Is there a tax reason why a company would prefer hiring agency drivers instead of full time drivers long term? and are there any other financial reasons, A friend has been at firm 2 years now at £10 per hour and they only pay their own drivers £7.50, very strange.
Just purely if the work drops off, your mate will be first out the door with no redundancy pay.
A driver on the books would cost more than £7.50 to the firm, they have national insurance to pay for their employees, holiday pay, sick pay, and redundancy, not to mention paying them when it’s slack too. Much easier and cost effective to hire in extra workers
Blunder Man:
Is there a tax reason why a company would prefer hiring agency drivers instead of full time drivers long term? and are there any other financial reasons, A friend has been at firm 2 years now at £10 per hour and they only pay their own drivers £7.50, very strange.
OK
Firstly they can take on drivers and get rid of them to suit demand.
Secondly, on top of the hourly wage paid to an employee there is Employers NI and holiday pay which works out at roughly an additional 26% of the hourly rate so to employ someone for £7.50/hr costs around £9.40 give or take a few pence.
All of a sudden that extra 60p an hour doesn’t seem so bad when you can drop that driver at a few hours notice.
Lets look at it from a business point of view. Say a large depot needs 100 drivers per day.
Assume the cost of employing those drivers is £700 per week = £3,000 per 30 day month x 100 = £300,000.
January comes around and the job goes quiet. Now only 50 drivers per day are needed. If the drivers are employed the 50 that there is no work for still need to be paid, (that’s £150,000) but there is 50% less money being earned from loads delivered.
So surely any sensible employer would permanently employ 50 drivers and use 50 agency drivers knowing they can be brought in/laid off on demand.
As far as I know, there are no particular tax advantages. Quite the opposite in fact. It could well lead to the co. making more profit & therefor paying more tax.
Conor:
Blunder Man:
Is there a tax reason why a company would prefer hiring agency drivers instead of full time drivers long term? and are there any other financial reasons, A friend has been at firm 2 years now at £10 per hour and they only pay their own drivers £7.50, very strange.OK
Firstly they can take on drivers and get rid of them to suit demand.
Secondly, on top of the hourly wage paid to an employee there is Employers NI and holiday pay which works out at roughly an additional 26% of the hourly rate so to employ someone for £7.50/hr costs around £9.40 give or take a few pence.
All of a sudden that extra 60p an hour doesn’t seem so bad when you can drop that driver at a few hours notice.
More like a few minutes notice!
bigvern1:
More like a few minutes notice!
I hear you. I got cancelled half a mile from the depot once. Seriously narked as it was a 28 mile drive to get there and was a last minute rush job - got phone call at 7am whilst still in bed, was in the car at 7.15am and on my way.
Knock that firm on the head. 
Winseer:
Knock that firm on the head.
Easy to say that. It’s just as infuriating for the agency; they get a call from the customer cancelling the job, driver’s on the way, what are they supposed to do, tell the customer it’s too late and they’ve got to pay the eight hours? Wouldn’t be getting many more calls from them would they?
In fact it often ends up costing the agency even more, if they’re half-decent and compensate the unfortunate driver for his trouble.
A mouse of an agency lets client firms push them around to the point that crap happens more often than not.
Negotiating lower hourly rates, negotiating nearer to zero hour contract, negotiating less than a one hour cancel policy.
A skinflint client pushes for all of the above things, and expects freebies out of the staff laid on as well.
Last year, I had the misfortune to find out who a few of these firms were, and it took me some time before I realised that there was a far better world out there both agency & client wise - just by being treated fairly, instead of endemically mistreated by the kinds of agencies that so many on these boards seem to moan a lot about, but rarely name. 
Conor:
bigvern1:
More like a few minutes notice!I hear you. I got cancelled half a mile from the depot once. Seriously narked as it was a 28 mile drive to get there and was a last minute rush job - got phone call at 7am whilst still in bed, was in the car at 7.15am and on my way.
Many agencies have a policy where you’ll get paid if you turned up without being cancelled. So turn the phone off! If you leave it on, you’re only going to get that call cancelling you halfway there… If you turn it off? - You might get paid for turning up, you might not get asked to work for that client again, or the least likely - the agency might abuse you by effectively sacking you for refusing to answer the phone whilst driving, which of course is a criminal offence. 
Perhaps someone who’s been paid for turning up and then being sent straight home might reflect on their own experiences… I’ve never been paid for turning up you see… zero hour contracts which took me a few months to realise I was being systemically conned day and night, expected to sit by the phone, and have to take a lickcock attitude to getting what sporradic work I DID get. I used to get cancelled once or twice a week (bad when you’re only offered 3 shifts at most!) and I’ve already reported more than one of the firms for being bent, but that doesn’t put money in my pocket, nor drive them out of business it seems. VOSA don’t seem to be very interested in kicking a ball at an open goal, unless its the driver!