Going by the above, the driver shortage is a long standing myth. If you operate lorries/trucks and pay £15.00 per hour you will be able to pick and chose which bum goes on the seat.
Alfa1M:
Yes theirs some utter tosh jobs amongst the agency, always was a case if it seems too good to be true…But right now there’s also some gems hidden amongst it.
Yes holiday pays usually rolled into it to make it more attractive. I prefer it like that tbh as now I just tell agency I’m not working next week rather than seeing if I’ve accrued enough holidays. I’ve worked it out as worth about £1.60/HR if you base it on 28 days holiday.
I never really understood agency hol pay , but how do you work out it’s worth £1.60 ph rolled up holiday pay , I thought it was the other way , I was paid £15 ph so less 12% = - £1.80
Though I do I agree about the holidays when you want , much better than the employed , can’t have holidays too many drivers off , or no holidays from 1 at week in dec to first week in jan ( I had month off at Xmas )
alamcculloch:
Going by the above, the driver shortage is a long standing myth. If you operate lorries/trucks and pay £15.00 per hour you will be able to pick and chose which bum goes on the seat.
My last agency job was £15 ph & they couldn’t get drivers for love nor money , every day you’d get a txt with we’re still paying £300 if you recommend a friend , if the hourly rate is more next door / up the road that’s where the drivers will go
I’m sure they offered something like a £1,000 if you returned for a month after leaving
I left 3/4 months ago and have rang / txt,d asking if I’m interested in returning at £2.50 ph more than I was getting but at a different place
But not interested , I’ve turned down I guess 6/7 jobs in my area , agency , all above the £15 ph you speak off , not because of the money , just I don’t want 5/6 days a week , 3 will do , that’s the only thing im finding with agency , they don’t seem very flexible in my area on days , what you want to work , whereas I thought that was part of agency work , picking & choosing when you want to work
ETS:
A search for ‘‘hgv driver’’ on indeed returns 16,163 jobs advertised. Granted some of them may be looking to hire more than 1 driver but many ads will no doubt be repeats of one another or generic agency ads or different agencies advertising for the same job.
In this part of the word (Staffordshire), many of those ‘jobs’ are repeated by the same agency several times over a period of time and some others are so vague,it becomes blatantly obvious they just prospecting for a list of names, rather than having actual vacancies on offer, so the ‘indicated’ vacancy figures returned can be wildly inaccurate. .
Naturally, there are certain driving jobs that have always been difficult to fill, or have such a vast turnover of staff, that they have been continually advertised for years. Every area has its rogue operators or duff jobs, that nobody who values their license, their marriage or their sanity would undertake.
I am STILL not convinced there is a driver shortage on the scale that is mentioned. A selection of jobs that nobody wants to do certainly, but 100,000 driver shortage just doesn’t seem to equate to the jobs I am NOT seeing advertised out there.
LIBERTY_GUY:
ETS:
A search for ‘‘hgv driver’’ on indeed returns 16,163 jobs advertised. Granted some of them may be looking to hire more than 1 driver but many ads will no doubt be repeats of one another or generic agency ads or different agencies advertising for the same job.In this part of the word (Staffordshire), many of those ‘jobs’ are repeated by the same agency several times over a period of time and some others are so vague,it becomes blatantly obvious they just prospecting for a list of names, rather than having actual vacancies on offer, so the ‘indicated’ vacancy figures returned can be wildly inaccurate. .
Naturally, there are certain driving jobs that have always been difficult to fill, or have such a vast turnover of staff, that they have been continually advertised for years. Every area has its rogue operators or duff jobs, that nobody who values their license, their marriage or their sanity would undertake.
I am STILL not convinced there is a driver shortage on the scale that is mentioned. A selection of jobs that nobody wants to do certainly, but 100,000 driver shortage just doesn’t seem to equate to the jobs I am NOT seeing advertised out there.
Of course there’s not, the RHA themselves won’t be daft enough to believe their own figure, surely it’s commonsense that if we were 100k short you would really notice it, other than a few empty shelves.
It’s slightly in favour of the driver again like it was in the early 2000s
There are firms local to me advertising at £10ph flat rate and apparently deduct 1.5 hours if you go over a 13 hour day on 1 of them.
But you’ve got plenty advertising well into the 40s now, but this is a low pay area
isaac hunt:
Well, what a blast from the past, me old mate.
Nothing for 6 years then 5 posts in a morning. Were you locked up?LIBERTY_GUY:
I guess I am true ‘old skool’Last time you were here, you were crying about flouncing off a job because the truck had wind up windows
I met a friend of yours Isaac - Mike Oxmells.
stevieboy308:
But you’ve got plenty advertising well into the 40s now, but this is a low pay area
Stevie, do you do anything for Tim Shields? I know it’s a small world up there. Wondering if you know if Gary S if still alive from Brid?
stevieboy308:
It’s slightly in favour of the driver again like it was in the early 2000sThere are firms local to me advertising at £10ph flat rate and apparently deduct 1.5 hours if you go over a 13 hour day on 1 of them.
But you’ve got plenty advertising well into the 40s now, but this is a low pay area
I can actually better those figures. Last week a local haulier was trying to get HGV driver for rigid at £9 hour. Yesterday there was another outfit (direct again) also offering £9 for rigid vehicle, delivering alloy profiles.
Last night I was looking on the workchain site (agency) where one job was driving eight wheel tippers where the client was insisting on minimum 12 months tipping experience at just £10 hour. Now there are three decent sized tipping companies in that area (built up industrial - not rural) as well as distribution centres etc, so obviously competition for drivers, but not so bad it worth more than £10 for tear arsing around in a tipper? There was class one couple of weeks ago, hauling sliderflex trailers at £10.65 hour, honestly described in the ad as mucky work but ‘plenty of hours available’.
I know that a few hauliers have encountered massive growth as a result of Covid, particularly parcel operators through online sales, so with a need to increase their fleet are offering premiums for drivers to go there.
Looking at the much broader picture though, if there WAS a driver shortage on the scale suggested, this thread would be crammed full of comments from drivers about how their yard has trucks standing empty long term, bosses having to turn down work they can’t cover etc, but it’s not?
At the end of the day WHY do Drivers have to work around 60 + hours a week, because like many people they can`t live on the basic rate they get without
Catch 22 get decent wage and people live up to it,and the only way they can put anything by is if their partner goes out to work. If they have young kids with any extra money
they get a large portion goes on child minding.
lolipop:
At the end of the day WHY do Drivers have to work around 60 + hours a week, because like many people they can`t live on the basic rate they get without
Catch 22 get decent wage and people live up to it,and the only way they can put anything by is if their partner goes out to work. If they have young kids with any extra money
they get a large portion goes on child minding.
Drivers work sixty plus hours per week because they are so zb dumb. If they were not working they would have to THINK for themselves and that is something that they have never had to do. Think about what to wear , what to eat and where to go. Easier just to work and let it all be someone elses decision. When they have to retire or come off of the road they die within six months , no more need to think.
lolipop:
The jobs are more than likely the ones that require start times between 12 midnight and 4 in the morning and shifts that include working all or most weekends,the shifts that the established Drivers have said “not on your life” too.
Yeh, and the ones that will strangely be inserted left right and center into those mugs signing up for “any five from seven” as well… 
Try to pick-and-choose like me, and suddenly there’s “no work available” despite the ads saying “available across all start times”… 
It is bad enough doing an unpaid assessment to get into these places - without that “pass” then turning into “We’ve got any 5 from seven 22:00-04:00 starts only - or you’re back on the sidellines sonny”, having broken up a previously available working week by taking the odd day off to attend the assessment…
No thanks!
I’m booked elsewhere until the middle of august already, and there’s no point being “unprofessional” and blowing out £17-£20 rates for £21-£24 rates - when the latter is pie-in-the-sky…
alamcculloch:
Drivers work sixty plus hours per week because they are so zb dumb. If they were not working they would have to THINK for themselves and that is something that they have never had to do. Think about what to wear , what to eat and where to go. Easier just to work and let it all be someone elses decision. When they have to retire or come off of the road they die within six months , no more need to think.
This ^. Most of them are thick as [zb]. I said before how we tried to go 4 on 4 off at a place I worked at, for same money as 5 on 2 off (weekends were rota’d anyway so what day(s) of the week made no difference) but the 2 long-standing drivers refused simply for no other reason than “not doing 4 on 4 off as I’d be bored after 2 days off, may as well come to work”. So they’d rather work an extra 77 days a year for free, because they have nothing going on in their home lives and would get bored. 
LIBERTY_GUY:
Conor:
Either you’ve got your eyes closed or you’re living in the middle of nowhere if you’re not seeing lots of vacancies about and all paying far more than the £9 odd an hour you saw for that one job.Excluding the crud jobs that are ALWAYS being advertised (for years), which every area has for the rubbish home and shop delivery work etc, they just not there.
Just because you don’t like the work doesn’t make it crap.
Winseer:
Thus, the hourly rate for agency only - keeps on rising.
Pay rise for Aldi lorry drivers amid shortage - BBC News
I see Aldi are pushing up their new recruits’ full timer rate - but only by a little bit…
Let’s see how much success they have…
I can’t say I’m tempted as yet…
A company at Bellshill have just offered their drivers a £2/hr wage rise which works out at just under 20%. They’re refusing it because other companies around them have increased their wages even more. And no, that’s not agency.
Conor:
Just because you don’t like the work doesn’t make it crap.
Although I don’t do home deliveries myself, as my skill set lies with industrial driving work, I shouldn’t imagine that dragging heavy American fridge freezers and concrete filled washing machines up flights of stairs would actually appeal to a lot of people? The fact that these companies are constantly advertising week after week, after week probably validates that comment. They can’t get staff and they can’t keep staff.
From my own personal perspective, if I was coming into the industry now and spending thousands of pounds of my own hard earned money getting a license and crossing the hurdles of CPC etc, on the rhetoric of ‘big money due to driver shortage’ I wouldn’t want to be mauling my guts out for the same sort of money I could get in a warehouse. I’d want one of those super clean trunking jobs, a brand new truck with all the extras, where the only time the driver sweats, is when their kettle stops working. That aint reality I know, but neither is the garbage the hauliers are spouting about needing cheap foreign labour to survive.
I know several walking floor companies looking for drivers. They probably dont shout from roof tops but its steady work and most can be flexible on the number of nights out. I have 2 or 3 a week less if I wish and in the last 8 weeks only dropped below 4 figures once and that’s when I had 2 days unpaid leave and we have just been given a 10% rise so maybe look away from usual RDC supermarket work and you may find an earning potential you previously hadn’t thought of
the old timer:
I know several walking floor companies looking for drivers. They probably dont shout from roof tops but its steady work and most can be flexible on the number of nights out. I have 2 or 3 a week less if I wish and in the last 8 weeks only dropped below 4 figures once and that’s when I had 2 days unpaid leave and we have just been given a 10% rise so maybe look away from usual RDC supermarket work and you may find an earning potential you previously hadn’t thought of
There’s a walking floor company in the North East advertising for drivers and boasting a £67k salary! It’s tramping 4 nights per week and I suspect max hours, but that’s not too shoddy. If true of course!
Quinny:
Winseer:
Can anyone on here honestly tell me that say, Stobarts paying through the nose - is helping their bottom line?But they are not.
I saw there ‘new enhanced’ pay rates at one of their sites last week, on a flyer in the drivers reception, and didn’t manage to pick one up,(As I would have posted it.) but I wonder why people go and work for them, when there are better paid jobs out there.
Their rates are certainly not going to see them fail soon due to wages, that’s for sure.
Ken.
But Stobarts have an entire army of agency regulars in their depots, Eg. Doncaster…
How can they afford it? 