Pimpdaddy:
thetastytrucker:
Why would anyone want to do 15 hr shifts ?££££££…
I’ve met a driver once who does 3x15s straight then 4 days off.
Plus only commuting costs/time for 3 days. Sounds like a perfect pattern to me. But is working 3x15 hour shifts in a row legal?
BillyMac:
But is working 3x15 hour shifts in a row legal?
I believe so…
This is going to sound controversial. Any driver shortage will probably be short lived. Let’s be honest, anyone that’s pulled into a yard in the East of England can see living proof that some places are staffed by people not from the UK. If desperate, there’s no reason why hauliers up north wouldn’t encourage/invite the same.
So what if they can’t find foreign labour with a DCPC? No bother. They’ll just put them through, at least they’re willing, it’s a few hundred pound if that at cost. All the quitters and “hang their hat up in disgust guys” will not dent the ongoing machine of capitalism.
Things get better when there is a true long lived shortage within an industry. There is only a shortage if not enough people within your own lands available to complete a task and you can’t recruit viable staff from external sources. If you can recruit from within Europe, you’re down to hoping there’s a shortage within the whole EU. But there’s isn’t. Any shortage will exist in areas not infiltrated currently by foreign labour agencies. It will be short lived and transient whilst they back fill the seats. Look at field workers. They are predominantly all foreign but have you experienced any shortages in buying produce until they found those guys?
Hauliers care about the bottom line. It’s been proven by track record they don’t care who drives their trucks from A to B. They need bums on seats at a cheap price. Damages? They’ll just write that off. The talk of proper drivers/old school drivers (whilst I agree of the value the hauliers don’t) is wasted in these modern times. The job is getting easier in regards to the old school driving terms and now a box ticking exercise legally. Any special requirements outside of basic driving can probably be trained just as well to an eager foreigner as a UK local. You hardly have to be able to drive a crash box and rope and sheet. Quite simply as long as a company is employing lawfully, they can manage the drivers regs sufficiently that they won’t lose their O licence and the cost basis of damages works out against income, they won’t bat an eyelid.
I don’t agree at all with this and I’m on the camp to get it changed but that’s irrelevant, it is currently the way it is and it will not change under the current set up.
Pimpdaddy:
BillyMac:
But is working 3x15 hour shifts in a row legal?I believe so…
In practice you should on no account work day 4 onwards if you’ve done the first three days as reduced rest. Just in case you get caught in a traffic jam on the home leg day 4,5, or 6 and go over 13 hours that day. Illegal. 
Can’t see anyone getting days off for that reason. In practice, work says they’ll give you shorter runs. You run tight leaving you with a night out/problem getting home if on day runs.
Freight Dog:
This is going to sound controversial. Any driver shortage will probably be short lived.
Controversial or not it’s the truth. I said it many times before & I got shot down. To me it’s just like your industry FD-there hasn’t, isn’t & never will be a shortage:!::mrgreen:
I finished at 72after 50 years on the road I did every thing and loved it especially Europe but really don’t miss it ,I miss how the job was and the old type of drivers ,I could not put up with what goes on today all things like CPC just another money making racket in the old days we had a strong union which kept the job straight and wages fair agency’s have killed the job ,the concept of them is ok provide a driver for holiday cover /sickness but then bosses clicked why have your own drivers paying holidays ,pensions ,sick pay etc so the industry was born ,don’t get me wrong I did some agency work but I was a very professional driver by deed not by name I did oil company’s a lot of tanker work I was more or less permanent on some firms and was well looked after when the so called economic slump came firms used this as a excuse to drop wages and not to pay the agency the rate they were being paid so they cut the wages of the drivers I went from9ph for 40 hrs ,time and a half after 8 hrs and Saturday double time Sunday to a flat £8 per hr a loss of £400 a month so I packed it all in I don’t envy you lads on the job now it’s finished and for those who think utopia is round the corner think again
Freight Dog:
Damages? They’ll just write that off… they won’t lose their O licence and the cost basis of damages works out against income, they won’t bat an eyelid.
That’s all very well for the hauliers, but in the majority of cases someone else or someone else’s property was also damaged.
…Think of what the excheqeur could rake in if they “stopped damages being written off against taxable income” for a yard’s bottom line?
Smash something up? - It gets paid for out of company funds directly instead of “gross revenue” to which it is then tax-offset, costing them a whole lot less… Has to be a better stealth tax than Gorgon Brown’s “Pension Grab” surely?
The Agency rates sometimes sound good but include holiday pay.
All well and good as long as you are aware.
They don’t include holiday pay at all - The pay is instead of holiday pay, which you don’t get. You don’t get sick pay either.
Contractor rates need to be significantly higher than PAYE - just to achieve the same ends.
I’ve always argued that a contractor needs around 40% (not 25%) more hourly rate to make up for the things one loses and extra overheads one pays for being self-employed in any shape or form.
Where do you get 25%? We get £1 per hour more although 1 agency pays 50p per hour more which was why i left them when i went self employed
I think il just be running local over here in Ireland till this driver cpc thingy catches on,most likely in or about 2085 or thereabouts…theres no postcodes over here yet,except for dublin being split into 10 areas…2 average speed camera sets for the entire northern Ireland,and about 5 fixed ones that are never on. I was ploughing a bird that worked for the enforcement section who told me that there only on for about 1 hour a month,and that gives them enough work to do for the rest of the month…( not forgetting about the one that they never repainted the lines on after the road got resurfaced)…happy days in the land that time forgot…they did at one point about 5 years ago to try out a camera van in Donegal,which was working flat out for a couple of hours until someone passed it,then came back with his pals and set it alight with the operator inside( though he was outside 30 seconds later),…and lets not be mentioning the tangs… 
To hell with the DCPC, to hell with the EU, to hell with weak UK governments, and to hell with the transport industry. I’m another old schooler with over 20 years under my belt. To those who argue that drivers simply accept the DCPC, do the training and keep quiet, I say, …what’s next ? Until all parties show a little common sense (which seems to be in short supply nowadays) the transport industry will continue to spiral chaotically up it’s own jacksie !
well said thirty yrs at the job all I ever wanted to do as a kid . completely different job now full of mostly big companies bringing out new regs and bu…t rules every 5mins and the new breed e.g. sat nav heroes just say yes sir just poke it up me a bit more. but gotta keep her lit at min as cant retire just yet 
i put an add in the job centre class 1 driver £9 per hour £25 per night out and i had 1 cv in 4 weeks 
all the companies around me only pay £7.50/£8
seems fair pay if tramping and decent truck
dieseldog999:
I think il just be running local over here in Ireland till this driver cpc thingy catches on,most likely in or about 2085 or thereabouts…theres no postcodes over here yet,except for dublin being split into 10 areas…2 average speed camera sets for the entire northern Ireland,and about 5 fixed ones that are never on. I was ploughing a bird that worked for the enforcement section who told me that there only on for about 1 hour a month,and that gives them enough work to do for the rest of the month…( not forgetting about the one that they never repainted the lines on after the road got resurfaced)…happy days in the land that time forgot…they did at one point about 5 years ago to try out a camera van in Donegal,which was working flat out for a couple of hours until someone passed it,then came back with his pals and set it alight with the operator inside( though he was outside 30 seconds later),…and lets not be mentioning the tangs…
lol love ireland 
best place in the world to live
stevejones:
seems fair pay if tramping and decent truck
magnum
burnley-si:
i put an add in the job centre class 1 driver £9 per hour £25 per night out and i had 1 cv in 4 weeks
all the companies around me only pay £7.50/£8
If that pay rate was a few miles nearer to me I’d be on it like a shot me…
