Mal,my post came accross as negative,but what I whas trying to say is why do truckers accept the low pay and conditions?
There is no reason for it.
If you love driving thats your choice in life.
I have bills to pay and I expect to be remunerated accordingly.
If I worked on a building site and boss says"Heres a new hammer on the condition you take a pay cut"how many builders would there be?
True,no one’s holding a gun to my head to remain in trucking-BUT,for those entering the industry you have to think about how your future will turn out i.e. the longer you remaining in trucking you will be branded with the stigma of just a truck driver and your future employment prospects count as zero.A mate high up in a large firm,told me any job applicants, wether it be proffesional or labouring, and the applicants CV has truck driving experience-the application is tossed out.Like it or not thats how it is in the real world.
I have been trying to leave,but the stereotype truck driver syndrom makes it hard to get a foot in the door.
Why is it wrong to work X hours without Z hours more than everyone else and recieve similiar wage and conditions?
Carl:
dont panic there will be always someone to drive trucks,even if he/she are eastern european
you can say that again carl! and its gonna make things even worse for anybody that tries to change the nature of the game. supply & demand is the engine of change, well they just got a new supply, some of the old commie countries!
boots:
Mal,my post came accross as negative,but what I whas trying to say is why do truckers accept the low pay and conditions?
because they have to boots, simple as that, dont you think it’s all been tried a million times before? its a case of supply and demand boots, we are not a valuable commodity it’s not a very hard job to grasp and to carry out. now, the irony is, if thousands hung the keys up, we soon would be! and all the bad stuff might actually improve. if barristers took 3 weeks to train, and there were thousands of them, they would not be on 200 quid an hour!
If you love driving thats your choice in life.
if i didnt, i wouldnt do the job, ive never said theres no drawbacks with the job, theres ■■■■■■■ plenty, and thats the very reason it aint a smart career choice, it’s summat different that keeps someone happy in this job, maybre being crazy 
I have bills to pay and I expect to be remunerated accordingly.
same here, plenty of em, and driving allways paid them.
If I worked on a building site and boss says"Heres a new hammer on the condition you take a pay cut"how many builders would there be?
well, youve got me on theat one boots, ive never done it, and i dont know anybody else that has either, if i was told i had to take a pay cut for a new truck my notice to quit would be given that very second. unless it was the way i wanted it.
True,no one’s holding a gun to my head to remain in trucking-BUT,for those entering the industry you have to think about how your future will turn out i.e. the longer you remaining in trucking you will be branded with the stigma of just a truck driver and your future employment prospects count as zero.A mate high up in a large firm,told me any job applicants, wether it be proffesional or labouring, and the applicants CV has truck driving experience-the application is tossed out.Like it or not thats how it is in the real world.
course it is, in the real world the lorry driver has no status at all, im sure some give a ■■■■ about that, i personally dont maybe because status is of zero interest to me in general, so i dont care and never have. and youre right about the career choice, who would say it was a good one? apart from a crazy truck head or summat! as ive said before, it is only a good one if youre going into it for some crazy reason like you love big diesels or summat. carreer, who would even imagine driving a lorry as a career anyway!
I have been trying to leave,but the stereotype truck driver syndrom makes it hard to get a foot in the door.
boots im genuinely sorry for you mate, i hope your luck changes soon and you get what you want. as an aside, getting a bogus reference might help, it’s been done! 
Why is it wrong to work X hours without Z hours more than everyone else and recieve similiar wage and conditions?
it aint wrong boots, it’s just that in the real world, you get what someone is willing to pay you, and for driving it is in the low end, but theres a lot worse. theres many a press operator on less per hour than us, in a crap noisy factory, that cannot even earn a lot by sheer hours.
there are many other jobs like that. as an unskilled man i couldnt have a hope of earning anywhere near my wage anywhere else. that in itself wouldnt be so bad, but id hate anything else anyway, so the bonus of me getting a good wage for summat i love is excellent!
people are all the same in the low end jobs, they dont get what they want, they get what they can. im sorry if this statement offends, (and im a lifer so i dont mean it to believe me), but we lorry drivers are not a special case, we really aint, and theres many manual low-skill workers in even crappier situations, it make me glad im a driver!
Wise words Mal and sums the whole situation up 100%.
I thought about making the change to something else last year but realised I have been doing it so long I have no knowledge or skill to do anything else, well anything else I would want to do. I’ll stick with it for now, I’m still enjoying it anyway.
I actually take a perverse pleasure in telling people what I do for a living, if they ask, and seeing their attitude change and then they look down their noses at me. I couldn’t give a [zb] what they think, it’s their problem not mine, and I think it says more about them than me.
i actualy like the job ok you have your bad days but who dosen’t i love driving , i love trucks, i like being on my own i wear what i want no whistle and flute making sure its spik and spam and no crease marks for the morning. i don’t want to change my job but its the do gooders killing it. its a family business i’m in, and in time i’ll be running it and times are not good now just a bit worried it will get worse for owner drivers in the future lets hope not
cheers neil, i try to be realistic as possible.
i know waht you mean mate, i think we all think about a change from tiem to time. some do quit the game never to return, and im glad for em i really am, so long as its a good move for them. i will be in a motor now for as long as my health allows. i met a 70 yr old doing boxes, as you know, you can do boxes in a quite knackered physical state, or even one-armed! his mates of his age might have been bored ■■■■■■■■ round the house, he was down the dock, and i thought, it’ll do for me!
it is more about them neil, theres a lot of stuck up ■■■■■■■ in life, i personally never look down on anybodys job, we are all needed, theyre just ■■■■■■■ ignorant mate, and it’d be too boring and too long a job to shine the light of reality of what we do for them onto them!
530power:
i actualy like the job ok you have your bad days but who dosen’t i love driving , i love trucks, i like being on my own i wear what i want no whistle and flute making sure its spik and spam and no crease marks for the morning. i don’t want to change my job but its the do gooders killing it. its a family business i’m in, and in time i’ll be running it and times are not good now just a bit worried it will get worse for owner drivers in the future lets hope not
well said 530, the do-gooders are wreaking havok, but then again, when didnt they 
keep tough, it’ll work out we just have to adapt to the daft [zb]s sometimes!
A lot of young guys would love to become truckers. What puts them off? Firstly the cost of the training and secondly the likelyhood of landing a job after spending best part of a grand getting their licence.
As a HGV driving instructor I have seen many good drivers in their early twenties pass the test and leave with great enthusiasm to go get a job only to see them a year later, slogging round in a white van on poor pay as no firm will give them a job due to lack of experience. Even after a couple of years they can’t get a Class 2 or 1 job as they have only been driving a van, so they are no better off just more demoralised.
The only ones who make it through are the ones who land agency jobs to get the experience or those who just hang onto the licence for a couple of years then tell small fibs about what they have been doing since passing.
No wonder they give up and get a job in McDonalds!!
cheers mal, your right i’m not gonna be a defeatist to those fools
530power:
i wear what i want
Have you ever been on a police programme and arrested in warrington by any chance 
simon
i saw that on tv the male truck driver that got caught drunk wearing womans clothes
SimonRS2K:
530power:
i wear what i wantHave you ever been on a police programme and arrested in warrington by any chance
simon
lmao! you just remineded me of seeing that, i ■■■■■■ myself at that programme it was bizzere!
muckles:
The Technology is available to record CD’s onto tape, or get an Ipod and a device which plugs it into the tape deck.
whatever you do don’t continue to listen to local radio, because you won’t need to be driving a truck for much longer as the nice men in white coats will find you somewhere to live.
i have taped from CDs in the past but i dont have a tape deck anymore. i play CDs on my pc, PS2 or DVD player and none of them have a tape deck. the ipod is an idea but at the moment, my priorities lie with creating my own CDs from what i have. i am one of these people who like a few tracks from an album and cant be arsed changing discs every 5 minutes
i actually like the local stations. 210fm, magic 105.4, ocean fm, 105.2 wave fm, fox fm. it all depends on where i am. the FM12 only picks up BBC stations and i hate them. fortunately, i normally drive the ECT now so im happy 
no point in buying a new head unit at the moment Mal. im moving soon and starting a new job around June. i dont know what i will be doing between moving and then so until i get my own unit (if i get one) then im not gonna bother personalising anything
Mal:
because they have to boots, simple as that, dont you think it’s all been tried a million times before? its a case of supply and demand boots, we are not a valuable commodity it’s not a very hard job to grasp and to carry out. now, the irony is, if thousands hung the keys up, we soon would be! and all the bad stuff might actually improve. if barristers took 3 weeks to train, and there were thousands of them, they would not be on 200 quid an hour!
Surely this is where the drivers CPC is used to our advantage. It stops people getting access to the job with the minimum of training.
I know that it costs thousands to get a licence (and I know that isn’t small change to most of us) and a few weeks off work, But how much does that compare with what people spend on a car, holiday, kitchen etc, or even retraining for a different occupation.
muckles:
Surely this is where the drivers CPC is used to our advantage. It stops people getting access to the job with the minimum of training.
I know that it costs thousands to get a licence (and I know that isn’t small change to most of us) and a few weeks off work, But how much does that compare with what people spend on a car, holiday, kitchen etc, or even retraining for a different occupation.
i dont have a clue how much hassle the stupid cpc for drivers will be muckles, im guessing it will be just enough to ■■■■ us off, and not enough to be of any use whatever. people will pass it because they have to, the proof of that would be give them the choice, and see how many take it on voluntary. so it’ll be passed and ignored i reckon.
i like your optimism, but i believe its a load of cobblers invented by academics to placate do-gooders and lorry haters. in the real proffesions it takes a good 5 years hard slog before rewards are started to be reaped i guess the cpc will be fiddled in a day or 2.
and i do not believe for a minute that any amount of bull-doo initiatives that are loaded on us will seriously make driving lorries a real proffession. there just aint any evidense for it whatsoever. the job is still the same, the same stuff happens, the same complaints are reeled off, so for all the bull, whats really changed?
most old drivers say it’s changed for the worse, i know i think so, and there are a good many on here thatve driven a lot longer than me, i would be interested to know what they think?. id say the biggest change we have had for the better, something thats done us drivers some good, is all technology, thats made the later model lorries like a hotel to sleep in and a peice of cake to drive, also the curtainsider, ect makes life easy.
i mean, what about adr? ive done it twice now, a week of total ■■■■■■■ boredom in a classroom and virtually nobody fails it. in 2 mins its half forgot and it aint done a damaned thing for our lot as i can see other than load us with responsibility thats seldom rewarded.
ive experienced the job both light on bull crap, and heavy with it, and i know which one was the most fun! and the worst of it is, im no better off at all for all the ■■■■■■■■ thats been foisted on us all since the tacho! if theres lads that are hats off to them, ive yet to meet one!
Brilliant post Mal, I agree with everything you’ve just said and at 21 I’m supposedly one of the new generation that is all for all this extra stuff, wrong, I’m totally against it, as are all the other under 25 drivers I know, all of whom, including myself are thinking hard about other career paths for the future as we dont realistically see it in trucking as its the freedom of the job that attracts most, and that is the main thing that is gradually being taken away. I know that all I have ever wanted and still want is to drive a truck the way my dad has since I was 4 years old, at the moment I can just about achieve this but I won’t for long and I’m not staying in a job that just becomes a regulated nightmare of the worst kind. I expect that most industries are now suffering from chronic over regulation but the transport industry seems to be having it VERY bad lately.
I wouldn’t bother entering the industry if you have no plan’s to stay in it , your already having doubt’s before even doing the job . I find it intriquing that some people use the word “freedom” There is no freedom to truck driving , fair enough your on the road and you can pretty much do as you please but miss a booking time or something similiar and your going to be in the ■■■■ if you have no sensible explanation for being late other than useing the word " freedom "
I can’t stand it anymore , i,ve been driving truck’s for 10 year’s and the only thing that has got slightly better is the wage’s although "big " wase rige’s are now in decline again . Yes THAT’S RIGHT i said the wage’s are ok Obviously i would like more but that’s not going to happen if something doesn’t change .
Something has to give this year , i can’t stand it anymore , the cocky security guy that knows more about the job your doing than anyone else and there is alway’s one that claims to have been a driver 
The never ending appaling planning , planning that you complain about to make thing’s better for yourself and everyone else and nothing get’s done .
Driver’s that are too scared to back to the yard to early in case they get sent out somewhere else , what a joke i go back when i,m done and if they want me to go somewhere else they just have to ask , i suppose laughing at them whilst taking my steelie’s off is a good enough answer …God there is more i could pick at i could be typing all night .
I think 2006 will be the year i hang my licence up and if all goes well i will not be keeping my hand in …
cheers robin! im no expert, but a lot of the blame comes from the eu. we british govt are pretty good at inventing useless bollox, but the eu are stellar. the ironic thing is, most of the countries on the continent dont take the stupid regulations seriously and ive heard they are amazed that we actually do!
somebody remind me, i know the gerry’s pretty well gave us the taco, is it true they then dumped it themselves shortly after? or is it a drivers myth?
no the tacho is alive and well in germany mal its just alot of them choose to ignore it
Mal:
, most of the countries on the continent dont take the stupid regulations seriously and ive heard they are amazed that we actually do!
not only that but our authorities allow them to ignore the law over here whereas british drivers get prosecuted wherever we stray. doesnt anyone else think something funny is going on? 