wing-nut:
thought I had the job for as long as I wanted.
You should know that on agency, you are only as good as your last shift.
You are easy to replace, don’t be surprised when it happens.
corij:
what i can never understand is in lithu or similar places if the wages are so sh/t but the price of fuel is the about the same as here,how come theyre mostly driving decent cars somethings out of kilter
Grey economy, people hide income. For example many are payed 2 or 3 time the minimum wage, but pay taxes as they make minimum wage. This is done by both employers and employees.
Dolph:
corij:
what i can never understand is in lithu or similar places if the wages are so sh/t but the price of fuel is the about the same as here,how come theyre mostly driving decent cars somethings out of kilterGrey economy, people hide income. For example many are payed 2 or 3 time the minimum wage, but pay taxes as they make minimum wage. This is done by both employers and employees.
cheers for that. iv always wondered . could be quite a few more brits than anyone knows are over there East Euro working and doin quite nicely out of it.
3 wheeler:
FRIENDLY CLASS 1` DRIVER
£500 STARTER BONUS, WEEKLY PAY
HAULIER GROUP - Maidstone
£150 a day
We are a small haulier looking for HGV CLASS 1 tramper container drivers to start immediately.
you will work Monday to Friday staying out all week on our container transport, you will be paid £500 per week into your account paid weekly, you will also receive a starter bonus when you start of £500
we have positions available for you to start today!
we operate a fleet of new Renault T ranges with fridges or Volvo FH13 units
we are a friendly team of polite staff and would welcome the same - friendly people welcome
Forgive me if you think I am wrong…But £500 Pw paid in your bank does not add up to the £150 per day advertised as its M-F which is 5 days . So what and where is the rest, how is it Made up and when do you get it ?
That advert just does not work or Instill confidence !
after tax maybe
The-Snowman:
Immigrant:
what is bad with Fish?Red wine
Left Fish in freezer and had just Red Wine
Got drunk.
Wasn’t good Advice. Next Time i give Wine to you and have just Fish 
truckman020:
3 wheeler:
FRIENDLY CLASS 1` DRIVER
£500 STARTER BONUS, WEEKLY PAY
HAULIER GROUP - Maidstone
£150 a day
We are a small haulier looking for HGV CLASS 1 tramper container drivers to start immediately.
you will work Monday to Friday staying out all week on our container transport, you will be paid £500 per week into your account paid weekly, you will also receive a starter bonus when you start of £500
we have positions available for you to start today!
we operate a fleet of new Renault T ranges with fridges or Volvo FH13 units
we are a friendly team of polite staff and would welcome the same - friendly people welcome
Forgive me if you think I am wrong…But £500 Pw paid in your bank does not add up to the £150 per day advertised as its M-F which is 5 days . So what and where is the rest, how is it Made up and when do you get it ?
That advert just does not work or Instill confidence !after tax maybe
I’ve seen worse than that advertised, and think they are just saying that they will pay this to your account and sort out the rest/difference when timesheets are sorted, maybe at the end of the month…
I’ve noticed that a lot of container work is advertised on a day rate, and assume this is because there is so much waiting around with that type of work. So much so, I’d guess that you will probably end up doing 15 hour days with split rests. But as I’ve never done it, I’m only guessing…
htmldude:
Hilarious amount of “all agencies are [zb] and all agency drivers are [zb]”. I worked agency, but as a 19 year old with a brand new Class 2 licence what else was I meant to do? They got me working (on a good job too). They ■■■■■■ me off, and I ■■■■■■ them off as well. But whatever.I’m sorry some of you had bad experiences on agencies, or with agency drivers. But not everyone is the same as the one person you had a problem with. It’s like saying all black people steal, which is clearly very racist, and completely untrue.
get used to it htmldude, some of our full time drivers on here have nothing better to do except slate agency drivers,it keeps them happy little chappies,but gets boring after a while,i have been agency myself,now full time,good and bad in agency and full timers except the full timers who slate agency will never admit they do wrong,if they smack a motor they leave it for a couple of days then suddenly do a vehicle check and hey presto they find the damage and its an agency driver that must have done it,i used to bite at their comments now I read them and laugh,not worth stressing out over anti agency mugs
Jareko:
Hi my English friends.
I’m from Poland and been living in your country for more than 10 years. Last time when I worked via agency was around 2005.
Typical English weeping, I would be shame to even put the post like that, get the balls and get yourself from the agency work. If the Polish man like me can get the fulltime job with the English as a second language along with average experience as a driver so what is the matter with YOU.
British victim syndrome. Poles and other Eastern Europeans manage to come to a completely different country with a different language and culture and manage to find work because they’re prepared to do what needs to be done to find a job. Maybe it is because they come from countries where the government doesn’t wipe their backsides as much as ours does so they’re used to having to fend for themselves instead of just holding out their hand for money to the government.
Comparing Poland invasion to Hitler’s one, well what you can expect from someone who finished his education at the age of 16.
Talking about Poland and Hitler I’d like to thank the Polish people for the help they gave my grandfather when he was at a prisoner of war camp in Germany after being captured at Dunkirk at the start of WW2. Had they not helped him and thousands of other PoWs like him he would not have survived to come home.
Quite a few of those who engage in Polish bashing are only actually here because of the help that Poles gave to British PoWs in prison camps during WW2 because had they not they’d not have got home and their parents wouldn’t have been born so they wouldn’t have existed.
Captain Caveman 76:
Evil8Beezle:
Wardaddy:
Dolph:
Yeahhhh, its not the agency and its greedy British boss fault, but the EE migrant.
I feel sorry for the author but the title is wrong, you have been replaced because of human greed(British, Lithuanian doesn’t matter) regardless of safety record, experience, language knowledge etc.No, he’s been replaced by someone who eats river fish for dinner and shares a broom cupboard with two other people, willing to work for a pittance.
If they want to work for nothing or thereabouts, I suggest they wash cars in a boarded up service station.So if you were in a poorer country, struggling to find work, yet able to LEGALLY go to another and work, you’d stay at home and starve?
Of course you wouldn’t, you would go to that country and do the best you could.
Don’t blame the people, blame the system and politicians….Spot on. Plenty of UK drivers have gone to the US or Canada. Exactly the same.
Contraflow:
Captain Caveman 76:
What bugs me about this whole “long term agency placement” is: If the job is there, why doesn’t the company employ you direct?Because employees have rights. Agency arses on seats don’t.
If they want to get rid of you in favour of a Lithuanian arse who’ll do the same job for minimum wage, they can.
No sympathy. Get a proper job. Don’t encourage the problem by being an agency arse.
Where I work, there’s no foreigners, gingers or agency arses. Unwritten company policy.
I’m lucky, I know. It should be the norm though, not the exception.
<<EDIT, rant not aimed at you Caveman, unless you’re an agency arse. Rant aimed at the agency arse OP.>>
The problem isn’t agencies, it’s the companies that exploit the agency drivers. If the job is there that necessitates a permanent agency presence, the driver should be taken on permanent (if they wish). As you said above, agency = employee without rights.
[/quote]
CC76, yes loads of us have come to Canada, not so many to the US.
BUT we are on the same wage as the Canadian drivers, and in the case of the company I started with (and probably plenty more) here, because of the wage stipulation on the Work Permits, they had to increase their mileage rate from 32cpm, where it had stayed for years before, to 40cpm, a massive 25% increase overnight on a fleet that covers an average 1.2 million miles a week, so it’s nothing like the UK, paying less to foreigners.
Harry Monk:
Sorry to hear this. Unfortunately it seems to be the way of the world at the moment. I’m sure it won’t be much longer before I have to sell up and get out, cabotage restrictions are the only thing protecting me at the moment, but once they are swept away then my job will be done by an eastern European for half the price.
Bet Gregorys can’t wait to reward their faithful subbies by tucking them over backwards when they can get foreign plate trucks run their trailers permanently.
No hour restrictions either.
Captain Caveman 76:
What bugs me about this whole “long term agency placement” is: If the job is there, why doesn’t the company employ you direct?
Aren’t there were rules where they have to offer you a job if you were on placement over a certain amount of time?
Holiday pay, sick pay, redundancy pay, pension pay, training, uniform, pay-roll costs…
Overheads.
Should have said that first I suppose… 
I feel sorry for the driver who lost his job, but put it down to one word : Competition ! look around your home or truck or car, i guarantee there are products made abroad, we buy clothes and white goods for example because they are lower in price, and we dont give a ■■■■ who suffers with low wages in order to give us what we want, clothes from Taiwan and china springs to mind…we buy fireworks made in china, we used to make our own, we had radio and tv manufacturers, we had car makers etc etc, all now foreign owned. The EU opened its borders to the east europeans in order to create more trade, without looking at the consequences. And as been told above, we take advantage of other countries for work, we load from the eu as a back load, but i am sure that the rates start off the same and go to who wants the work for a certain rate, so although we export for one rate, we collect a return to pay for the ferry and fuel. If you take LKW for eg, they get a good rate for the job, but dont pass it on, and this company has a huge customer base in every country in the EU, and gives their work to mostly east european transport companies at a reduced rate. IF we voted out of the EU, i would guarantee things wont change, we would still trade with the eu, and have in place a set of agreements that will still allow freedom of movement for eu citizens, and for us too. The only solution is for all of us to move to another EU country, where the cost of living matches the country concerned , like the driver above whose son went to Poland to work.
^ Indeed!
If you read The Sun enough though you get the full facts… Bloody foreigners stealing our jobs etc, and our poor, honest government just want to help make everything nice with their magic wands & fairy dust…
Business is competitive, it’s that simple. If I was desperate I’d undercut the competition too, because that’s how it works
Replaced by a Lithuanian. Could be worse. You could’ve been replaced by a couple of Duracells and a rubber rabbit.
It’s all about context this life.
calsdad:
This happened to me. There is an easy solution.Agency liar will not have told the place you were working that they are switching you for the other guy. They will be supplying the new guy at the same £X per hour and increasing their profit. So the company is paying the same per hour but getting a lower quality driver. Agency will have lied to company about your availability. Creating the situation.
I simply went into the customer to download my tacho (find lost hat or other plausible lie). They ask if you are OK, you give them the yes but not working much story. They will soon join the dots, or if they are a bit thick you can help. Once they realise what the agency is up to questions will be asked. Helps if replacement is making a mess of the job and costing them money. Every TM likes to think they are the agencies number one priority once they realise they are not they soon switch.
Agent loses work. You probably won’t get back in but at least the agent loses his commission.
Solution to this is getting a decent agent. Well they are all scum but at least one who has some honesty.
However, this is not what happened in the OP’s case. His agency didn’t supply relief cover, so the client company went with a different agency, who are presumably charging lower rates. That’s why they’ve kept the new guy on.
It’s not the OP’s agency’s fault (beyond the “not being bothered to find relief cover” bit). It’s the new guy’s agency for undercutting the rates and the client company for going for with the “cheaper is better” mantra.
As others have said, it’s a basic fact of a competitive market. Everyone does it to some extent. I wonder how many people on here consider the wages of everyone involved in the supply chain when they’re buying stuff. The cheaper product/supplier is cheaper for a reason.
Exactly, especially the German ones, they make drivers unload themselves, thereby reducing the need for warehouse staff, and thereby reducing the cost of goods to the customer, and now they are the leading supermarkets…of course they are …less overheads…but in all honesty…i believe the saying: you only get what you pay for the quality of the fresh produce is crap and i prefer to shop locally for that.