The-Snowman:
robroy:
they are part of the reason the rest of us are on ■■■■ poor wages. 
You have obviously been in the hgv game a while. Guys like me have come in at the tail end and I for one know and accept full well the days of good money are long gone. But im just wondering how guys like the OP are part of the reason for ■■■■ poor wages? Im not looking to start an argument,far from it. Im just asking. I like to respect the views of the “old hands” and take advice from them as much as possible if I need it and they are willing to supply (some don’t make it easy though!). Its just ive always wondered where the money went to from the old days. I don’t buy the high fuel prices argument as the main reason either. Most hauliers blame this but I think its a smoke screen. I may be wrong though,I dont know enough about running a haulage company to argue otherwise.
Thats a fair question, i don’t have all the answers but i’ll give a couple of reasons.
The old days had their share of poor payers, and just like now you might well have to take any job going to get your feet under the table, then learn the job and (no internet then) find out by word of mouth, and as Robroy touches on, via the lorry drivers ‘club’ (for we did look out for one another more) where the better pay was to be found once you’d proved yourself worth recommending, though as now you found jobs by knocking on doors, some things don’t change.
Invariably, but not always, the better pay was found where there was muck and graft, ropes sheets and chains for steel and too blinking often handballing 21 ton loads on and off.
Those old motors were not flash, no power steering in my early days, crash boxes, joke heaters, day cabs (preferable if you could find digs IMO), no air assisted clutches, etc…it was sheer bloody hard work and the money was better because of this, it had to be to get anyone to do it…there were alternatives then.
Unless you went on containers, in their infancy then, there were no chauffering jobs, RDC’s in their infancy too, we still had a manufacturing base then as Britain hadn’t yet become just a large western warehouse for Chinese plastic tat.
The destruction of our manufacturing base, started in earnest under the Thatcher reign, has seen a massive change in the fortunes and job prospects and futures of our young men and women, unless they were bone idle they could get decent paid honest productive and satisfying work, which (and the miners are THE shining example) helped build a genuine local community structures, but also gave those young men a sense of pride and something to get their teeth into, to work for.
We must also touch on the subject of unlimited immigration (bound to upset the liblabcon accolytes this), as we moved from a manufacturing base to importing warehousing and distributing Chinese tat, we no longer needed (deliberately to a certain degree) skilled workers, we needed cheap workers, if anything young cheap foreign workers who might well clear off back home when they’ve done their stint before they become pensioners or sick, rinse and repeat…cynical? you bet…but do you really believe any of the bullshine our politicians speak about this subject, for they are the most cynical of all.
Immigration, following manufacturing destruction, has been the biggest downfall of the British working class (not the least through ridiculous housing costs), the smoke and mirrors university for all clarion call from Blair as part of his quest to destroy this country is cobblers, we can’t have 500 bosses managing 50 workers except in a state sector job, and look where this has ended up … exactly here … nationaldebtclock.co.uk/ this cannot be paid off, they can’t even slow it up, just wait till the bubble bursts and worldwide interest rates rise…the current interest on the defecit (not the debt thats incalcuble) alone is more than the defence budget…you try running your household budget like this and see how long you last Osborne.
And now we have the rubbish being spouted by our current Blairites, Cameron and Osborne that our economy is on the mend…i refer my learned friend yet again to look at the debt clock two minutes later.
I could go on for hours about this , we have been conned and lied to by successive governments going right back to the 70’s when Traitor Heath took us in to the common market on a lie, they are all complicit in this, Thatcher realised too late what the EU was really about, soon as she started to say NO the europhiles in her backstabbing party did their thing and stabbed her in the back, then after a disastrous John Major joke govt we had 13 years of labour with deliberate immigration designed to rewrite the history and the future of Britain, and we and all children of working class people will pay the price, the country has changed forever, there is no going back and YOU, the electorate, voted for it all in your millions.
Thats enough bollox from me you be pleased to hear if your still reading (Christ knows why), back to driving.
Then , just as now, the jobs with the best terms and conditions were unionised, but the attitude to those premium unionised jobs was strikingly different, most drivers looked on those terms and conditions as the ones to strive for, not to attempt to undermine them and join the race to the bottom instead, currently fashionable.
The days of good money and good jobs have not gone completely, those jobs were never advertised then and they are still not advertised now, and if they have any sense the drivers lucky enough to have them keep schtum, only giving the nod to the type of driver that would benefit the job, it’s no good getting your mate in just cos he’s your mate if he’s basically useless or a ■■■■ taker, good jobs only stay good jobs because sensible drivers do their best to make it work for the company as well as themselves, the company must make a healthy profit to benefit everyone.
The jobs with best T’s and C’s are still unionised, but you have to specialise to get the best (used to be muck and bullets and up to a point it still is), lets be brutally honest, any fool can chauffer a modern lorry that takes not one ounce of effort or skill to drive from one huge RDC to a supermarket, the drivers sole work is to open doors then sits on arse for several hours while others (cheap immigrants?) unload the thing, then drive back, there is no skill involved and no work either, why would they need to pay top money, they can get cheap immigrants to do this simple driving task even if they don’t speak a word of the language?
Again in the strive to make things as easy as possible for themselves and not get their hands dirty drivers have shot themselves in the foot, we deskilled the lorries and we deskilled the job.
We, the British working class are own own worse enemies, drivers every bit as guilty as any other group, we have voted year after year for our own destruction, turkeys voted for Christmas, none of the establishment parties have the interests of the British working class in mind, especially labour which is almost entirely comprised of champagne socialists (Dennis Skinner and a few other honourable exceptions) who have never done a days honest work in their priveliged lives, remember this.
was it, so that’s a whole different ball bag ain’t it.
) hundreds of times already about that.
and juddian has once again I see put it far better than me.
i am on a good wage from what i compared with others round tge area . Im only on days and an odd night out but im pretty sure that when youre on tramping that you earn a bit more. Id be surprised if stobbies drivers dont take £550-£600 home after a week away. I used to get that when i was tramping at maritime. Obviously put the hours in for that kind of money 
im only plannig to do this for a year or so, so hopefully everythings gonna be ok.