I think £10 per hour on a par with Plumbers and mechanics should be the minimum, but that would need the people further up the chain to realise the costs involved in operating trucks, which is down to operators to hold firm in prices, not chase poor work and VOSA to mop up the cowboys who cut corners.
C. 
Cold Up North:
I think £10 per hour on a par with Plumbers and mechanics should be the minimum,
i’d guess that a good 90% of commercial vehicle mechanics, fitters, technicians or whatever you choose to call them will hold an HGV licence (2 weeks training) so would therefore be qualified to do our job.
How many of you lot hold City & Guilds in Vehicle Engineering or equivalent, which takes at least two years of study and training? 
starfighter:
Henrys cat:
to the last 2 posters, how do you work out that abloishing the WTD would help?The way to get it to help is make the 48hrs from book on to book off, that would try and do what your looking for.
That was my intent with the abolishing POA, if you are sitting around on POA for four-five hours a day that’s where your 60 hour week comes from. Also may get some of these RDCs to buck their ideas up and stop holding you up for ages.
Misread your post
gnasty gnome:
Cold Up North:
I think £10 per hour on a par with Plumbers and mechanics should be the minimum,i’d guess that a good 90% of commercial vehicle mechanics, fitters, technicians or whatever you choose to call them will hold an HGV licence (2 weeks training) so would therefore be qualified to do our job.
How many of you lot hold City & Guilds in Vehicle Engineering or equivalent, which takes at least two years of study and training?
Yep, City & Guilds Agri mechanics, 3 yrs course. Plus various other qualifications on grinding wheels, Access platforms, diggers, handlers etc. Got out of the mechanics as the pay was, and is, crap. They may charge you £50 plus per hour, but it don’t always filter down the line.
This job pays alright for what it is, in agriculture its a similar rate to this but the stuff you pull is more complex to work.
Its the basics of supply and demand that are the problem, basicly if some of you who don’t like the pay sodded off, so there were less drivers available, the wage may go up. But once it does more people will either train up, or come back into the job and the rates will go down.
It would be the same if there were an surplus of qualified doctors or what ever. Its the joys of a free market
gnasty gnome:
Cold Up North:
I think £10 per hour on a par with Plumbers and mechanics should be the minimum,i’d guess that a good 90% of commercial vehicle mechanics, fitters, technicians or whatever you choose to call them will hold an HGV licence (2 weeks training) so would therefore be qualified to do our job.
How many of you lot hold City & Guilds in Vehicle Engineering or equivalent, which takes at least two years of study and training?
It’s not unusual for many driving jobs to pay better than being stuck in a factory or workshop all day working on or building the things.That’s one of the reasons why I decided that I’d prefer to drive trucks not fix them or build them.
Winseer:
C1 London store drops seems to be the best paid at nearly double the hourly rates for 17t work outside of london. Nice work if you can get it. I’m still waiting to open my account here.
Multi drop in London is worth double the rate for distance bulk work.I’d prefer to have minimum wage to drive a C on distance bulk/full loads than double that to drive a 17 or 7.5 tonner in London doing multi drop zb in that zb hole. 
darren1000:
I think many of you under value your skill
i think you’ve no idea how supply and demand works, for a start.
darren1000:
other industries have inflated there pay in the past however transport have gone the other way,
ok, let’s hear you big list of industries that have inflated their pay
stevie
stevieboy308:
darren1000:
I think many of you under value your skill, other industries have inflated there pay in the past however transport have gone the other way,ok, let’s hear you big list of industries that have inflated their pay
stevie
Non productive ‘medium and upper management’ office worker zb’s who are usually always the ones shouting most about ‘overmanning’ and everyone in ‘the old fashioned heavy industries’ needing to reduce their wages to those of China etc etc if they are to remain competitive.
If not then they shout for those industries to be shut down and most of the country’s workforce to be overpaid,unproductive zb’s employed in offices just like them instead earning loads ‘a’ money to manage zb all because there’s zb all left to manage 
.
Which is more or less where the country is now. 
Henrys cat:
gnasty gnome:
Cold Up North:
I think £10 per hour on a par with Plumbers and mechanics should be the minimum,i’d guess that a good 90% of commercial vehicle mechanics, fitters, technicians or whatever you choose to call them will hold an HGV licence (2 weeks training) so would therefore be qualified to do our job.
How many of you lot hold City & Guilds in Vehicle Engineering or equivalent, which takes at least two years of study and training?
Yep, City & Guilds Agri mechanics, 3 yrs course. Plus various other qualifications on grinding wheels, Access platforms, diggers, handlers etc. Got out of the mechanics as the pay was, and is, crap. They may charge you £50 plus per hour, but it don’t always filter down the line.
This job pays alright for what it is, in agriculture its a similar rate to this but the stuff you pull is more complex to work.
Its the basics of supply and demand that are the problem, basicly if some of you who don’t like the pay sodded off, so there were less drivers available, the wage may go up. But once it does more people will either train up, or come back into the job and the rates will go down.
It would be the same if there were an surplus of qualified doctors or what ever. Its the joys of an open door policy on immigration
FTFY!
44 Tonne Ton:
It would be the same if there were an surplus of qualified doctors or what ever. Its the joys of an open door policy on immigration
FTFY!
[/quote]
They daren’t say on the news the inconvenient truth that it’s Tory thinking in action which is that unemployment among the indigenous white British workforce is partly due to foreign immigrant labour being brought in to keep labour costs low and if they don’t give the immigrants the jobs,and benefits,then the zb’s will stop coming here and then wages will go up. 
talk about dreaming, in two years you will all be looking back to when you had jobs !we are all europeans, look at how the int transport from england has changed, now its almost all done by polish and latvians, a company i work for imports from italy, so far this week, one polish truck, one latvian and one from slovenja, in a year or two cabotage will be perfectly legal, and common place, I cant see many poles getting 15 pound per hour.I was loading in felixstowe the other day and beside me was two poilsh trucks loading for tesco didcot, that my lads is sadly the future of english transport.
darren1000:
minimum wage for lgv should be £15 per hour, comment if you agree and want to start a national face book campaign.
I’m a london bus driver.
£15ph for lgv?, that means I should be on £20ph for dealing with the public!!!
richmond:
we are all europeans,
But some ‘Europeans’,like ze Gemans,will always be more equal than others and what’s in it for us to bring the economy down to east european standards of living and the country was better off before we joined the whole commie zb up anyway.
richmond:
talk about dreaming, in two years you will all be looking back to when you had jobs !we are all europeans, look at how the int transport from england has changed, now its almost all done by polish and latvians, a company i work for imports from italy, so far this week, one polish truck, one latvian and one from slovenja, in a year or two cabotage will be perfectly legal, and common place, I cant see many poles getting 15 pound per hour.I was loading in felixstowe the other day and beside me was two poilsh trucks loading for tesco didcot, that my lads is sadly the future of British transport.
As long as you keep voting Labour/Tory/Lib Coalition then you are absolutely right. You could of course vote to take back control of this country but it’s much safer to sit at a computer moaning about it and doing nothing.
Indeed ! transport is normally done by the cheapest person, unless you are able to specialise a bit, i dont like posting what way i see the future going , its just thats where i see the future of uk transport going, in fact i can prove it, cos i lost a job to an italian who now backloads out of that factory, i was asked if i wanted to match the price, but i wasnt keen on reducing my rate by £150 per load !The italian co now has the job and subs it to the poles and latvians, i see nothing wrong or illegal in what they are doing, if iwas in the italians position i would do it too, we are here to try to make money, even if i dont like it, but i dont see how you are going to get a pay rise, when you put it into a eurpean wide perspective. Norbert dentressangle bought christian salvessen, when cabotage becomes totally free, they can double man a latvian truck here for probably half the wages of a uk driver, along with brining cheaper fuel in, if i was there tpt manager, i would send them over with full tanks keep them here until the fuel runs out, and you can slot them into christians work .I have never voted, power corrupts them all.
Carryfast:
billybigrig:
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
You need to be earning a train driver’s wage if you want that standard of living,especially if you live in the South East.
But £6-7 per hour will become increasingly seen as being good enough for a truck driver ‘if they choose how to spend it right’ with a £300,000 + mortgage and a deposit of around another £50,000+ saved in the bank to put down + all the other expenses and the decent car’s running costs at £6 per gallon etc etc.
In the jobcentre’s and the Tory government’s world anyway.
How the ■■ can anyone build up a £50k deposit on £6-7 an hour? Hanging around MSA’s scrounging derv, food, & money from other drivers is about the only way I can think of saving ANYTHING out of £6-7ph. If you do a 50 hour paid week, you’re looking at £350pw or about £250 after tax & insurance. I live in the South East. My outgoings not including the mortgage are over £600 pm Stick some rent/mortgage on that, and you’re spanking the plastic long before payday - IF you’re on flat money. £350pw is the worst possible wage in that its just high enough to exempt one from tax credits, but isn’t a decent living wage by far. My solution was to drop my income all the way to £10k and get £5k a year in tax credits. I only work an average of 16hours, but I’m going to have to up my game to 24hours as of april to keep my little “credit and tax strike” going! I could work FullTime instead, get LESS takehome pay (12.5k) but spend nearly 3 times the hours at work!
There is method to my madness, and I can’t work out why other guys show no interest in “work downsizing” like this.
I won’t be going FT again until I can get a job where a 48hour week pays £35k again. It will come, but may be 5-10 years away yet.
I left Royal Mail because the overtime dried up. Overtime is like methadone in that business, but we were all glad that generally, it’s readily available. I would never have been able to get a mortgage if it wasn’t for built-in overtime with the duties as it was then. I see other courier firms now having what used to be my basic+build in OT week as their BASIC - ie 54 hours. for something crap like £500-600pw. It stinks! It’s ok for a single guy or a middle aged guy who’s already paid his mortgage off, but what about all those in between? 30 somethings with families and a RECENTLY TAKEN OUT mortgage to pay? I pity them - their generation is having this recession at it’s worst IMO. 
I once asked a Jewish Businessman for advice on upward mobility, after he’d gone bankrupt at my age now, and became a millionaire less than 5 years later in his life. His advice was to spend less rather than try and earn more. His bankruptcy was a “career move” in the same vein as Madonna’s “losing virginity”. I worked out I could get by on a third of the income IF I stopped spending money on crap every month like interest payments on plastic, new cars, expensive insurances & warrentries, and other “financial” rubbish designed to fleece us all. 10 year old car, mortgage only, cheap insurance curtesy of a clean licence, and a wife that doesn’t insist on driving or working herself. = Low overheads, cheap lifestyle, effectively sitting out this recession in style! I can’t say I’ve any interest in going bankrupt, but I’m not a landlord like the guy with the advice, so it’s not really for me anyway. 
Winseer:
Carryfast:
billybigrig:
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
It’s not how much is coming in but how you choose to spend it
You need to be earning a train driver’s wage if you want that standard of living,especially if you live in the South East.
But £6-7 per hour will become increasingly seen as being good enough for a truck driver ‘if they choose how to spend it right’ with a £300,000 + mortgage and a deposit of around another £50,000+ saved in the bank to put down + all the other expenses and the decent car’s running costs at £6 per gallon etc etc.
In the jobcentre’s and the Tory government’s world anyway.
How the [zb] can anyone build up a £50k deposit on £6-7 an hour? Hanging around MSA’s scrounging derv, food, & money from other drivers is about the only way I can think of saving ANYTHING out of £6-7ph. If you do a 50 hour paid week, you’re looking at £350pw or about £250 after tax & insurance. I live in the South East. My outgoings not including the mortgage are over £600 pm Stick some rent/mortgage on that, and you’re spanking the plastic long before payday - IF you’re on flat money. £350pw is the worst possible wage in that its just high enough to exempt one from tax credits, but isn’t a decent living wage by far. My solution was to drop my income all the way to £10k and get £5k a year in tax credits. I only work an average of 16hours, but I’m going to have to up my game to 24hours as of april to keep my little “credit and tax strike” going! I could work FullTime instead, get LESS takehome pay (12.5k) but spend nearly 3 times the hours at work!
There is method to my madness, and I can’t work out why other guys show no interest in “work downsizing” like this.
I won’t be going FT again until I can get a job where a 48hour week pays £35k again. It will come, but may be 5-10 years away yet.I left Royal Mail because the overtime dried up. Overtime is like methadone in that business, but we were all glad that generally, it’s readily available. I would never have been able to get a mortgage if it wasn’t for built-in overtime with the duties as it was then. I see other courier firms now having what used to be my basic+build in OT week as their BASIC - ie 54 hours. for something crap like £500-600pw. It stinks! It’s ok for a single guy or a middle aged guy who’s already paid his mortgage off, but what about all those in between? 30 somethings with families and a RECENTLY TAKEN OUT mortgage to pay? I pity them - their generation is having this recession at it’s worst IMO.
I once asked a Jewish Businessman for advice on upward mobility, after he’d gone bankrupt at my age now, and became a millionaire less than 5 years later in his life. His advice was to spend less rather than try and earn more. His bankruptcy was a “career move” in the same vein as Madonna’s “losing virginity”. I worked out I could get by on a third of the income IF I stopped spending money on crap every month like interest payments on plastic, new cars, expensive insurances & warrentries, and other “financial” rubbish designed to fleece us all. 10 year old car, mortgage only, cheap insurance curtesy of a clean licence, and a wife that doesn’t insist on driving or working herself. = Low overheads, cheap lifestyle, effectively sitting out this recession in style! I can’t say I’ve any interest in going bankrupt, but I’m not a landlord like the guy with the advice, so it’s not really for me anyway.
You say sitting out, I say making worse.
Stevie
stevieboy308:
Winseer:
Carryfast:
billybigrig:
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
It’s not how much is coming in but how you choose to spend it
You need to be earning a train driver’s wage if you want that standard of living,especially if you live in the South East.
But £6-7 per hour will become increasingly seen as being good enough for a truck driver ‘if they choose how to spend it right’ with a £300,000 + mortgage and a deposit of around another £50,000+ saved in the bank to put down + all the other expenses and the decent car’s running costs at £6 per gallon etc etc.
In the jobcentre’s and the Tory government’s world anyway.
How the [zb] can anyone build up a £50k deposit on £6-7 an hour? Hanging around MSA’s scrounging derv, food, & money from other drivers is about the only way I can think of saving ANYTHING out of £6-7ph. If you do a 50 hour paid week, you’re looking at £350pw or about £250 after tax & insurance. I live in the South East. My outgoings not including the mortgage are over £600 pm Stick some rent/mortgage on that, and you’re spanking the plastic long before payday - IF you’re on flat money. £350pw is the worst possible wage in that its just high enough to exempt one from tax credits, but isn’t a decent living wage by far. My solution was to drop my income all the way to £10k and get £5k a year in tax credits. I only work an average of 16hours, but I’m going to have to up my game to 24hours as of april to keep my little “credit and tax strike” going! I could work FullTime instead, get LESS takehome pay (12.5k) but spend nearly 3 times the hours at work!
There is method to my madness, and I can’t work out why other guys show no interest in “work downsizing” like this.
I won’t be going FT again until I can get a job where a 48hour week pays £35k again. It will come, but may be 5-10 years away yet.I left Royal Mail because the overtime dried up. Overtime is like methadone in that business, but we were all glad that generally, it’s readily available. I would never have been able to get a mortgage if it wasn’t for built-in overtime with the duties as it was then. I see other courier firms now having what used to be my basic+build in OT week as their BASIC - ie 54 hours. for something crap like £500-600pw. It stinks! It’s ok for a single guy or a middle aged guy who’s already paid his mortgage off, but what about all those in between? 30 somethings with families and a RECENTLY TAKEN OUT mortgage to pay? I pity them - their generation is having this recession at it’s worst IMO.
I once asked a Jewish Businessman for advice on upward mobility, after he’d gone bankrupt at my age now, and became a millionaire less than 5 years later in his life. His advice was to spend less rather than try and earn more. His bankruptcy was a “career move” in the same vein as Madonna’s “losing virginity”. I worked out I could get by on a third of the income IF I stopped spending money on crap every month like interest payments on plastic, new cars, expensive insurances & warrentries, and other “financial” rubbish designed to fleece us all. 10 year old car, mortgage only, cheap insurance curtesy of a clean licence, and a wife that doesn’t insist on driving or working herself. = Low overheads, cheap lifestyle, effectively sitting out this recession in style! I can’t say I’ve any interest in going bankrupt, but I’m not a landlord like the guy with the advice, so it’s not really for me anyway.
You say sitting out, I say making worse.
Stevie
+^1.
No one can afford to buy no one can afford to spend.Which means yet more redundancies and even more labour on the labour market and even less wages and even less to spend so on and so forth.
How come sitting out is “making it worse”? For me? For other drivers?
I hold out for decent hourly rates. That does us all a favour I would have thought.
I don’t work for the sake of working, nor do I pay to go to work (fell for that trick for a few weeks last year before I realised what was happening!)
Going to work is not a “privilege” that some agency has given you out of the goodness of their hearts. They make more out of your labour than you do, so it’s in everyone’s interest to go for top dollar anyway you can - and if that means sitting out 2 weeks on average every month, constantly turning down the mediocre and outright crap stuff, then so be it.
I’ve just spent a month on the chat because I won’t drive the dustcart for £8ph, nor the C1multidrop for £8ph, nor the C+E tramper for £350pw, nor the 9ph job that was over 50miles away! At the end of that lean month, my tax credits have been bumped up by £300ish because my projected year end earnings are now falling short. I’ve paid no tax. I’ll get a bigger tax rebate on the flat-out hours I’m getting this week and next (£10ph 12 miles away) I’m better off for sure compared to either staying out of work or doing any work I can get no matter how low the pay/how far away/how naff the job might be.
The only way I can “be making it worse” is if I’m stepping on someone’s feet as an employer/landlord/4x4owner/tory voter/mortgage paid off grumpy, or savings rate moaner!
I accept I cannot change the system, so I’ll do my best to make it work for me instead.
I’m done with the system shafting me, it’s long overdue for some payback! Sure, it’s a leap of faith but that beats submission to all and everything I don’t agree with.
Haven’t read all this thread, but to the OP; you are well within your rights to ask for £15 per hour. You are also well within your rights to build a consensus amongst other drivers and collectively demand £15 per hour. Now, in the highly unlikely event that you convince all 300,000 UK LGV drivers to sign up to this, this is what will happen. Somebody doing another job, say a van driver, will go say ‘£15 ph, I’ll have go at that’. He’ll do his C+E and then, to make sure he gets a job, he’ll work for £14 ph. Then someone, probably lots of people actually, in Belgium or Poland, will say ‘£14 ph to drive Britain, I’ll have a piece of that’, and they’ll go in at £13. Then unemployed drivers, and there will be lots of those because of the companies that have gone bust because of their wage bills, will get fed up and go in at £12… and so on and so forth until we get back to where we are now. You can’t fight the market, the Soviets tried and look what happened to them. The North Koreans are still trying it, and by any measure it’s one of the worst places to live in the World, for truck drivers as much as anyone else.
You are right about one thing though, it’s good to try to bargain up the wages, and it’s good to do it together. I’m on the agencies and will often try to, politely, bid up the rates as bit, especially if it’s busy, and it will help me, you and all of us if more drivers regularly did the same.
Sorry if any of this has been said before. 
