darren1000:
… comment if you agree …
Only those who agree can comment eh?? 
Are you scared of a proper discussion on this unsustainable idea of yours? 
Free speech and all that says you’re entitled to your view, but others might think the idea is unworkable. 
For the rates on general haulage it just doesn’t stack up to pay 15 quid an hour.
jessicas dad:
and how many other jobs pay £15.00ph
what makes us so special.
Excuse me Alex but I’ve been told I’m ‘special’ not sure how it was meant!
£15, what bollox. OP, stop wasting your time, £15, hehehe, not in my lifetime. Maybe before all the immigrant ski’s came over, not now.
This is just a wind up!
Anyone who has true knowledge of our industry knows what is happening or what has happened, even in the good old days it was only a well paid job at best. There will always be an easy supply of drivers despite all the hoops required to jump through these days, don’t believe what you read about in the daily rags about a severe nationwide shortage of drivers.
If you have a job then be thankful, but to test your theory go to your boss and tell him that from now on you want £15 an hour, when he has stopped laughing and given you a goodbye wave let us know how you got on!
As for a facebook page Jeremy Kyle or what!
If wages were to go up to that then the price of everything would have to go up to pay for it. £15 an hour would see most people in the real world get an increase of 100% 
A big chunk of it would go on higher rate tax as well.
Many of you speak as though £15ph is a lot of money, it’s not. Forty hours a week at that rate is £31,200pa and there’s certainly some on here who could claim to be earning at that rate. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them!
Lorry driving has always been a job where you have to work 60 hours a week to get a decent wage.I know office workers work 37 hours and think they have a long week.
You shouldn’t have to work 60 hours a week to earn in real terms not a big wage.
But most haulage jobs are unworkable on low hours because of the nature of the work and distances involved.Maybe some day after this recession is over the job will pay the wages it deserves,but I can’t see it happening in my lifetime.
Ok so lets think about this.
£15 an hour for a rather un-average 9hr day, that’ll work out at just over £35k a year.
A senior nurse in intensive care, after 3 years of training and 6 years in the job can expect to be on around £25k
Or if you think it’s the driving that’s complex then how about this: a pilot with an average UK airline, as a First Officer, after years of training and medicals, as well as around £40k in their own funds, will probably be earning between £24k and £27k
So why is it that you think we should be getting more for driving?
Trucknet is, on average, a terrible yardstick for the industry. Most people here are interested in their job, fairly literate and can normally hold some form of discussion with another human.
There are plenty of drivers, though, who do the job because there’s nothing else they can do. It’s a very low skilled job, yes there’s some paperwork and H&S stuff but mainly the job is ensuring the vehicle is loaded (which is basic physics at best) and then driving it to where it needs to go.
I’d say we get paid over the odds as it is! Not that I’m moaning of course.
I’m currently trying to get back into my first love, which is flying, but the truth is I’ll need to put £10k to get “back into it” and then will be taking around a £10k a year pay cut IF I can manage to scrape a job up. Yes long term prospects offer more but that’s not guaranteed.
As it stands we have an easy job, for good money, and as long as you are willing to work, you can get fired one day and walk into another job within a week, if you aren’t fussy.
Should you ever manage to get the government, industry and unions to agree to £15/hr I’ll be the first in line
Alex
44 Tonne Ton:
Many of you speak as though £15ph is a lot of money, it’s not. Forty hours a week at that rate is £31,200pa and there’s certainly some on here who could claim to be earning at that rate. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them!
Hear,hear.
Last week in this year 2012,I took home the princely sum of £303 for 40hrs work. 
Wish I too was earning £31,200pa,ain’t gonna happen anytime soon,sadly.
Show me your dealer, great stuff he sells
But get real; I don’t know where your o.ooo2% comes from if you increase driver wages by 50-100%
Everybody who is a little longer in the industry knows that after fuel, employments cost are the highest.
About responsibility, always the remark if we let the attention one second goes, could cost lives and lots of money, this argument is valid for every person who is part of traffic.
And if the bin man didn’t collect the rubbish whole cities could go ill.
Be realistic, it’s not a super brainy job, it’s not (most times) physical heavy, and you don’t need years of study to get there.
It’s a job many could do without to many problems if showed the ropes, it’s not science, and the big difference between a Surgeon and truck driver■■?
A Surgeon get paid to keep people alive, and a truck driver get paid not to kill them: mrgreen: 
And when I was ill, I was really glad that there was a surgeon on my bed and not a truck driver.
£15/hour is a bit high… but the sentiment is right. After all, if there were no lorry drivers at all what would happen? Business is not just about skill. It’s about need and demand…and there would be National Uproar if the supermarkets were empty…MP’s would debate it, the media would be going spare not to mention Joe Public…
And yet, on here, we have drivers actually declaring we don’t deserve any more than low wages…
The we wonder why that’s all we get…
Lorry drivers are unbelievable…can you see MPs deciding they don’t do much so don’t deserve a lot of pay■■? FFS 
44 Tonne Ton:
Many of you speak as though £15ph is a lot of money, it’s not. Forty hours a week at that rate is £31,200pa and there’s certainly some on here who could claim to be earning at that rate. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them!
A lot do earn that much, but for 70 hours.
Although I usually drive for 40 hours (ISH)
And work about 5 hours. The rest is sitting around. So at just under 600a week take home I guess i’m on about 15 quid an hour!
As for the OP, it must be spring because I can hear a cuckoo
15? Why 15? Why not 80?
I think with enough facebook campaigning we can achieve 80 no problem. 
The apathy and sarcasm don’t endear us to employers either…
I think there’s more chance that minimum wage condition would be removed altogether in future anyway together with massive oversupply in the labour market caused by continuing redundancies and immigration of cheap imported labour so expect to see a lot more downward pressure on wages not upward.Although the Tory zb’s are too stupid to understand that as wages drop so does spending power in the economy.
But if you want more wages,at least up until the point when the country’s economy collapses altogether like Greece,drive a train not a truck.
Truckulent:
£15/hour is a bit high… but the sentiment is right. After all, if there were no lorry drivers at all what would happen? Business is not just about skill. It’s about need and demand…and there would be National Uproar if the supermarkets were empty…MP’s would debate it, the media would be going spare not to mention Joe Public…And yet, on here, we have drivers actually declaring we don’t deserve any more than low wages…
The we wonder why that’s all we get…
Lorry drivers are unbelievable…can you see MPs deciding they don’t do much so don’t deserve a lot of pay■■? FFS
:twisted:
Couldn’t agree more, well said…
Lotteea:
darren1000:
minimum wage for lgv should be £15 per hour, comment if you agree and want to start a national face book campaign.A lot of companies are paying approx £15 per hour its just that most jobs that are available are through agencys, so for argument sakes we may get £7 - £10 per hour depending on loaction and the agency gets approx £5 - £8 per hour as well so it already adds up to more, I dont think it the Companies its the Agencys that are taking alot of the the money, the last agency I went into had very plush offices and about 15 staff running around, its alot of over heads !!!
Firstly welcome to Tucknet
A little education in agency rate listed below for you
Agency pays driver say £8ph
Agency cost to employ driver £2ph
Currently agency charge rates are between £10-12ph
In some instances its cheaper to hire an agency driver than it is to employ direct. F.e i was paying my directly employed drivers £7.50ph for 7.5t work. The agency was asking a charge rate of £7.75ph which after additional costs per annum for employing the driver worked out cheaper than direct employment (on a figure basis)
The market for agencies reflect the current market in which they supply. So as logistics in general is on its arse so therefore is the agency game.
While i agree that brain surgeons get paid a brain surgeon rate. I do believe that drivers should not be forced into working the hours they do to return a good salary. There are many arguments for and against the responsibility of certain career paths and training involved, but one thing is for certain. A driver works in general a lot longer than most professions on and hr per hr basis, with often extenuated periods away from home and varied unsocial hours, without proper means of facilities.
If you where to compare an A+E doctor to a brain surgeon it would be fairer to compare them as a like for like.
Doctor training (to become a doctor not continued) 6 years +60 years of employment
Driver training 4 weeks (not including additional vocational training) + 65years 48weeks of employment.
Who would have accounted a larger wage in that period of time? i dare say the doctor. Who is the worse off? The driver, why? because he didnt study more or have the drive to achieve a better job.
Spacemonkeypg:
Doctor training (to become a doctor not continued) 6 years +60 years of employment
Driver training 4 weeks (not including additional vocational training) + 65years 48weeks of employment.Who would have accounted a larger wage in that period of time? i dare say the doctor. Who is the worse off? The driver, why? because he didnt study more or have the drive to achieve a better job.
If you take that to it’s logical conclusion every driver would be a doctor instead and none of it is down to differences in actual gifts that everyone is born with.There’s plenty of doctors who’d make zb drivers and plenty of drivers who’d make zb doctors.There’s even plenty of doctors who are good but still don’t make the grade.
However who would drive all the trucks and what would happen to doctor’s wages and job opportunities and what would you do with the surplus of doctors if everyone who drives a truck did have the idea and the ability to be a doctor and chose to do that job instead.
Good drivers,pilots,and doctors etc etc are born not driven.However there’s no reason why drivers or anyone else should be paid less than they need to provide them with a civilised living in a civilised developed economy and there’s certainly no reason that would explain the difference between a train driver’s salary compared to most types of truck driver’s salary,at least at C+E level.
darren1000:
minimum wage for lgv should be £15 per hour, comment if you agree and want to start a national face book campaign.
Can you explain why you should earn £15+ an hour?
Carryfast:
Good drivers,pilots,and doctors etc etc are born not driven.However there’s no reason why drivers or anyone else should be paid less than they need to provide them with a civilised living in a civilised developed economy and there’s certainly no reason that would explain the difference between a train driver’s salary compared to most types of truck driver’s salary,at least at C+E level.
Define your “civilised living” ■■. In the many years I’ve been doing this job I’ve always maintained what I class as a civilised living 
I’ve never wanted for anything nor struggled to pay bills. I’ve always run decent cars and lived in nice houses in nice places. I’ve dressed and eaten well and,touch wood, remained fit and healthy. What more could a man need
It’s not how much is coming in but how you choose to spend it