Was going to post this with my other thread but thought I’d separate it.
Many non drivers see how much we get paid and can’t understand why we think the wages are so poor or why we complain about our pay.
So I thought I’d do a comparison of a council office worker and a tramper.
(The council office worker pay is achievable easily without skills or qualifications but may take a few years to get to the 30k pay bracket this is from first hand experience)
Joe Bloggs who is a 25 year old office worker for his local council earns 30k a year.
Reginald Leeroy Smithers who is a 60 year old truck driver earns 35k a year.
Now you may think reginald is on good pay as he is getting paid 5k more then Mr.Bloggs.
But hang on.
Joe blogs works a 37.5 hour week.
So Joe Blogs is on £15.38 an hour with full sick pay and many other benefits.
Reginald Leeroy Smithers works closer to 60 hours a week.
So he is on about £11.22 an hour.
But Reginald is a tramper and has to eat at the overpriced MSA so he is using his night out money for what it is intended for and doesn’t hoard it so he gets £20 a day night out allowance so let’s deduct that.
(For simplicity I just deducted about 5k a year off his wage for night out allowance)
Without his night out money he is now on £9.62
Now I think this is a fair comparison as I could of picked a driver who earns 45k as that is achievable but not common and I could of choose a driver who earned 25k a year as that is more common so I tried to do best of both.
This is the problem with drivers pay. Ye you can earn money but how many people want to work 60+ hours a week when they can just work under 40 hours a week for slightly less?
Btw try not to be too harsh on the maths as it was all just guesstimates.
there are some similarities here.
Teachers are expected to work ridicious hours for their pay just like us and now many of them are going no thanks I want a life.
If Reginald was like me he.wpuld either source and cook his own grub in the cab or take stuff with him. In a week I’d wager I spend £10 on meals. That’s not to say I don’t eat out, but I’ll sure as hell not eat in an MSA and normally park near a pub at least once a week where I can get a decent meal for the price of a Burger King from an MSA.
Reginald would also do well to use the meal voucher facility as even if his boss won’t pay it (mine just pays receipt total regardless) hed only be paying a couple of quid from his own pocket.
I dont hoard my night out money and if I spend it then I spend it but there’s ways of doing things that don’t cost the earth. I don’t do full tramping so don’t get regular enough night put money to count is as wages.
adam277:
Joe Bloggs who is a 25 year old office worker for his local council earns 30k a year.
I don’t think there are many unskilled office workers at any Council earning that, I’s say more £17k-£23k.
On a group on Facebook a question was asked of HGV drivers, what do you take home a year and how much is an average house where you live. Loads answered (over 100 replied) and the average take home pay was around £600 a week, give or take maybe £20 each way. That is £41,000 a year. Now of course I don’t know how many hours people had to work for that as it wasn’t asked.
Reginald has financed his life to reflect his £35K.
He is stuck doing this job now, as he doesn’t have the skills or time to do the training to get new skills, and can only go to another job that pays £35K.
Reginald has no chance of promotion, and all the jobs he can get are similar to what he already does.
Reginald has learnt the hard way it’s not what you earn, it’s what you spend.
adam277:
Joe Bloggs who is a 25 year old office worker for his local council earns 30k a year.
I don’t think there are many unskilled office workers at any Council earning that, I’s say more £17k-£23k.
On a group on Facebook a question was asked of HGV drivers, what do you take home a year and how much is an average house where you live. Loads answered (over 100 replied) and the average take home pay was around £600 a week, give or take maybe £20 each way. That is £41,000 a year. Now of course I don’t know how many hours people had to work for that as it wasn’t asked.
My dad came out of prison and within about 5 years was earning 30k a year with the council.
You’re right you do start at about 17k a year with the council but you have excellent opportunities to move up the ladder if your willing.
But this was just an example I could point to other jobs but each one could be picked apart so don’t knit pick too much.
toonsy:
Reginald is a spanner for tolerating MSA’s.
If Reginald was like me he.wpuld either source and cook his own grub in the cab or take stuff with him. In a week I’d wager I spend £10 on meals. That’s not to say I don’t eat out, but I’ll sure as hell not eat in an MSA and normally park near a pub at least once a week where I can get a decent meal for the price of a Burger King from an MSA.
Reginald would also do well to use the meal voucher facility as even if his boss won’t pay it (mine just pays receipt total regardless) hed only be paying a couple of quid from his own pocket.
I dont hoard my night out money and if I spend it then I spend it but there’s ways of doing things that don’t cost the earth. I don’t do full tramping so don’t get regular enough night put money to count is as wages.
I agree most trampers do a ALDI/LIDL shop before their week starts but my point is this.
Should night out money be apart of our pay or not? For Reginald he uses it like it’s intended whereas more savvy drivers don’t.
My opinion is Reginald is actually on 30k a year and they are paying him 5k a year to night out.
adam277:
Was going to post this with my other thread but thought I’d separate it.
Many non drivers see how much we get paid and can’t understand why we think the wages are so poor or why we complain about our pay.
So I thought I’d do a comparison of a council office worker and a tramper.
(The council office worker pay is achievable easily without skills or qualifications but may take a few years to get to the 30k pay bracket this is from first hand experience)
Joe Bloggs who is a 25 year old office worker for his local council earns 30k a year.
Reginald Leeroy Smithers who is a 60 year old truck driver earns 35k a year.
Now you may think reginald is on good pay as he is getting paid 5k more then Mr.Bloggs.
But hang on.
Joe blogs works a 37.5 hour week.
So Joe Blogs is on £15.38 an hour with full sick pay and many other benefits.
Reginald Leeroy Smithers works closer to 60 hours a week.
So he is on about £11.22 an hour.
But Reginald is a tramper and has to eat at the overpriced MSA so he is using his night out money for what it is intended for and doesn’t hoard it so he gets £20 a day night out allowance so let’s deduct that.
(For simplicity I just deducted about 5k a year off his wage for night out allowance)
Without his night out money he is now on £9.62
Now I think this is a fair comparison as I could of picked a driver who earns 45k as that is achievable but not common and I could of choose a driver who earned 25k a year as that is more common so I tried to do best of both.
This is the problem with drivers pay. Ye you can earn money but how many people want to work 60+ hours a week when they can just work under 40 hours a week for slightly less?
Btw try not to be too harsh on the maths as it was all just guesstimates.
He is on less money the driver, and no matter how you try to tell these people they are living in a truck for buttons, and if you’re adding your huge night out money to your hourly rate then there are more fools out there than i thought
Take home between 500 and 600 for over 60 hours a week and sleeping on the side of the road as well your welcome to it people who do this will always be in demand no need for flip flops
adam277:
But Reginald is a tramper and has to eat at the overpriced MSA so he is using his night out money for what it is intended for and doesn’t hoard it so he gets £20 a day night out allowance so let’s deduct that.
(For simplicity I just deducted about 5k a year off his wage for night out allowance)
Why did you deduct it from his wage when he would be paid night out money in addition to his salary?
If you’re on £30k a year doing those hours then you seriously need to change your employer as that’s 7.5t money.
Darkside:
Reginald has financed his life to reflect his £35K.
He is stuck doing this job now, as he doesn’t have the skills or time to do the training to get new skills, and can only go to another job that pays £35K.
Reginald has plenty of time when sat waiting to get tipped or loaded and on a night time once he’s parked up to do an Open University degree.
I think people on here seem to think office workers are making a mint. My dad used to have his own financial services business a couple of years ago and out of his 18 workers all but 4 were on less then 20k. I used to do work there in term breaks and two weeks in to every month they were already out of money and counting down the days till payday.
A friend of mine currently works and the Bank of Ireland in the centre of Bristol and gets 22k - He has a 45min commute each way and parking fees or train fares that take a wedge out of his pay.
The thing with wages from my experience is when I started C2 multi drop 10yrs ago when I was 21yrs old I was working with people more then twice my age and earning the same amount. A year later listening to these guys moan every day it was me moving jobs to C1 for more money - What was stopping them?
So maybe people can stop crying and actually better themselves and make their way up the pay ladder - That doesn’t mean find a job with more hours work available
Some drivers pay is poor, some are very well paid, the only way to compare any job is to divide the top line by the number of hours work to give a mean average hourly rate, then factor in to the calculation night/weekend/overtime rates that should have applied to give you a workable figure.
Night out or subsistence pay is nothing to do with wages, and should not be included in any way.
Unless you want to live like a hermit locked inside the bloody lorry you already spend too much time in, you will spend most of it, i’d often find the odd B&B to sleep in, anything to get away from the lorry…but remember i spent years on transporters so cut down cabs at best and anyone with any sense would try to avoid sleeping in one of those regularly.
For the average working class bod, who skills themselves up and works their way into the better jobs, the lorry game is pretty good overall.
Our once fine industries have been devastated by corporate and govt greed/betrayal/incompetence over the last 40 years, there simply arn’t the alternatives out there for working class bods to earn a decent crust.
The one thing where lorry drivers win, as you get older, if you skill yourself up and get a rock solid reputation (surprisingly small world ours, especially if your specialise) you become more desirable in the labour market…this is the complete opposite to many trades, so you can still earn well for comparatively easy work right up until you decide to hang your licence up.
To me, the major differences between Smithers and Blogs are the fringe benefits. Smithers pays into a pension but when he retires, he will not even double his State pension of £165 a week; Blogs also pays into a pension, but he will eventually retire on half his current salary. What’s more, if he dies before his wife, she will get half of that for the rest of her life as well as her own pension (she also works for the council) and her State pension.
If Smithers goes sick, he gets nothing for the first three days and then goes on SSP (£92.05 a week) whereas Blogs gets his full salary for six months. Smithers and his wife eat in the subsidised canteen every weekday and have use of the council-run leisure centre at a reduced rate, so they find it easy (and cheap) to keep fit. Blogs either eats in MSAs, fast food outlets or has a fry-up in his cab. He gets hardly any exercise, so he is clinically obese and liable to heart disease, diabetes, chronic back pain, etc etc.
Smithers gets the statutory 25 days annual leave, plus 8 bank holidays. Blogs gets 30 days (rising to 35 after ten years of service) plus ten Bank holidays.
Smithers, on his way to work, looks up at the guy in a big shiny Volvo and dreams about cruising the highways of Europe; Blogs looks down at Smithers’ ten-year-old Volvo Estate and thinks “at least I’m getting paid while I sit in this traffic jam.”
toonsy:
Reginald is a spanner for tolerating MSA’s.
If Reginald was like me he.wpuld either source and cook his own grub in the cab or take stuff with him. In a week I’d wager I spend £10 on meals. That’s not to say I don’t eat out, but I’ll sure as hell not eat in an MSA and normally park near a pub at least once a week where I can get a decent meal for the price of a Burger King from an MSA.
Reginald would also do well to use the meal voucher facility as even if his boss won’t pay it (mine just pays receipt total regardless) hed only be paying a couple of quid from his own pocket.
I dont hoard my night out money and if I spend it then I spend it but there’s ways of doing things that don’t cost the earth. I don’t do full tramping so don’t get regular enough night put money to count is as wages.
It’s still only an extra 5k or so for an extra 20-25 hours per week, which is an extra 108 hours per month, which equates to 4 and a half 24 hour periods that your working every month, which equates to an extra 49.5 full days per year if you minus off 4 weeks annual leave. And they aren’t just working days, they are full 24 hour periods of extra hours your doing over what joe bloggs does for only 5k or so less. And your away from home all week where as joe bloggs does his 37 hours, or 8 hours per day (probably has an unpaid 30 minute lunch that’s not included in those hours) and he goes home. No having to spend part of your day and a half off at home having to plan, prepare, cook, then package up meals for the following week. ■■■■ isn’t really.
It seems like if i could get a job with more hours I would be on the pigs back what people don’t realise is their hourly rate goes down
Most have nothing in benefits driving a truck if you can’t do the hours out the door
And god help most if you get sick or die I would think most dont even have insurance in there job
They are missing out of lots of benefits just to get a few quid extra and do twice the hours
This might be totally irrelevant to this thread, but anyway I just happened to come across this :-
"Last quarter, higher transportation costs dragged down Walmart’s (WMT) profit margin.
Although many companies outsource trucking to third-party carriers, Walmart has its own private fleet of 65,000 trailers, one of the largest in the country. Last year, Walmart brought on more than 1,400 new drivers.
Walmart drivers, who are known for their white shirt uniforms, get paid per-mile. Pay varies based on their tenure at the company.
Beginning in February, Walmart will give a one-cent-per-mile increase in pay. That means drivers will now make about 89 cents per mile on average and $87,500 a year."
They are paid per mile
It was part of a bigger article about Walmart and other american firms and their driver shortage, although the average salary appeared to be about 50% of the walmart level :-
adam277:
But Reginald is a tramper and has to eat at the overpriced MSA so he is using his night out money for what it is intended for and doesn’t hoard it so he gets £20 a day night out allowance so let’s deduct that.
(For simplicity I just deducted about 5k a year off his wage for night out allowance)
Why did you deduct it from his wage when he would be paid night out money in addition to his salary?
If you’re on £30k a year doing those hours then you seriously need to change your employer as that’s 7.5t money.
Darkside:
Reginald has financed his life to reflect his £35K.
He is stuck doing this job now, as he doesn’t have the skills or time to do the training to get new skills, and can only go to another job that pays £35K.
Reginald has plenty of time when sat waiting to get tipped or loaded and on a night time once he’s parked up to do an Open University degree.
Interesting point,re open university degree but does possession of an ou degree really translate to a better career in reality?
adam277:
So I thought I’d do a comparison of a council office worker and a tramper.
(The council office worker pay is achievable easily without skills or qualifications but may take a few years to get to the 30k pay bracket this is from first hand experience)
Joe Bloggs who is a 25 year old office worker for his local council earns 30k a year
As you say it was from first hand experience, please could you actually tell us which council, what job and pay grade joe Boggs job is supposed to be?
Juddian:
Some drivers pay is poor, some are very well paid, the only way to compare any job is to divide the top line by the number of hours work to give a mean average hourly rate, then factor in to the calculation night/weekend/overtime rates that should have applied to give you a workable figure.
Night out or subsistence pay is nothing to do with wages, and should not be included in any way.
Unless you want to live like a hermit locked inside the bloody lorry you already spend too much time in, you will spend most of it, i’d often find the odd B&B to sleep in, anything to get away from the lorry…but remember i spent years on transporters so cut down cabs at best and anyone with any sense would try to avoid sleeping in one of those regularly.
For the average working class bod, who skills themselves up and works their way into the better jobs, the lorry game is pretty good overall.
Our once fine industries have been devastated by corporate and govt greed/betrayal/incompetence over the last 40 years, there simply arn’t the alternatives out there for working class bods to earn a decent crust.
The one thing where lorry drivers win, as you get older, if you skill yourself up and get a rock solid reputation (surprisingly small world ours, especially if your specialise) you become more desirable in the labour market…this is the complete opposite to many trades, so you can still earn well for comparatively easy work right up until you decide to hang your licence up.
Indeed.
I’ve managed to re-market myself now I’m back on agency as being a “sunday and friday night specialist”. I’m busier this January so far than I was in the run-up to last Christmas! - Go figure!
I’m working for two agencies at present, and so far this month - I’ve had a single void week from one of them, which paid me some accrued holiday pay for that void week, such are the sheer number of hours I’ve clocked up since November that I’ve already accrued some holiday pay. I think I’ll stay on agency like this for a while longer yet… What is it going to be like around Easter? - “Pick of the jobs”?
I Don’t need to do Tramping, nor Euro runs, and I’ve not had to do an emergency night out for over a decade (famous last words, with this week as it’s coming… )
or could move to America work for wallmart. there offering huge pay rises 90k usa dollars a year and advertising campaigns due to driver shortage and lack of interest
adam277:
But Reginald is a tramper and has to eat at the overpriced MSA so he is using his night out money for what it is intended for and doesn’t hoard it so he gets £20 a day night out allowance so let’s deduct that.
(For simplicity I just deducted about 5k a year off his wage for night out allowance)
Why did you deduct it from his wage when he would be paid night out money in addition to his salary?
If you’re on £30k a year doing those hours then you seriously need to change your employer as that’s 7.5t money.
Darkside:
Reginald has financed his life to reflect his £35K.
He is stuck doing this job now, as he doesn’t have the skills or time to do the training to get new skills, and can only go to another job that pays £35K.
Reginald has plenty of time when sat waiting to get tipped or loaded and on a night time once he’s parked up to do an Open University degree.
Interesting point,re open university degree but does possession of an ou degree really translate to a better career in reality?
Speaking as someone who actually has an OU degree (done from the cab years ago when I was a tramper) it’s a definite no!. If anything, it’s a definite hindrance. I did mine for the joy of learning, not advancement though, but jobs wanting a degree use usually seriously crap wages and I was competing with kids willing to work for peanuts to get a foot in the door, whereas I had a mortgage and family to feed. But when looking for driving jobs I soon realized interviewers thought I was too overqualified, and moved onto the next knuckledragger in the queue, so I stopped mentioning it.
