Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.
You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark 
windrush:
Rjan:
The problem most drivers have is that they aren’t willing to back each other up. They’ll sooner do 20 extra hours every week for plain time, than spend a minute standing next to the man who says he won’t do it except for time-and-half.I’m guessing that you (and carryfast!) have never driven tippers on quarry work? If you had you would know how it works, the haulier is told the rates (why am I repeating myself?
) and they either do it or stop at home. THAT’S HOW IT IS!!
And I don’t mean to imply that I’m contradicting your account. What I’m articulating, however, is that it is like this because drivers won’t solidify and demand any alternative.
We’re paying an individualist penalty in our wages and conditions, whilst the bosses who solidify into large firms (or contracting chains, employer associations, or loosely agreed policies formed around the pub table) and thus set prices, cream a collectivist surplus in profit by driving down our pay.
I only rehearse these points because it isn’t at all obvious to me that you’re choosing to work 60 hours for the same pay as you could get for 40 hours.
In my experience, it’s not in the nature of men, even those who like their work, to like routine work so much that they’ll do 20 more hours a week every week for nothing, even less to do for nothing work which swells the coffers of their employing organisations (including their so-called “customers” which are actually bosses).
However, getting back on tack, the job that was in the op’s link could well be that the guy has his own work so can fix his own rates and that is a different matter?
If the guy has his “own” work (really, with tippers, it’s not his own work at all, but work for employers like quarries or tarmac firms), he can only set the price at which he turns down work, he can’t fix the rate at which the work is actually done, because to do that you have to act in concert with many others.
Rjan:
And I don’t mean to imply that I’m contradicting your account. What I’m articulating, however, is that it is like this because drivers won’t solidify and demand any alternative.We’re paying an individualist penalty in our wages and conditions, whilst the bosses who solidify into large firms (or contracting chains, employer associations, or loosely agreed policies formed around the pub table) and thus set prices, cream a collectivist surplus in profit by driving down our pay.
I only rehearse these points because it isn’t at all obvious to me that you’re choosing to work 60 hours for the same pay as you could get for 40 hours.
In my experience, it’s not in the nature of men, even those who like their work, to like routine work so much that they’ll do 20 more hours a week every week for nothing, even less to do for nothing work which swells the coffers of their employing organisations (including their so-called “customers” which are actually bosses).
However, getting back on tack, the job that was in the op’s link could well be that the guy has his own work so can fix his own rates and that is a different matter?
If the guy has his “own” work (really, with tippers, it’s not his own work at all, but work for employers like quarries or tarmac firms), he can only set the price at which he turns down work, he can’t fix the rate at which the work is actually done, because to do that you have to act in concert with many others.
Well when you are paid a percentage your hours at work are not fixed, you can either teararse around or take things steady but you still get the same wage irrespective. Depends how you want to do the job really, some lads just wanted to get tipped and rush off whereas I would have a chat with the tarmac gangs etc, maybe enjoy a brew with them, all depends on the individual of course. It never bothered me either way but I did like to be home by early evening as my missus was (still is) disabled so needed me at times. That is why I swapped jobs from hourly pay to percentage as generally I could get done sooner than the hourly paid lads but still get virtually as much in wages.
The guy COULD have his own customers and purchase material ex works from the quarries etc, plenty of lads did that for many years without ever actually hauling for the quarries and sometimes they asked other hauliers to help them out when they were busy. Sometimes their rates were better than the quarries. Coincidently I was chatting to another former haulier today about this thread and he agreed with everything I said, the hauliers (not the drivers as you said) were told the rates and it was either do the job or clear off elsewhere, but of all the quarries in our area ours had by far the best rates anyway. When companies like Tilcon/Tarmac/ARC/etc had their own fleets the rates were reviewed annually and usually raised slighty, also fuel cost increases occasionally happened. However, when the fleets were sold off all that stopped, they had no need to keep hauliers content as there was a ready supply of trucks and (apart from RMC who retained their own fleet of tippers etc) and haulage rate increases were very few and far between and often dropped! A case in point, Tarmac dropped the rate from Buxton to the Manchester area when a by-pass opened recently and knocked several minutes off of the journey.
Pete.
Rjan:
And I don’t mean to imply that I’m contradicting your account. What I’m articulating, however, is that it is like this because drivers won’t solidify and demand any alternative.We’re paying an individualist penalty in our wages and conditions, whilst the bosses who solidify into large firms (or contracting chains, employer associations, or loosely agreed policies formed around the pub table) and thus set prices, cream a collectivist surplus in profit by driving down our pay.
I only rehearse these points because it isn’t at all obvious to me that you’re choosing to work 60 hours for the same pay as you could get for 40 hours.
In my experience, it’s not in the nature of men, even those who like their work, to like routine work so much that they’ll do 20 more hours a week every week for nothing, even less to do for nothing work which swells the coffers of their employing organisations (including their so-called “customers” which are actually bosses).
However, getting back on tack, the job that was in the op’s link could well be that the guy has his own work so can fix his own rates and that is a different matter?
If the guy has his “own” work (really, with tippers, it’s not his own work at all, but work for employers like quarries or tarmac firms), he can only set the price at which he turns down work, he can’t fix the rate at which the work is actually done, because to do that you have to act in concert with many others.
Rjan, have you ever thought of changing the language you choose. It’s terribly tedious wading through some of the terminology. I always tailored my language to fit the people I was talking to. Plenty of people here with clever degrees but they manage to ‘speak’ without sounding quite so patronising.
Firstly, in windrush’s case, its equally down to the hauliers not ‘solidifying’. As I’ve said before, as hauliers we are often employees of the company we work for. We can as drivers can, say no to work with poor rates and find some other work if we can. Though as a haulier we dont just have our families to think of, we have assets that we may take a loss on to dispose of and in a family run concern, we very well may worry about those that work for us. Really.
In my entire life, I have never set prices with another haulier in any of the ways you suggest. For the big boys it’s pretty simple. The trucks and the fuel cost pretty much the same for everyone with x many trucks. There will be differences locally in terms of cost of premises, but they don’t form a large part of overall costs. Wages do however and their is some scope to gain an advantage on a competitor if you are in an area where wages are lower than your competitors, but you are still able to service the location for broadly the same costs.
But for small hauliers, all I’ve ever known is rate cutting until someone drops out or if like me, you do some niche work where you and the drivers are actually appreciated for the work you do. I’ve certainly never sat with my competitors and hatched an evil plan to set rates. There is only one I would have trusted anyway, the other two would have stabbed their own grandmothers in the back to get other firms work.
Cream a collectivist surplus, my arse, to put in driver appropriate language 
albion:
Firstly, in windrush’s case, its equally down to the hauliers not ‘solidifying’. As I’ve said before, as hauliers we are often employees of the company we work for. We can as drivers can, say no to work with poor rates and find some other work if we can.
That’s what I said. You can turn down work individually, if you can survive without work, but you can’t determine the price at which work is actually done.
Though as a haulier we dont just have our families to think of, we have assets that we may take a loss on to dispose of and in a family run concern, we very well may worry about those that work for us. Really.
Agreed. It’s often the presence of so many small businesses that is the problem, because when it comes down to it, they frequently side with other bosses, or try to compete with one another by attacking the workforce.
It doesn’t require all, or even most bosses, to be swines. The market mechanism magnifies the power of the swines by returning larger profits to them whilst squeezing out those who attempt to be most generous, and the vast majority of small business people fundamentally support that market mechanism.
You often seem personally irked that anything bad is said about bosses. Yet I believe you describe that attacks have already begun on the workers in the firm you used to own.
My point is never to argue that all possible business owners are swines. It’s that free market competition selects swines and, at the greatest intensity of competition, drives out all with even a modicum of ethics.
In my entire life, I have never set prices with another haulier in any of the ways you suggest. For the big boys it’s pretty simple. The trucks and the fuel cost pretty much the same for everyone with x many trucks. There will be differences locally in terms of cost of premises, but they don’t form a large part of overall costs. Wages do however and their is some scope to gain an advantage on a competitor if you are in an area where wages are lower than your competitors, but you are still able to service the location for broadly the same costs.
But for small hauliers, all I’ve ever known is rate cutting until someone drops out or if like me, you do some niche work where you and the drivers are actually appreciated for the work you do. I’ve certainly never sat with my competitors and hatched an evil plan to set rates. There is only one I would have trusted anyway, the other two would have stabbed their own grandmothers in the back to get other firms work.
Perhaps this is true for small hauliers currently - although many of them can informally set rates just by being determined to match each other, which is a common policy. In my experience all small businesses are extremely keen to know what their competition pays and charges, in order to effect this policy.
But it clearly isn’t true of the larger employers like Tarmac, where as Windrush describes, a bypass was built and no sooner had that happened than rates were ordered down. Don’t tell me that somebody in Tarmac (or their like) isn’t literally sat around a table setting rates for all the hauliers they deal with, and sending out orders to all the sites they control (and to their accounting department) that they must comply with the rate set.
Cream a collectivist surplus, my arse, to put in driver appropriate language
Alright, they stand together and thus make extra profits, whilst workers look after themselves alone and thus pay the price in lower wages. I doubt most posters here struggled to understand in context.
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.Of which I soon put him right that I won’t be working more than a 12 hour day either.As for Saturdays you’re avin a larf.
In this case contrary to Rjan’s issues the wage rate is fine.But why would anyone want to work more than a 3 day week at £14-17 per hour,bearing in mind that the advert makes it clear that maxing out hours is mandatory ?.Unless they’re just bleedin greedy.So they go for the full fat up to £50 grand offer on the basis of as few workers as possible doing as much work as possible.Suddenly the boss realises that the competition is paying much less together with a resulting ready made pool of desperate drivers looking for a job.What could possibly go wrong.
Carryfast:
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.Of which I soon put him right that I won’t be working more than a 12 hour day either.As for Saturdays you’re avin a larf.
I choked a little on my drink laughing as I read this, thinking “only in haulage is going to the boss and demanding to work no more than 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, considered to be laying down the law”. 
In this case contrary to Rjan’s issues the wage rate is fine.But why would anyone want to work more than a 3 day week at £14-17 per hour,bearing in mind that the advert makes it clear that maxing out hours is mandatory ?
At 3 days of 12 hours, I’m with you that that is a broadly sufficient amount of time to spend at work for a week.
Unless they’re just bleedin greedy.So they go for the full fat up to £50 grand offer on the basis of as few workers as possible doing as much work as possible.Suddenly the boss realises that the competition is paying much less together with a resulting ready made pool of desperate drivers looking for a job.What could possibly go wrong.
At £14 an hour, unless you’re pushing cages over cobbles all day, I’d suggest that he could probably get the work done at a somewhat cheaper hourly rate, and attract a broader number of candidates, by splitting the job up.
The logic of making the hours longer and hiring fewer workers only goes so far - obviously, if you demand 90 hours a week when the rest of the working world demands 40 hours, you won’t force pay down, you’ll force it up as workers run for the hills and flee the industry altogether, and you’ll be left beholden to a tiny number of Stakhanovites who will accept the hours but can name their price for it.
That is, the most likely problem is that the industry, because of a past history of enforced long hours, low pay, and lack of job security and stability, is now in an end-game/rebound state where it contains only experienced guys who want every possible hour they can get when they can get them (because anyone who wanted shorter hours has long since left the game for better pastures), and so he probably can’t find sufficient candidates full stop (at any number of weekly hours) unless he attracts new trainees which he won’t want.
Its only in haulage that drivers want to start work before dawn and finish after sunset. In other industries you would be considered useless if you couldn’t turn in a days work in seven or eight hours. This ,all work no play makes Jack a very dull boy holds good to day as it did when first written more than a hundred years ago.
Rjan:
I choked a little on my drink laughing as I read this, thinking “only in haulage is going to the boss and demanding to work no more than 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, considered to be laying down the law”.At 3 days of 12 hours, I’m with you that that is a broadly sufficient amount of time to spend at work for a week.
At £14 an hour, unless you’re pushing cages over cobbles all day, I’d suggest that he could probably get the work done at a somewhat cheaper hourly rate, and attract a broader number of candidates, by splitting the job up.
The logic of making the hours longer and hiring fewer workers only goes so far - obviously, if you demand 90 hours a week when the rest of the working world demands 40 hours, you won’t force pay down, you’ll force it up as workers run for the hills and flee the industry altogether, and you’ll be left beholden to a tiny number of Stakhanovites who will accept the hours but can name their price for it.
That is, the most likely problem is that the industry, because of a past history of enforced long hours, low pay, and lack of job security and stability, is now in an end-game/rebound state where it contains only experienced guys who want every possible hour they can get when they can get them (because anyone who wanted shorter hours has long since left the game for better pastures), and so he probably can’t find sufficient candidates full stop (at any number of weekly hours) unless he attracts new trainees which he won’t want.
Firstly to be fair proper haulage,( as opposed to proper job and finish night trunking ) just ain’t going to get enough work done with a less than 12 hour day so that’s fair enough.
Great so we’re agreed that a 12 hour + 3 day week is a fair working week.
£14 per hour + is also ok as part of that deal ?.
The bit I don’t get is the conclusion that combining all that together somehow creates downward pressure on wages together with the contradiction contained in your final paragraph. 
IE reasonable working week tick,reasonable hourly rate tick,two workers employed instead of one thereby reducing the labour supply tick.Instead of which even the strongest so called best practice union ethic has even train drivers earning silly money per week.Rather than reducing the amount of days worked thereby employing more drivers thereby maintaining more upward pressure on wage rates while also employing more workers.
On that note ironically it’s the unions being shackled to an obsolete view of the working week in general across every sector,which is obviously the elephant in the room here for all workers.Not just even moreso older ones looking for ‘part time’ job share.In view of which the idea of even a 4 day week is no where near bold enough.
As opposed to truck drivers realising correctly that the industry can’t work without a 12 hour working day or more going with the territory.There’s obviously still no reason why that should mean more than 40 hours per week or less nor any reason to call the resulting reasonably worked workforce ‘lazy gits’.Especially when we’re talking £14-17 per hour wage rates.
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.Of which I soon put him right that I won’t be working more than a 12 hour day either.As for Saturdays you’re avin a larf.
CF, have you any idea just how unemployable you are.
Is there a single transport manager/employer reading here who would give you a job.
Juddian:
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.Of which I soon put him right that I won’t be working more than a 12 hour day either.As for Saturdays you’re avin a larf.
CF, have you any idea just how unemployable you are.
Is there a single transport manager/employer reading here who would give you a job.
I dont think so
Juddian:
CF, have you any idea just how unemployable you are.
Is there a single transport manager/employer reading here who would give you a job.
For the avoidance of any doubt.I was employable enough to have an unbroken work history with mainly 3 employers between 1975-1999.While when I finished it wasn’t because I was a lazy git.It was because I’d effectively broke my back beyond reasonable or safe repair according to the surgeons,hand balling zb loads being used as a human forklift mostly doing jobs that the elites thought were below them and avoided leaving them for the mugs like me.Not helped by also being involved in hand balling artic loads as part of a change from trailer swaps to hub system work and being expected to load/ unload,during the resulting transhipment operations in the warehouse and not having the strongest spine in the world like zb Geoff Capes luckily had.
As for the muppet who I was referring to even he eventually agreed that I was right.In that being expected to run from Surrey up to the Midlands to do multi collections of structural steel then back to London to multi drop it all in a shift was avin a larf.Or another example of a morning spent in a queue at Erith to load paper reels then after finally getting loaded get it all down to Poole and tipped and onto the next collection.To which I politely told his son,because he’d gone home early,to zb off when I reached Rownhams and parked up for the night ready to carry on with both jobs in the morning.No issues on arrival with either customer.
Luckily for me I then got the call I’d been promised from my previous longest ‘employer’ to get back there after a temporary layoff,to save a senior driver’s job who’s depot was closed down.To which the boss’ son in question told me that his dad was a zb and wasn’t used to running artics on general haulage only 4 wheelers doing local zb and would I change my mind and stay there.
As for your kind comments assuming you were an employer and ‘if’ I was still in the industry looking for a job,which I’m not,I’d tell you the same as I told him.Also don’t think I’ve said anything much different to what robroy has said elsewhere at least regarding 12 hours being enough for anyone and his breaks are his own not the boss’ ?.So it’s anyone’s guess why he seems to have gone all guvnor’s man here in that regard.On that note also suggest you read muckaway’s comments and also then tell him what you’ve told me.
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.
Except you had no idea how much followed him home. That was worst bit about my time as aTM, the fact I could NEVER switch off. When you stop driving for the day that’s it, all done, no more thought required
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.You don’t know many…our rather any haulage bosses do you? Comical remark
Yes I actually worked for one of the worst types.He was sometimes in the office at 5 am but he was never there after 5 pm unlike the hours he expected me to be doing.
Except you had no idea how much followed him home. That was worst bit about my time as aTM, the fact I could NEVER switch off. When you stop driving for the day that’s it, all done, no more thought required
Lorry driver logic all so often seems to be that everybody else in society is working 40 odd hours a week and going home & cracking open a beer.
Very much not the case where people are earning £30k+. The number of hours they spend in the office is often not the full picture.
switchlogic:
Except you had no idea how much followed him home. That was worst bit about my time as aTM, the fact I could NEVER switch off. When you stop driving for the day that’s it, all done, no more thought required
Leave it out.TM and Company Director/Owner don’t generally go together.It’s more likely that an owner driver will also be the TM than a company director/owner and even if your description was correct an owner driver also being the nominated TM would obviously be untenable as a job.
As for me I make no apologies for being a militant dinosaur of the 1970’s who thinks that Rjan is too moderate. 
As for the rest of the turkeys voting for Christmas drivers wanting to max out their hours to help their poor struggling boss who would have thought it.Strange how it’s me getting all the flak from the grovelling yes men while the OP gets away without a word said against him though in that regard.
I dont have the mental strength to go through this whole thread since its been carryfasted but am I correct in picking up the gist of it that carryfast is advocating a 3 day week? So either everyone has to drop 2 days wages or employers should be raising the hourly rate, effectively meaning drivers doing less for more?
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Except you had no idea how much followed him home. That was worst bit about my time as aTM, the fact I could NEVER switch off. When you stop driving for the day that’s it, all done, no more thought requiredLeave it out.TM and Company Director/Owner don’t generally go together.
This is where your fairly limited experience of this industry is showing. Even if the TM isn’t the owner who do you think the TM calls when the s*** hits the fan? In my current job they run 200 trucks, guess who answers the phone if you ring the office in the middle of the night with a problem? Yup, the man who owns it
Carryfast:
Strange how it’s me getting all the flak from the grovelling yes men while the OP gets away without a word said against him though in that regard.
This debate has gone on so long I think the dementia is setting in old fruit. You seem confused as to who the original poster actually is
I do try to keep up, really i do but sad to say i think it’s time for me to look for a white flag. 
The-Snowman:
I dont have the mental strength to go through this whole thread since its been carryfasted but am I correct in picking up the gist of it that carryfast is advocating a 3 day week? So either everyone has to drop 2 days wages or employers should be raising the hourly rate, effectively meaning drivers doing less for more?
Why would they need to raise the hourly rate when it’s already £14-17 per hour.By the figures given it would actually mean around £25,000 pa for a 3 day week.
While we’ve already got loads of people on here moaning about wage rates in the industry and the hours expected.