A friend of mine recently told me about this site & I thought maybe one or two of you could clear up a few things for me ?
As my name suggests, I am one of those much hated sales reps. I thought recently about taking a change of carrer & becoming a truck driver. I have one of the old Class one licenses from my days in the army & could easily find work down here in suffolk.
I am at the end of my contract now & leave next week. I have been offered a regular night trunk to Liverpool from Felixtowe (5 nights a week) & the boss bloke said i will get a decent cab with a “good” limiter. I have read the rules on hours limitations & i think i can do this ok in my 10 hours a day driving time (i can do Ipswitch to blackpool in my car in about 3.5 hours early mornings).
Although i will be taking a pay cut, i see this as an easy way out of my horrendous situation of driving up to 500 miles a day over 16 hours & spending anything from 4 to 6 hours with customers. I would appreciate any help you can all give, long time since i drove a truck in the army but i must be able to do it ok.
Although i will be taking a pay cut, i see this as an easy way out of my horrendous situation of driving up to 500 miles a day over 16 hours & spending anything from 4 to 6 hours with customers. I would appreciate any help you can all give, long time since i drove a truck in the army but i must be able to do it ok.
Seems like a wind up to me. Not much difference in job just a bigger and slower vehicle
Liverpool to Felixstowe (and back I presume?) 5 nights per week ? Is this a wind-up? You’ve no chance.
I know for a fact that you can JUSSSSSSSSSST do Felixstowe to Sandbach services on the M6 (via A14 to M1, up the M1 then across the A50 to Stoke, up M6) in one hit (4.5 hrs) and it’s easily another hour+ from Sandbach to Seaforth (assuming that that’s what you mean by “Liverpool”). So you’ve got an absolute minimum of 11hrs driving if you’re running a legal vehicle (ie. with the limiter set at a maximum of 90 kmh) with no hold-ups or anything else.
You can only do two 10hr drives per week and you have to compensate for that extra driving time by doing two 8hr drives the following week or equivalent (I’m not 100%, Neil [Coffeeholic] will tell you for sure) so it basically boils down to not being able to do the job LEGALLY by a substantial amount.
If you want to run bent (either by driving a defective vehicle or exceeding your maximum hours) then that’s entirely up to you but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Which company is it out of interest ? They don’t run Belgian registered vehicles per chance do they ?
Speedy:
You can only do two 10hr drives per week and you have to compensate for that extra driving time by doing two 8hr drives the following week or equivalent (I’m not 100%, Neil [Coffeeholic] will tell you for sure) so it basically boils down to not being able to do the job LEGALLY by a substantial amount.
You are, of course, quite correct in that only two tens can be done in one week but you don’t need to do 8 hour drives the following week. 10 hour days need no compensation.
I can’t quite grasp what you are saying about the 10 hours driving time ?
I understood from the guy i will be working for, that i could drive 10 hours on 3 of the 5 days & he assures me it can be done ?
After my 3 10 hour stints of getting righ round, he said that we can meet at cambrige or ipswitch so i can take my car home and he will leave the lorry in felixtowe for me.
Why is the limiter set at 90k if hgv are legal to do 60, or am i wrong about the speed limit ?
One of you mentioned a european company (sorry, i forget who), no it is a 3 vehicle haulier but i beleive the trailers are tank container types.
I will not mention his name just yet, in case i am not supposed to. i wouldn’t want to put my new job in jeapordy just yet.
what is the issue with the speed restrictor ? I understood that they were all setup at the hgv test station, so if it is wrong, i have no way of knowing ?
i saw the cab i will be driving last week at my interview, it is a L reg iveco. Much bigger cab than i ever drove in the forces and seems to have a lot of luxury in comparison. He did say the gearbox will take som time to learn but i think it will be ok. Not the newest of vehicles but will make a good starter for me. The guy has 2 other drivers on other jobs & has said that in time i might be able to rotate onto general work to give me more experience.
thank you all for your interest. i hope i can learn from you all.
Your normal maximum daily driving time is 9hrs. Twice per week you can extend this to 10hrs. That is the law. Neil will give you the link to the DfT drivers hours website if you want to check for yourself.
Speed limiters for vehicles over 7.5 tonne mgw must be set at 85kmh (53mph-ish) but there’s an allowance on that and the max is 90kmh (56mph). Anything over that becomes an MoT failure (unless the vehicle is over a certain age, and an L-reg Iveco isn’t).
…Meet at Cambridge or Ipswich?? Yeah, and what do you reckon the likelihood of that actually happening will be? “Oh hi there, sorry I’m really busy tonight… you’ll be alright to bring it all the way back to Felixstowe won’t you?..”
Run bent at your own peril AND knowingly running a defective vehicle will land YOU as well as the O-licence holder with a hefty (likely) four-figure fine, points and if its serious enough, have your licence revoked. It’s just not worth it. I’d avoid this place like the plague (even if he is paying £500+ take home/week).
The bloke seems a really nice old guy, been in haulage for about 10 years. Is it common practice in this industry for a boss to tell lies to “collar” a new driver ? It certainly is in my profession - biggest cheats are the sales reps managers.
£500 a week is unlikely i think. Wges have only been discussed briefly but he has offered £75 a night plus a bit of bonus each month if there’s no big repair or damage bills.
I am considering that this might not be ideal, but what else for a 54 year old with no real experience that can no longer handle the pressures of repping. i will be sad to see my Vectra go though & no doubt i will take a little longer to get there with 40 tons.
Whoever put you in touch with this site deserves a drink!Unfortunately it’s par for the course for guv’nors to tell porkies and as for encouraging someone HE doesn’t know to break the law,well he sounds like an arse to me.It sounds as if it’s been a while since you were behind the wheel so I’d suggesta refresher course.After that if your ok with it I’d try the agencies to see what kind of work appeals to you.Good luck with it and you know where to come for help
Hi Vectrarep and welcome to the site.
After reading your post and all the ones that followed, I think if I were in your shoes I would walk away from this one. Your best bet IMHO is to go and work for one of the many agencies in the Suffolk area (Manpower being just one of them) and find a job through them. It is likely that an agency such as them would deal mostly with ‘blue chip companies’.
I worked for Manpower when I lived in London and through them I landed two cracking jobs, one at Coca Cola night trunking and one at Readymix concrete.
Blokes like the one offering you this job are (hopefully) a dying breed and need reporting to the VI because they can’t possibly be doing this job legally!
That trunk would kill you in little time, and likely a few others as well! Id steer well clear mate! Felix to the Pool and back 5 times a week would be horrendous, like about 12+ hours a night driving eh?
Hello Vectrarep and welcome to the site. Just a bit of advice from an old hand. When your prospective employer mentions a “good limiter”, what he probably means is that it can be over-ridden, enabling you to go at whatever speed the vehicle is capable of. As for the wages - £75/night is hardly a good wage. Now for the legal side (or illegal side in this case), which it would be, because you can only do 90 hours driving in a fortnight. Lastly, I think you should name and shame this cowboy, because its people like him that get the industry a bad name and take work from the many decent operators. DONT TAKE THE JOB, AND HOPEFULLY THIS CLOWN WILL EVENTUALLY GO OUT OF BUSINESS
Best Regards
Trevor
Take the job. Run your vehicle absolutely legally. If it turns out that this guy is actually OK, then you’ve got a job. If he’s telling you to run bent, keep logs of every conversation. When the guy fires you (for refusing to break the law), report him to the VI, and take him to court for unfair dismissal - nice compensation claim…
WHOAH !!! slow down … Report the poor bloke to the authorities !!!
After a little chat with him on the phone today, i said that “somebody” had told me i would need to run illegal. His reply was sort of Weeeelll not really illegal or “bent”, we just have to make up a little ground here & there.
Now whilst i appreciate that the drivers that blatantly ignore the regulations & drive day & night are a menace, is there really much harm in just tweaking the truth a little ■■ Seriously, are we ALL whiter than white (i know as a rep, it’s nothing to drive at 100+ whenever possible & on my london journey it’s impossible to keep to the limits.
I do hear what some of you are saying, & the guy that called it a “dream job” was obviously poking fun at me for being new & having to accept a lower paid job (I’ve had it with 40k a year, too stressy).
The Bossman: i am certainly not going to name him so that somebody with a sad life grasses him, disgusting thing to do to a fellow driver / contractor (a rep would have his bits removed with a blunt knife for this). He may run a little “odd” but he’s obviously not a rich bloke, just another small time operation trying to make a few quid to pay the bills. Really nice bloke too. Is it normal practice in this industry to stick the knife in just because some poor bugger has to bend the rules to make ends meet
It’s all so easy to siut in a new truck that’s owned by a big firm, one day i might need help & this bloke will give it to me, i’m sure.
After reading the above it sounds like i’m having a go, on the contrary, just trying to understand why you support rules made by a “suit” that has less experience of the job than i do ■■
Despite the fact that in my opinion this is an obvious wind up, and I mentioned this to someone last night as soon as I saw the user name and before your first post. I’ll bite anyway.
VectraRep:
Hi Guys …
WHOAH !!! slow down … Report the poor bloke to the authorities !!!
Yes, that would be the sensible thing.
VectraRep:
After a little chat with him on the phone today, i said that “somebody” had told me i would need to run illegal. His reply was sort of Weeeelll not really illegal or “bent”, we just have to make up a little ground here & there.
So in fact, as we all suspected, he is running illegally. In the same way you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you can’t be a little bit bent. You are legal or you are not.
VectraRep:
(i know as a rep, it’s nothing to drive at 100+ whenever possible & on my london journey it’s impossible to keep to the limits.
That statement confirms this is a wind up in my opinion.
VectraRep:
I do hear what some of you are saying, & the guy that called it a “dream job” was obviously poking fun at me for being new & having to accept a lower paid job (I’ve had it with 40k a year, too stressy).
Best you stick with the lower end of the market then because there are drivers who earn that and more, so it may be too stressfull for you.
VectraRep:
The Bossman: i am certainly not going to name him so that somebody with a sad life grasses him, disgusting thing to do to a fellow driver / contractor (a rep would have his bits removed with a blunt knife for this). He may run a little “odd” but he’s obviously not a rich bloke, just another small time operation trying to make a few quid to pay the bills. Really nice bloke too. Is it normal practice in this industry to stick the knife in just because some poor [zb] has to bend the rules to make ends meet
‘If he has to bend the rules’ to ‘make ends meet’ he shouldn’t be running a transport business.
One of the reasons for the tachograph rules is ‘Fair Competition’ and by running bent he puts those who run legal at a disadvantage and happily these days it is becoming more normal for those running bent to be reported.
james,
people who allow there trucks to runt bent and drivers who willingly run bent for there boss do this industry no favours (putting it nicely)
99.9 % of drivers and employers will agree on this matter.
if you cannot make money by running legal then you should not be in this business.
so take your future new boss, he asked to to run slightly bent and he does,nt know you from adam. now take you, you dont know him but your prepared to do this for him, what does that make you.
if this is a genuine thread ( which i doubt) then just walk away).
you have said your age so why not act it.
