LOVE OR MONEY

I don’t know whether this has been asked before but here goes.
I have often asked myself this question many times over the years, but do we Drivers do the job for LOVE or MONEY. I cannot remember how many times when ive been waiting at some border customs point or offload point, waiting for a ferry, laid in the bunk, sat in the cold, eating another tin of London Grill, or having to listen to another Driver regaling his umpteenth trip to the ME. whilst away from my own bed and family, BUT WE Continue to work unsociable hours, in all weathers, and with very little if ANY appreciation.
How many times have we sat there glued to the seat, whilst driving to make a delivery with drooping eyes or trying to get a ferry home so you can spend a day with the family, Before being sent back to some very very far off destination. Or arriving in Dover and having to phone home to say that you have been turned round and will not be home this week again,.,. So back to the original question, have we done all this for LOVE or MONEY, For my self it is quite obvious that its never been for the money haha :smiley:, and even with all the bad days ( to many to mention ) it really has been an experience that I am glad to have been part of. In the words of the IRISH its been a “craick” .
So come on lets here your views…

Both

I would go back to lorry driving tomorrow,if I could.
Cheers Dave.

I loved the job how it was in my day but I wouldn’t give a carrot for it how it is today. There were real characters doing the job, we spent hours clearing customs cementing friendships which have endured until now! We helped each other at all times and enjoyed the best of food and fellowship!

To me its my job and my hobby because its what ive allways done,dont know about the money though i was on more 23yrs ago ,the jobs alot easier now but drivers have no pride in the job or tackle they drive…its just a job to most :cry:

You can still have both, money and love of the job, those jobs do exist but getting increasingly rare and if you have one (i do, i appreciate it and do my level best to make it last) you look after it and keep schtum.

However, unless you specify (as much as you can now with EU otherwise known as the fatherland in peacetime making the rules up to suit themselves) and buy your own lorry you’ll only ever be attending a steering wheel for the rest of your natural in those few good jobs, having a proper lorry with a proper gearbox is the thing i miss the most, there’s not enough cuss words in the alternative dictionary to describe how much i hate the modern box of electronics that is the modern lorry with their gutless strangled engines, and ZF’s AS Chronic gearbox from hell heads up the most detested list of what should have been skipped before birth.

Funnily enough, where i work there’s a high percentage of old schoolers, who, having had to graft night and day in the past to make a crust, feel exactly as i do about the job, and simply gobsmacked at the arrogant couldn’t give a toss the world owes me a living attitude of some of our workmates who haven’t grafted before and think what we have is the norm, take the ■■■■ and think it’s going to last whatever they do or don’t do.

Juddian:
You can still have both, money and love of the job, those jobs do exist but getting increasingly rare and if you have one (i do, i appreciate it and do my level best to make it last) you look after it and keep schtum.

However, unless you specify (as much as you can now with EU otherwise known as the fatherland in peacetime making the rules up to suit themselves) and buy your own lorry you’ll only ever be attending a steering wheel for the rest of your natural in those few good jobs, having a proper lorry with a proper gearbox is the thing i miss the most, there’s not enough cuss words in the alternative dictionary to describe how much i hate the modern box of electronics that is the modern lorry with their gutless strangled engines, and ZF’s AS Chronic gearbox from hell heads up the most detested list of what should have been skipped before birth.

Funnily enough, where i work there’s a high percentage of old schoolers, who, having had to graft night and day in the past to make a crust, feel exactly as i do about the job, and simply gobsmacked at the arrogant couldn’t give a toss the world owes me a living attitude of some of our workmates who haven’t grafted before and think what we have is the norm, take the ■■■■ and think it’s going to last whatever they do or don’t do.

Well said, all of it. I would add another dimension, though: sense of vocation. My two main careers were long-haul trucking and school-teaching, both of which I had a sense of vocation for, and both of which I enjoyed. That’s a privilege - a privilege of my own choosing, but a privilege nonetheless. Having to work in a job / place you hate must be hard; must wear you down. Nurses can earn more stacking shelves, but they don’t. Robert

Vocations? it’s true that when my schoolmates read Autocar, New Musical Express or the Dandy, i’d be studying Commercial Motor and Headlight.

Only ever wanted to drive a lorry and all that entailed, not just to operate a steering wheel, the latter gives little pride or required/aquired skills, one of the few remaining pleasures now, but for how long? is driving the auto box in manual override (despite it’s attempts to prevent that) and beat the 'puter in progress (simple) and fuel economy (harder).

Job satisfaction. Sure, there are crap days, there are disastrous days, but when everything is falling just right and the job is going well…would you want to do anything else?? I did once have a couple of years break, I went on the spanners, it wasn’t for me, clocking on, clocking off, 15 minute tea break, etc. In my working life I got immense job satisfaction, 100%, it brought a family up, it bought a house, and there is a Jaguar in the garage.
And let’s hear it for our ladies because we couldn’t do it without them

Certainly not for the money.

Not for the bosses that I spent most of my working days with, anyway! :unamused: :wink:

love in my case , tried different jobs at the insistence of 'er indoors , on the spanners , you get more for bending them than mending them , builder’s lorry , great job but the money was pathetic , factory job , 2 weeks and thumped the foreman , so i always got back to what i really wanted to do . i’ve mostly worked for decent firms where an extra effort was rewarded even if it was only a thank you . the fact that the boss trusts you to take expensive lorries with expensive loads and doesn’t feel the need to be on your case all the time , ring me when you’re tipped . i suppose it adds up to professional pride , knowing that you are good at what you do and being respected for it . money comes second to that .cheers , dave

robert1952:

Juddian:
You can still have both, money and love of the job, those jobs do exist but getting increasingly rare and if you have one (i do, i appreciate it and do my level best to make it last) you look after it and keep schtum.

However, unless you specify (as much as you can now with EU otherwise known as the fatherland in peacetime making the rules up to suit themselves) and buy your own lorry you’ll only ever be attending a steering wheel for the rest of your natural in those few good jobs, having a proper lorry with a proper gearbox is the thing i miss the most, there’s not enough cuss words in the alternative dictionary to describe how much i hate the modern box of electronics that is the modern lorry with their gutless strangled engines, and ZF’s AS Chronic gearbox from hell heads up the most detested list of what should have been skipped before birth.

Funnily enough, where i work there’s a high percentage of old schoolers, who, having had to graft night and day in the past to make a crust, feel exactly as i do about the job, and simply gobsmacked at the arrogant couldn’t give a toss the world owes me a living attitude of some of our workmates who haven’t grafted before and think what we have is the norm, take the ■■■■ and think it’s going to last whatever they do or don’t do.

Well said, all of it. I would add another dimension, though: sense of vocation. My two main careers were long-haul trucking and school-teaching, both of which I had a sense of vocation for, and both of which I enjoyed. That’s a privilege - a privilege of my own choosing, but a privilege nonetheless. Having to work in a job / place you hate must be hard; must wear you down. Nurses can earn more stacking shelves, but they don’t. Robert

Hi, as always very interesting thread /subject. I’m not connected to the industry in any way, I’ve just always loved trucks/lorries from a very early age. I always wanted to get involved with trucks as a kid, and have enormous respect for you chaps. I organised my own work experience when I was at school with the volvo dealership in stockport, (my mate went on to work for erf, got his licence and the rest is history!) and was promised a placement on the training programme when I left school. Sadly this didn’t materialise and I ended up working in the print industry in graphics. I used to draw trucks morning noon and night and had an interest in this type of thing.

I’m now absolutely fed up in my current job, badly treated, ignored, overlooked, it’s getting increasingly harder to survive working for an absolute prat. I always thought I would end up in the transport industry like I say but it didn’t quite happen, I’m now really thinking about learning to drive (class 2),it’s been my ambition to hold a class 1 licence, for some it’s learning to fly but for me it has always been about owning an old 141 or such like!

I’ll be 40 at the end of this year and keep thinking its the right time to do it, I’ve got this notion of doing container work or such like, I’d love to work for myself, ,well I can dream can’t i!

I just want to be able to enjoy work, it’s not good hating your working life, I know it’s not all a bed of roses in this game but despite my numerous doubts would like to try it. It can’t be easy, I know it isn’t!
All those gears and manoeuvring a trailer is like white mans magic, am I being realistic or just dreaming?

Thanks for reading and for any advice,

Thanks, harryvr6.

It’s only a dream as long as you only think about it, start doing something about it and it could come true.

Don’t put the cart before the horse and worry about a job, you need the license first.

So book an assessment and take it from there. Good luck.

it used to be both for me ,
The good old days when you had Tforms and when a UK reg truck was driven by a Englishman , not like nowadays

harryvr6:

robert1952:

Juddian:
You can still have both, money and love of the job, those jobs do exist but getting increasingly rare and if you have one (i do, i appreciate it and do my level best to make it last) you look after it and keep schtum.

However, unless you specify (as much as you can now with EU otherwise known as the fatherland in peacetime making the rules up to suit themselves) and buy your own lorry you’ll only ever be attending a steering wheel for the rest of your natural in those few good jobs, having a proper lorry with a proper gearbox is the thing i miss the most, there’s not enough cuss words in the alternative dictionary to describe how much i hate the modern box of electronics that is the modern lorry with their gutless strangled engines, and ZF’s AS Chronic gearbox from hell heads up the most detested list of what should have been skipped before birth.

Funnily enough, where i work there’s a high percentage of old schoolers, who, having had to graft night and day in the past to make a crust, feel exactly as i do about the job, and simply gobsmacked at the arrogant couldn’t give a toss the world owes me a living attitude of some of our workmates who haven’t grafted before and think what we have is the norm, take the ■■■■ and think it’s going to last whatever they do or don’t do.

Well said, all of it. I would add another dimension, though: sense of vocation. My two main careers were long-haul trucking and school-teaching, both of which I had a sense of vocation for, and both of which I enjoyed. That’s a privilege - a privilege of my own choosing, but a privilege nonetheless. Having to work in a job / place you hate must be hard; must wear you down. Nurses can earn more stacking shelves, but they don’t. Robert

Hi, as always very interesting thread /subject. I’m not connected to the industry in any way, I’ve just always loved trucks/lorries from a very early age. I always wanted to get involved with trucks as a kid, and have enormous respect for you chaps. I organised my own work experience when I was at school with the volvo dealership in stockport, (my mate went on to work for erf, got his licence and the rest is history!) and was promised a placement on the training programme when I left school. Sadly this didn’t materialise and I ended up working in the print industry in graphics. I used to draw trucks morning noon and night and had an interest in this type of thing.

I’m now absolutely fed up in my current job, badly treated, ignored, overlooked, it’s getting increasingly harder to survive working for an absolute prat. I always thought I would end up in the transport industry like I say but it didn’t quite happen, I’m now really thinking about learning to drive (class 2),it’s been my ambition to hold a class 1 licence, for some it’s learning to fly but for me it has always been about owning an old 141 or such like!

I’ll be 40 at the end of this year and keep thinking its the right time to do it, I’ve got this notion of doing container work or such like, I’d love to work for myself, ,well I can dream can’t i!

I just want to be able to enjoy work, it’s not good hating your working life, I know it’s not all a bed of roses in this game but despite my numerous doubts would like to try it. It can’t be easy, I know it isn’t!
All those gears and manoeuvring a trailer is like white mans magic, am I being realistic or just dreaming?

Thanks for reading and for any advice,

Thanks, harryvr6.

Hi Harryvr6. As you would have read my original thread, I ended with the comment that I am glad to have been part of it, and that still stands…
What I would say is go for it mate, it is not rocket science and as my dad always told me `If you want something then with a bit of effort you can get it
follow that dream BUT and a big BUT to get the most from this career, look at it as a way of LIFE not just a job. Hope you get your dream just keep us all informed,.,.,.

£’s

Now I look at this from a slightly different angle as I have mainly been an employer of drivers, if you go back to the 80’s I had 3 or 4 young lads every week knocking on the door wanting to escape to Europe in a big rig, now this was ok but you cannot beat experience so a lot that came looking got no joy. Go work in the UK for a year and then come back and ask me for a job, even with my own son I made him do 3 months here before boarding a ferry and I told him if you f–k up here it can be sorted a lot easier than abroad which later on he thanked me for as he could see my logic. As for today there are not drivers flocking to your door looking for work things have changed here, most of the drivers we have today are old school and don’t mind the time away from home and loved one’s and they have years of valuable experience to boot, when one leaves today it is hard to find replacements as some jobs in the UK pay good money so you have competition. IMHO I think the international drivers today do it as they could not put up with fighting the daily grind of traffic jams to be found everywhere, most I know hate there job and cant wait for the weekend to come, they also have to put up with competition from EU drivers who have come here looking to better themselves. The money our drivers earn today I think is fair but they deserve more, having done the job myself many years ago driving that is you are only as good as your men behind the wheel believe me they can make or break you. When I first went abroad in a day cabbed AEC Mandator £35 a week all in in the early 70’s I thought it was the bo-llocks and it was a love affair with new places to go and explore abroad even in a Mandator, but as you grow older you wise up a little and it becomes more about what you can earn out of it as money is what drives most folk. At the end of the day the job has got more complicated than in years gone by, you need bits of paper for every thing nowadays and half of it does nothing for the industry,
Where will it all end I don’t know, but one thing is for sure I am glad to be retired after a life on the road and in an office and have handed it all to my two sons to take to the next level. so good luck to them for the future and any one else brave enough to be still at it, Buzzer.

harryvr6:
…I’m now absolutely fed up in my current job, badly treated, ignored, overlooked, it’s getting increasingly harder to survive working for an absolute prat…

Good luck with your quest but don’t think for one moment that the grass is greener. What you have said in your quote above will be repeated many times every day by thousands of drivers, both HGV and non-HGV.
Long anti social hours (you want to do a 15 hour shift starting at 0300hrs? :open_mouth:), working nights, weekends, bank holidays, getting stuck out in the truck in all weathers and conditions, missing out on big family occasions like birthdays, anniversary’s etc and friendly social occasions such as parties and summertime BBQs. Traffic, traffic and more traffic! The various enforcement agencies (Plod, VOSA, HMRC, Border Agency etc) taking a keen interest in YOU, yes YOU personally! Driving vehicles of questionable roadworthiness and god help you if you question or refuse to drive it! If you are late Its YOUR FAULT, if you`re early its YOUR FAULT, an issue with the load, that’ll be YOUR FAULT, warehouse monkeys not loading it right, YOUR FAULT!! you get the picture but in general, as the driver of the vehicle delivering the load, if there is an issue, YOU will be the one getting in the neck first!

Good luck if you choose to jump the fence and become a professional driver but I would do some serious asking around first. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for! :laughing: :wink:

There’s a theme running through all this…it a job these days that is a ■■■■ sight different to the job when a lot of us old lads were doing it. I never believed I would be able to cope with retirement after a working life on the road, but now, looking at the job, the rules and regulations, mobile phones :imp: , I’ve no desire to go back. There was an immense amount of satisfaction to be had in our day, you were trusted to get your notes and get the job done, you were able to look after your vehicle AND HANDLE IT CORRECTLY…and you had proper gearboxes :wink: A few months ago I had a ride (not driving) a new Scania :cry: ye gods, it was like rolling about in a boat, I’d no idea what the gearbox was doing, and going down the hill into Dewsbury I genuinely feared for my life because I didn’t think it would stop, I mentioned to the young fella who was driving “do you know what brake fade is”? all he did was smile. :cry:

No, however much money they are on, I’ve no desire to go back.

I loved the driving when it was a challenge. Going through towns and villages with the fridges cracking away, drawing attention to the sheer size of the wagon and the responsibility involved in getting there and back with no drama. The motorway network turned us into train drivers - hours of boredom with brief stops at motorway services between delivery and loading.Before the jobsworths screwed our haulage industry and turned it into a faceless parcels service the job was the way to see countries and different people and how they lived and behaved. You reacted to the challenge and behaved appropriately towards your lorry and what it was carrying. You looked after your tackle. It was yours and you treated the wagon the same way. I packed it in in the 70’s, as it started to turn into a chore. You have to be young to enjoy anything to do with transport now cos if you can hark back to the sixties you will only grieve. Jim.