job of it as he was paying the excess anyway! He ended the conversation by telling the boss that he would be back the following week to collect his P45.
Just chipped a glass table getting it out of the box, that’ll be a fine of at least £80 in the comin weeks.
Got a Class 1 job recently locally only to find that when the contract got to me there were a few restrictions that I didn’t like.
I had to sign to authorise them to take out whatever deductions they wanted, including fines that they would pay and pass the cost on to me.
Any damage, including damage where I hadn’t done it but had been done to the vehicle whilst I was in charge of it, ie parked up, loading etc.
If the vehicle was late to a delivery and they were charged for it being late by not getting it to the customer on time, they’d pass the charge back to me.
Insurance Excess to £250 per incident, automatically taken from my wages. I was only on £300 a week.
If the load was damaged, I would be charged too…
Not that I’m a dangerous driver. I’ve not had a collision with any HGV I’ve driven yet and try to be careful anyway, but for the wages they pay, those T&Cs are pretty restrictive…
So my take home for the 2 weeks I was there of mostly 12-15 hour shifts worked out at just over £550, after tax…
Its ilegal to deduct anything from wages except tax n national insurence. insurance is paid by employers for above reasons, negligense may be something diffrent tho im not sure
The company I recently left have just upped their insurance excess (to save themselves some money) and as they have always charged the drivers this excess, it has now gone up from £500 to £1000! They move cars, and this applies to all damage whether to cars or the transporter. 
eezeer:
Its ilegal to deduct anything from wages except tax n national insurence. insurance is paid by employers for above reasons, negligense may be something diffrent tho im not sure
Unless it is in your contract…
grumpybum:
eezeer:
Its ilegal to deduct anything from wages except tax n national insurence. insurance is paid by employers for above reasons, negligense may be something diffrent tho im not sureUnless it is in your contract…
Indeed, which is why the put it in the contract and had me sign the form to authorise ALL of the deductions. So I stopped working there and went back to Agency work…
I imagine that pilots working for British Airways have similar contracts 
Seriously these clauses are pretty disgusting.
I can understand (perhaps) a young driver being asked to pay the extra excess incurred because of his age.
The deduction of fines etc has to be illegal in some way or other as most will be fixed penalties that YOU have the option to challenge before paying them.
If the company simply pay them you are left with no challenge available as once they are paid the matter is closed.
I know the pressure is on to get and keep a job but quite obviousley some jobs are not worth having.
Can a boss put anything he likes in the contract or are there some things that amount to unfair practice and are banned ?
Be a freaking man and tell them to go forth and multiply.
Grow some balls
An owner driver I used to work for until August 2011 employs his nephew who came out of the army, he was 22 and for at least a year I know that the owner was taking 25% out of the lads wage for the ‘extra’ he had to pay out in insurance. It was the only way he could get a start anywhere at the time but when I left this was still going on to the best of my knowledge !
del949:
Can a boss put anything he likes in the contract or are there some things that amount to unfair practice and are banned ?
Unfair contract would AIUI indeed apply to a work contract. A £250 insurance excess deducted in one go would probably be such an example.
At the time I felt the easiest way for me to deal with it was to walk away. They had several drivers there already that stuck to that contract and it worked for them. I don’t want to damage vehicles, but likewise I’m an employee not an OD!
If their insurance doesn’t cover your knocks, then the firm are underinsured.
Those firms that “lay their own insurance risks” of course won’t penalise their drivers in any way for it, because they’d drive away the low-liability drivers, and end up with a concentrated pool of dodgy drivers too fearful of losing their jobs to object to any daft idea the firm comes up with.
The simple way around it is for firms to insist upon job applicants having clean licences. 
A good credit rating can get you a good mortgage.
Why not then, a good licence getting someone a good job with excellent T&C’s?
“Behind every professional driver is a professional firm.”
Unfair contract would AIUI indeed apply to a work contract. A £250 insurance excess deducted in one go would probably be such an example
.
After I posted I had a quick google because I thought that might be the case.
But it seems a bit ambiguous.
I found one case where the laws on unfair contract did apply to employment contracts but most listings referred to a high court case where it was decided that consumer unfair contracts did not apply to employment contracts.
There does not appear to be any unfair employment contract laws.
So, perhaps a boss can put whatever he likes in the contract and once you sign it…
there was one law that stipulated that deductions cannot amount to more than 10% of the gross wage in any one week but even there there were exceptions. i.e the final week etc
Best answer, if the T’s and C’s are crap, don’t work for them.
There’s jobs outside the haulage industry, and I wouldn’t hesitate to do one rather than work for a crap firm.
When they’ve got no drivers, they’ll either sort themselves out or go under, neither is a bad choice tbh.
Anything taken from your wage that would cause you to be working below NMW is illegal, the NMW is the MINIMUM wage they are legally required to pay you (before tax and insurance of course)
Personally I think the only thing drivers should pay for or offer to pay for are steps and mirror’s and notthing more
I once worked for a company that brought in this crap (80s) ,kept out of the yrd as long as i could but finally got caught by boss ,sign here,here and here ,nope will think about it ,ok …wouldnt be as bad but we ran 24-7 so tiredness took its toll.
never did sign .left before cost me money. well i did see the beast ,middle o the night on M6,so took the warning.
jimmy