Just been to my local Lidl store and noticed a rather large poster saying “store assistants needed, starting salary 7.30 - 7.50 p/h”
I though I would post it here as I know there are a lot of trampers out there working for less per hour.
Other advantages of working for Lidl as a store assistant, apart of higher hourly rate are:
Not having to deal with VOSA
Not having to worry about your load and whether it has been evenly redistributed over the trailer floor
No nights out, so you can spend every night with your loved ones at home
No need to pay for an expensive class 2 and class 1 licence,
No need for Digi card and watching your hours carefully so you don’t get punished by VOSA with a hefty fine, court action, or even imprisonment
No need to worry about your load, or fuel being stolen while you sleep
No need to worry whether you would be able to find a parking space in one of the lay bys
No buffeting of your vehicle by passing traffic, while you try to get some sleep
No need to pay hundreds of pounds for your periodic CPC training., etc, I could go on and on…
I know there are a lot of drivers on here happy to work for this sort of money putting their and others lives at risk every day, so here is an alternative that seems like a no brainer.
Except most drivers could not afford to live off a basic wage of 40 hours on that I would suspect. Truck driving has always, or at least in many cases being a poorly paid job when divided by the hours worked. Its purely because the hours are often so long that a poor wage builds up to be quite a lot higher than your average shelf stacker earns.
Here in Canada I get paid by the mile, which I strongly dislike and on bad weeks I do earn considerably less than the minimum wage when you divide my wages by hours but I just could not afford to live working for $10 or $12 per hour, for 40 hours a week. I’d still have to work 60 or 70 hours in a shelf stacking type job to earn what I do now, so I might as well be doing something I usually quite like. Truck drivers do long hours, but in the UK especially much of that time is time being paid to sit in RDC or other such places where you’re not actually doing a great deal. If you did 40 or 60 hours in a Lidl store you’d probably be under constant supervision from a manager, who would pounce on you at the first sign of slacking off.
All that being said, all the downsides you mention of being a truck driver are very valid and part of the reason why I moved over here, where some, but not all of those issues are not present.
Agree with robinhood,I work on containers and I rarely do manual labour , even though I do 15s , n 13s it’s mainly driving and waiting , and the driving isn’t hard , so if you work out the wage that way , we are better off , barring the vosa points etc
hkloss1:
I know there are a lot of drivers on here happy to work for this sort of money putting their and others lives at risk every day, so here is an alternative that seems like a no brainer.
So, when you start working for Lidl as a shelf stacker, you might like to come back here & tell us all about what we’re missing.
You will be working for Lidl soon won’t you ? After all, it’s a “no brainer”.
£7.50 per hour for 40 hours is only £300 gross. Unless you’re going to work 5 12 hour shifts and earn £450 gross its not even going to come close, and even then most truck drivers earn more for a 60 or 70 hour week when 20 or more of those hours are spent waiting on loading docks, laid out on the bed, reading a magazine, surfing the internet. How much of a shelf stackers 40 hours, or the 60 hours you’d need to do spent doing those things? Trucking is an anti-social job by its very nature, but its certainly not hard and most drivers are on more than a reasonable wage for what they do. We’d all like to earn more but you’re not going to achive that working at Lidl’s stacking shelves for £300 per week before tax. What kind of life can you even afford on that wage? and I should think doing 60 hours a week in that type of job for a proper wage would make most people suicidal. No, truck driving for all of its faults is not bad enough that it’d make me downgrade to poverty wages just to be at home, in a house and life I can no longer afford.
Aldi and lidl give thier cashiers a set time per item to scan and are timed if they are too slow they get a bollicking sod that for thier money.
As for giving up trucking for a shop job no ta very much, clocked in at 2.45 am friday and wont clock out till tomorrow on 2nd night out at sedgemoor services tonight tibshelf last night.just think of all the places and things you would miss seeing being stuck in a shop.
Daytrunker:
Aldi and lidl give thier cashiers a set time per item to scan and are timed if they are too slow they get a bollicking sod that for thier money.
As for giving up trucking for a shop job no ta very much, clocked in at 2.45 am friday and wont clock out till tomorrow on 2nd night out at sedgemoor services tonight tibshelf last night.just think of all the places and things you would miss seeing being stuck in a shop.
Jeff
last week when I was shopping there the ■■■■■■■ the checkout told me they have to learn the plu numbers for every piece of fresh produce as they are not bar coded, and as for scanning I have never seen check out staff go so quick, its a blur just trying to keep up putting the stuff back in the trolley, as you cant pack at the checkout
I worked on the Irish ferries for a while in 2002. pay was £6.50 an hour straight through, your week was Tuesday till Saturday, week on days was 4.30 am till 12.30 (usually an hour or two overtime shunting trailers), next week nights, 16.30 till 00.30. Sunday and Monday was your days off but you was expected to work one of the days.
I packed it in and went on agency work for Woolworth after 18 months
My mate works for Toyota and is apparently “on good money.” He takes home £220 per week, and that is for working nights. What sort of mortgage can you get for that?
Assuming you worked ‘inside’ before being a driver what made you decide to change jobs to be a driver ?.If you didn’t then you’ve got a shock coming assuming you really do decide to take your own advice by jumping ship.
Wheel Nut:
My mate works for Toyota and is apparently “on good money.” He takes home £220 per week, and that is for working nights. What sort of mortgage can you get for that?
Not a very good one. My brother works in the saw mill in New Holland and while he’s not on the minimum wage, I doubt he takes home more than £300 per week, he’s trying to buy a house with his wife and any mortgage they can get will only get them a ruin with a roof, that they’d absolutely never be able to afford to fix up so for now they’re stuck renting and pouring their money down the drain, unable to get a sufficient mortgage to buy a house actually worth having.
hkloss1:
Just been to my local Lidl store and noticed a rather large poster saying “store assistants needed, starting salary 7.30 - 7.50 p/h”
I though I would post it here as I know there are a lot of trampers out there working for less per hour.
Other advantages of working for Lidl as a store assistant, apart of higher hourly rate are:
Not having to deal with VOSA
Not having to worry about your load and whether it has been evenly redistributed over the trailer floor
No nights out, so you can spend every night with your loved ones at home
No need to pay for an expensive class 2 and class 1 licence,
No need for Digi card and watching your hours carefully so you don’t get punished by VOSA with a hefty fine, court action, or even imprisonment
No need to worry about your load, or fuel being stolen while you sleep
No need to worry whether you would be able to find a parking space in one of the lay bys
No buffeting of your vehicle by passing traffic, while you try to get some sleep
No need to pay hundreds of pounds for your periodic CPC training., etc, I could go on and on…
I know there are a lot of drivers on here happy to work for this sort of money putting their and others lives at risk every day, so here is an alternative that seems like a no brainer.
mds141:
IIRC Aldi/Lidl hourly rates are before deductions. So after tax/NI you’re looking at £6.30 or so ph.
Think most jobs are before deductions and first £10000 is tax free
Which is why he said you would be looking at about £6.30 per hour (by my quick calculation it actually works out at £6.32 per hour for a 40 hr week with a basic hourly rate of £7.30)
But an awful lot of supermarket work is part time (helps them keep staffing costs under tight control) and Lidl/Aldi generally operate with fewer staff than Tesco etc - again to keep costs down. So everyone has to work that much harder/faster.
“But an awful lot of supermarket work is part time (helps them keep staffing costs under tight control) and Lidl/Aldi generally operate with fewer staff than Tesco etc - again to keep costs down. So everyone has to work that much harder/faster.”
Are haulage companies that much better to work for?
Wheel Nut:
My mate works for Toyota and is apparently “on good money.” He takes home £220 per week, and that is for working nights. What sort of mortgage can you get for that?
It sounds like minimum wage to me
That’s a surprise as it was always thought that Toyota paid a good wage. There’s certainly plenty who can justify the drive from Stoke every day for their money.
I know several people who work for them and have been there a number of years. I don’t think you’ll get a 40 hour week contract there nowadays and once staff get used to working there they seem to take the job in their stride.
