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.
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
You clearly said ‘‘as a TM’’ you could never switch off ( unlike ) a driver.In which case the TM and Owner Driver example shows up your big headed bs for what it is.
As for ringing the ‘office’ in the middle of the night so you’ve obviously never worked for a firm where you don’t even know the names of the managing director/s or CEO and the immediate management below him of the corporation let alone ever spoken to him/them on the phone.That’s generally why they employ multiple tiers of management to run the place.In my case that would have been the night manager of my base depot and later at the end of my time the driver supervisor/trainer.
So how many years of night trunking,working for a large firm.Let alone one of the largest multi national US based corporations out there,did you actually do and no Fed Ex’s relatively modest operation won’t cut it ?.
switchlogic:
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
No it’s the same OP who said that any boss who words an advert like that would expect blood for that money.Well yes obviously being run ragged across a 6 day week but a doddle if it’s only a 3 day week.
Carryfast:
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.
So everyone should drop 2 days wages? What hourly rate and hours per day are you working £25K out on?
Incidentally, thats £2K a month before tax. Just how far do you think £1600 a month will take you in this day and age?
Oh, and for the record, A 5 day week at your figures is closer to £34K a year. I know what wage id rather have
remy:
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.
Well I have given up! I may be one of the few following this thread (or trying to!) who has actually done the job and knows what is involved but it appears that in all my time both myself and my bosses did everything wrong? Carryfast seems to want some kind of utopia but I can tell him that the only way you are going to make good money with a rigid tipper is by working darn hard and putting the hours in. He doesn’t want to work saturdays, fair enough as I didn’t work many but did do some nights and sundays as it was rate and a half, but that’s his choice. He doesn’t strike me as being one of lifes natural grafters to be honest, with his attitude he wouldn’t have got a start with any companies I worked for. I made a decent enough living but it involved early starts (which I liked) and sometimes late finishes which also didn’t bother me, but if I had been chasing the ‘mighty dollar’ I would have chosen a different form of road haulage (own account etc) and I doubt that much has changed on that score!
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.
I don’t agree. Haulage could easily get plenty done in 8 hours, it would just mean warehouse hubs being built closer together, and bosses’ minds being properly focussed by the prospect of racking up time-and-half or even double-time.
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.
There’s no contradiction. £14 an hour basic strikes me as above-average even for haulage currently, and there clearly is no surplus of tipper drivers available (even with the long hours being worked by those who are tipper drivers).
The industry is likely on the horns of a different problem here.
One possibility is that conditions have simply become so extreme that it can’t get work done except at above average wages.
More likely is that of its general resistance to accepting new drivers, and the struggle to attract and retain them when the only employers that will tentatively accept new drivers are frequently those with the worst pay and conditions.
Clearly, any boss, no matter what other charade he employs to sweat his workforce, will eventually face spiralling wages and labour shortages if he does not accept and attract new entrants.
Carryfast:
As for ringing the ‘office’ in the middle of the night so you’ve obviously never worked for a firm where you don’t even know the names of the managing director/s or CEO and the immediate management below him of the corporation let alone ever spoken to him/them on the phone.That’s generally why they employ multiple tiers of management to run the place.In my case that would have been the night manager of my base depot and later at the end of my time the driver supervisor/trainer.
So how many years of night trunking,working for a large firm.Let alone one of the largest multi national US based corporations out there,did you actually do and no Fed Ex’s relatively modest operation won’t cut it ?.
Oh I dunno, worked for Tesco, Sainsburys, did a bit of night trunking for TK Maxx, lots of trunking (night and day, UK & European) for UPS, then the usual like Wincanton, NFT etc. The difference being between me and you is simply that I had more than three jobs. Nothing big headed about that, anyone can. I just speak from a position of more experience than you, doesn’t make me anything special, just someone who moves a lot because he gets bored easily. As for this post you’ve moved the goal posts yet again, how many ‘haulage bosses’ work in big multinationals? After all that’s what you originally whinged about.
Carryfast:
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.
I don’t agree. Haulage could easily get plenty done in 8 hours, it would just mean warehouse hubs being built closer together, and bosses’ minds being properly focussed by the prospect of racking up time-and-half or even double-time.
You obviously don’t get the difference between haulage,which would include tipper type operations,v trunking.Haulage generally involving random customers spread across equally random geographical areas.Also as others have said sometimes on a random feast or famine type demand basis.Also bearing in mind that all hours worked above 9 hours generally and sometimes 10,if not less,will by definition be made up of ‘other diuties’ like vehicle checks,loading/unloading,waiting time between jobs and breaks.Neither the driving time nor ‘other work’ side of that equation being possible to compromise on without going out of business.
As for short haul hub system trunking v direct longer distance trailer swaps using artics and demounts as intended.You’ve obviously never been on the receiving end of the results of changing from the latter to the former.Especially when the bleedin union decide that it would be a good idea for drivers to be involved in the resulting,often hand ball,transhipment operation at the hub.Because ‘we can’t have them being paid to sit around doing nothing’ during that time which can often by necessity end up with a longer shift overall,involving more warehouse labouring than driving,as opposed to longer distance trunking.
As for the topic as I said a 3 day week job share would be a game changer in this case regarding the OP’s,probably correct view,of what’s being demanded in the advert.
£50,000 per annum =over £4,000 per month = 1,000 per week - tax an average working week of 48 hours = approx £15 per hour working for a man who tells it as it is dosent sound to bad of course if you have a second job as a barrack room lawyer or belong to the PC brigade then it might not suit but remember not every job pays that well be careful what you dismiss without thinking.
Just saying.
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.
Is this you in Manchester Pete? just before you dash off back to Derbyshire for another load?
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
“Old fruit” haven’t heard that one…your choice of vernacular is always enteraining, made me chuckle and chortle…that is unitil until I looked in a mirror and realized that’s me too…
old 67:
Is this you in Manchester Pete? just before you dash off back to Derbyshire for another load?
Oh I had tipped and long gone, that could be Dave (Rigsby) making heavy weather of it though!
Pete.
I never worked for the riff raft at Hughes bros , I was with the premium outfit at Hillhead , but only as a subbie , never aspired to the giddy heights of company driver once I left the garage .
old 67:
Is this you in Manchester Pete? just before you dash off back to Derbyshire for another load?
Oh I had tipped and long gone, that could be Dave (Rigsby) making heavy weather of it though!
Pete.
I never worked for the riff raft at Hughes bros , I was with the premium outfit at Hillhead , but only as a subbie , never aspired to the giddy heights of company driver once I left the garage .
Ah right, I thought Hughes Bros quarried Hillhead. Which quarry did they own then Dave, it obviously had a tarmac plant?
) just ain’t going to get enough work done with a less than 12 hour day so that’s fair enough.
