att:
Rottweiler22:
A couple of years ago, Turners drivers were on £7.10 per hour. It was only with the world’s most complicated “productivity bonus” scheme that it pumped the wage up to £8-£9 per hour.As a company they’re massively reliant on the Poles. They probably have the largest reliance on EE drivers in the UK. Some of their depots don’t have a single British driver. Nothing against the EEs, but pay peanuts, and put questionable drivers on their seats, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Horrible firm to work for. Huge “them and us” culture. Drivers to them are just scum, to be spoken down to, used, abused kept under control.
I did three weekends for them, I cannot argue with any of that, but shall add…The behind the counter worker/planner(not that depot), whatever she was, was Eastern European and had an awful attitude to the Brit drivers, would never acknowledge a good morning or any other kind of greeting, so I burst into opera one morning, just to get her attention
It worked…She asked me what my problem was, I told her it was her
A more useless and badly organised place to work at, would be difficult to find…I was in on agency and the pay was goodish, but I would still not work there for £300 per weekend and that was 7 years ago…They asked me to wait for a bay to put the lorry on after being away for 2 days…I left it as far away from the building as I could, took the keys back, told them to poke it…I did get paid, which I was not expecting…I would rather be homeless and penniless before I would do that job.
I lasted a similar amount of time before walking out. They took on a load of local weekend work, but had no day drivers willing to work weekends for the £8 odd they were offering. So they started expecting trampers to run-in or run-out every other weekend. And it wasn’t a run-in. They’d tell you it was a morning run-in on a Saturday, and then plan you for a 12 hour shift. Doing the crappy local runs they had nobody else to do. When I kicked-off to the planner, he admitted that they took-on the weekend work because “it was at a rate they couldn’t refuse”, even though they knew they couldn’t get the drivers at the weekend because they were paying a pittance.
I’d get back to the yard at 4pm on a Friday, after a 4am start on Monday morning and four nights out, and they’d try to give me another load. “Just nip here…”, “just nip there…”. Expecting you to work late into the night on your last day. The next week I used all of my 15s early in the week so they couldn’t shaft me on a Friday night, and the transport manager called me to give me a bollocking. “You should save your 15s for later in the week, because you should know Thursdays and Fridays are our busiest days…” Expecting me to be driving around at stupid o’ clock on one of my few nights at home. I don’t think so.