What Is A Crap Wage?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
81

Used to get £450 a week on a rigid HIAB with nights out at £23. Parking unpaid (hence meals and showers come out of own pocket too.)
On the face of it this looks good but you were expected to max your hours and start at 4am. I never had a problem with the loading but it was dirty and physical and could take up to an hour and many drops were on building sites, meaning you wanted that shower at the end of the shift, even if you had to pay out your own pocket for it.
When you divide that £450 by at least 65 hours it doesn’t sound so good. The artic drivers were on £550 a week, still doesn’t sound so good.
When people start using night out money to boost the wages it’s not good. You lose nearly £100 when your on holiday for a week.

As another poster said always try to look for a company hauling it’s own goods. I work for a wholesaler nowadays as a supervisor. Don’t drive every day, home every night and the same set hours (8 a day!) Granted I miss the road sometimes but then I remember I haven’t got to cruise round some godforsaken place trying to find somewhere to park and eat.

82

Winseer:

kr79:

Winseer:
There’s no point blaming the employers.
Market forces being what they are, if a skinflint boss offers £7ph and some mug jumps at it, then there’s no need for them to raise that rate is there?
“Darn Sarf” here, accommodation is so expensive, that few will be mug enough to work for such a low rate that they’d be paying to go to work.
Live in a cheaper area, and you’ll be commuting so much, you’ll spend your meagre wages on fuel, tolls, and of course wasted time out of your life…

How are you going to earn enough to pay £800-£1200 a month rents if you’re keeping legal on £7ph? I make that £338 pw averaged (legal max) of which you’ll take home about £290. Pay your rent, and you’re scrounging food off your mates by Thursday…
Landlords say “If you don’t like it, don’t live here where the jobs are”… Hah! Jobs?

A proper job IMO is one that pays ALL life’s overheads, and you’ve got enough left to go out once a week, and maybe go on holiday once a year to boot.
Am I too demanding of a job? :confused:

A mate of Mine went for a job the boss said I know the wage ain’t great but you can claim tax credits. WTF pay a proper wage and not subsidies e your business with government handouts.

If the wage ain’t great, then I want it over two shifts not five or six - to keep my overheads down you understand! :smiley:
Part time jobs are harder to get than full time ones though! :frowning:
If I could create my own perfect shift-patterned job, it would be 10am-1am Saturday & Sunday which because of the weekend rate, would average around the £16ph mark. Even with 2x1hr deducted for breaks, that’s £448 gross with minimal commute overheads to boot. :sunglasses:
30 hours over the two days would thus suit me just fine, what with the 5 days of my own life to live each week to boot! :slight_smile:
You think I’m dreaming? - Dream long enough, and it’ll come - mark my words.
Indeed, the day it DOES come will mark the end of this recession proper. :wink:

The LAST thing you want to be doing with a low hourly rate is banging on loads of hours. This is not only because you’re compounding the loss that a lower hourly rate represents - BUT you are also likely to earn just enough to knacker your chances of getting tax credits as well!
I believe they peter out totally at around £26k, unless you have a veritable tribe of kids.
If you DO have loads of kids, then my little “5 days off per week option” suddenly starts to make you look like the “World’s Best Dad” for being there for them that much AND earning AND still qualifying for a topup as well - don’t

If firms paid proper wages in the first place you wouldn’t need government assistance.
If you can’t support yourself with out there help you are failing.

83

I think drivers pay would still be on the downward spiral regardless of weather tax credits were deployed or not.
The big differences would be:-

(1) more drivers hanging up their keys to take a promotion to convieniences management and horizontal storage supply renewal stuff.
(2) If you can’t afford to pay to go to work, then you won’t be going to work, or looking for work.
Travel costs fall, or wages rise. If neither occurs, you save yourself for better spots where it can be made to pay.

84

Doesn’t sound great but I’m from the south I think tipper drivers average £8.60 ish this way just by talking to a few they all moan that there over worked and under paid and I suppose we all are to an extent but maybe if u get your foot in there keep a clean truck and look after it it will creep up its worked for me been at my place since I was 18 always get laughed at for queuing at the tip so getting out wiping the motor down whilst I wait instead of reading the paper result I’m on more than them who’s laughing now!

85

Karl86:
Doesn’t sound great but I’m from the south I think tipper drivers average £8.60 ish this way just by talking to a few they all moan that there over worked and under paid and I suppose we all are to an extent but maybe if u get your foot in there keep a clean truck and look after it it will creep up its worked for me been at my place since I was 18 always get laughed at for queuing at the tip so getting out wiping the motor down whilst I wait instead of reading the paper result I’m on more than them who’s laughing now!

I might’ve done a bit more cleaning if there’d been an incentive. When the quarry’s left like the Somme and no proper washing facilities that don’t leave you wet and cold, you tend to lose interest.
I used to clean the cab, lights etc but not the tipper sides. The inside I kept immaculate so I couldn’t be blamed if material was contaminated, although we as drivers were always at fault. We were even told to check the loaders’ bucket (yet when I drove a loader it was the loaders’ job).

86

Roymondo:

3300John:
if you work only
2 days (less than 18 ours you pay no tax)that should bring in 400 a week that
would do me.

■■

Surely your liability for income tax depends on your income, not the number of days you work? Personal Allowance is currently just under 150 quid a week - you would pay 20% tax on anything above that.

If you think self-employed people only get £150 a week tax free, then you’ve missed the entire point of being self-employed.
Most will mitigate away their entire pay upto the high £30k’s.

Yes, that’s right. A PAYE cleaner on £14k pays more tax than a self-employed anything on more than double that. :sunglasses:

Obviously, if you can get the tax offset benefits of Self-Employment whilst getting the protection of being PAYE, then you’ve got it made. Umbrella is NOT this scenario by the way…

87

I was talking to a bloke last week who said his brother works for Taylors for…£6.70 ph on artics :laughing:

88

8 quid straight through @ Taylors…time and half @ weekend.

89

commonrail:
8 quid straight through @ Taylors…time and half @ weekend.

Still crap then. Tnt van drivers get paid more :smiley:

90

TNT van drivers work a lot harder :wink:

91

mickyblue:

nearly there:

Skippy70:

Fatboy slimslow:

Fatboy slimslow:
STOBRATS! :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing:

stop bashing them! :laughing: it’s a daily occurrence! :sunglasses: :grimacing:

OOPS-did someone forget to change to their alter ego ■■

Lol

hahaha caught out

err, no! :open_mouth: used to work there, now I still bash them! :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing: and I’m going to cost them alot of money! :unamused: THE Wayne KERRS! :grimacing: :grimacing: :grimacing:

92

Whether they get 150 quid a week or 30k a year tax free is irrelevant - my point was that the tax allowance is based on amount earned, not the number of days worked (which was the assertion I commented on).

93

A crap wage is also one that can make you want to emigrate.

The last company I worked for in Canada had me and three other Yorkies, 2 southerners and a couple of Geordies, as well as three Irish lads from the same town, and 2 from other parts of Ireland working for them, that’s as well as a few dutch and Germans. This was a small companiy in a small town, so I wonder what the total number of Brits is who have moved to Canada?

The Government must realise that the Brit HGV drivers are retiring, or leaving in droves!

94

We had an artic driver in the other week who said he was on £6.20p an hour!.

95

tortoise:
We had an artic driver in the other week who said he was on £6.20p an hour!.

My mate is on at Bedfords Leeds, £6.68 ph tramping.

96

tortoise:
We had an artic driver in the other week who said he was on £6.20p an hour!.

Yes but he gets a new truck every 3 years, spotlights, air horns, frilly curtains across the windows, bullfighter arrows in the windscreen etc.
What more does he want?
:laughing:

97

Roymondo:
Whether they get 150 quid a week or 30k a year tax free is irrelevant - my point was that the tax allowance is based on amount earned, not the number of days worked (which was the assertion I commented on).

No, it’s still not.

If you earn £150 a week, you’ll pay no tax under PAYE.
If you earn £300 a week, and offset £150 of it, you’ll still pay no tax.
If you earn £300 a week, and offset none of it, you’ll pay about £50 tax and NI.
If you earn £9k a week and offset all of if, you’ll pay no tax.

The last point means “earnings have nothing to do with it”.
MP’s offset more in expenses than they get paid in actual wages. This means it actually costs the exchequer more than double the headline rate to employ them effectively… :open_mouth:

Higher base earnings just means more lies on the tax reclaim sheet.
What gets me though is why we mere mortals are only allowed to claim things like “mileage” and “works clothing” where MPs get to claim their mortgage & rents, foreign holidays, getting the decorating & gardening done, and even having the houses extended…

Something is not right with the system when not one single MP has gone to jail for utter and deliberate fraud. :angry:

The indivudual’s tax allowance starts off the same for everyone, and then gets certain addons/takeaways based upon their other circumstances, such as being married, living abroad, and even how much tax they owe/are owed from last year. This year’s ‘earnings to come’ can’t have anything to do with it again, because it is not known yet what they are going to be at tax year end. LAST year’s earnings don’t have any influence, beyond if an under or overpayment has been made, in which case the code will be modified to claw back extra taxes, or an over-paid rebate for instance.
An interesting point of note would be if an MP was sacked about halfway through the year, and did no paid work after that. He’s already claimed offsets for the entire year as an ongoing thing (like selling his house at a loss to his brother, then paying £9k per week to rent it off him, that £9k then being claimed back from taxes!)

HMRC might well ask him to forfeit ALL claims made, since they are clearly valid for the first six months of the tax year at best, but he’s claimed 100% of the year in advance… More fraud.
Meanwhile, Bod, Guy, and Myself get grilled about not retaining our meal receipts when claiming for the flat rate meal allowances! (Que “Sharp Intake of Breath”!) :astonished:

98

I might’ve done a bit more cleaning if there’d been an incentive. When the quarry’s left like the Somme and no proper washing facilities that don’t leave you wet and cold, you tend to lose interest.
I used to clean the cab, lights etc but not the tipper sides. The inside I kept immaculate so I couldn’t be blamed if material was contaminated, although we as drivers were always at fault. We were even told to check the loaders’ bucket (yet when I drove a loader it was the loaders’ job).
[/quote]
This is true which ever way you look at it were wrong must admit I’m not to sure if my demon shine and micro cloth would do much to a tipper lol I was tipping at a place once where the wheel wash had jets all over it sprayed the whole cab top to bottom that’s great if the waters clean but when it’s sucking up the crap from the wheel wash and throwing it back out well you can imagine I hated going there good luck on what ever you do find though it ain’t all that great out there atm

99

In a way, we are all to blame for crap wages, because we want goods as cheap as possible.
I remember watching a tv program about a pair of jeans made in china(IIRC), they followed the jeans from manufacture to being sold in the UK, the biggest cost?, yep, transport.

We want everything cheap, and they cut wages in order to do it.

100

If you removed credit and benefits across the board, then things would get even cheaper because we would then not be able to make up shortfalls in the cost of living except by going without, and buying less stuff.

Less stuff sold = fire sale prices & more people laid off.
This, and the previous governments have no clue how to kick-start the economy with any method other than the proliferation of credit, and what they call “wages restraint” which basically means “more debt” or “more going without” for the masses.
I’ll go without myself, since I’ve long since given up on credit. However, like so many others, I’ll offset as much of my meagre wages as possible so I can make ends meet. There’s nothing left for savings, and won’t be until wages rise well beyond the price of cost-of-living inflation.