Conor:
stevieboy308:
How many jobs that say, a 3k, 2 week course or less will will give you 37k?For a 60hr week? Shelf stacking at Aldi with no need to spend the £3k and a lot safer work environment.
Ahhhh, you can’t beat the classics.
As far as I’m concerned I want 12 hours a day.
There are drivers at my place that only want 8&9 hours a night which is my eyes is silly.
I won’t entertain a 9 hour shift what’s the point.
The drivers that make me laff are the ones that have no bottle…YES Men!!!
They think there well liked…But there the ones who settle for coming in boxing day midnight and new years eve midnight… and be told there A SPARE…help round the yard…I wouldn’t do that because …I don’t do FAVOURS.
Like a previous poster said, give farming a try. Quite often during lambing time I never went to bed. 20 hour days were very common.
Or give gamekeeping a try. Believe me then you’ll know about long hours for low pay.
How about working in forestry? A lot of the machine operators around here are on 16 or 17 hour days.
And yes I have seen that ■■■■■■■ nonsense someone posted about aldi paying more money. Really? You ever been in aldi? Does the shelf stacker sit in his or her arse, looking out of the window and listening to the radio? No. They are rushed off their feet all day long.
I do 60 plus hours a week. I’d rather do long hours when I’m away from home. I have no interest in a short day and then sat in the cab like a pleb watching telly for hours on end.
Drivers sticking together? ■■■■ that. I was asked to be drivers rep for the depot I’m at once. I nearly had to goto hospital I laughed that much.
Happy new year to you all x
This advert rings a few bells. It’s not that Agency recruiting for Stobbies again is it??
Captain Caveman 76:
Conor:
stevieboy308:
How many jobs that say, a 3k, 2 week course or less will will give you 37k?For a 60hr week? Shelf stacking at Aldi with no need to spend the £3k and a lot safer work environment.
Ahhhh, you can’t beat the classics.
Out of interest I looked at aldis website, and its £8.40 p.h. rising to £10.00 for 15-25 hours. If you could get the ten pound an hour for 60 hours it works out at £31,200.00. But you can’t, it’s 25 hours so it’s around 13-14k. I somehow think if I asked mine to work for £10.00 p.h., no double time at weekends and bank holidays, I’d be looking at lot of vehicles in the yard.
I was reminding one of mine before Xmas that he needed to get a wiggle on and use up some of his holidays (holidays run Apr-March) and he said he couldn’t afford one. So I asked him seriously of his mates that left school at 16, how many does he know that earn 40+k, and he doesn’t know one.
As for hours, being a office wallah these days, I do less than ever, but that’s still around 55, excluding any time done on the phone in the evening/weekends. Outside of driving I’ve been a forkie and worked for an Irish forwarder in the office and they were both more than 60 hours.
Because so much of ours is double man, we use a lot of POA, our average working week is 27 hours, total ranges from 42 to the max + ferry crossings. Technically you can be out all week, go to Sweden and one of you might not work at all that week and the other put in less than 20 hours. Makes no sense to me either.
Do I think hours are excessive yes, but no more than many other jobs for which you don’t need years of qualifications. And there’s plenty with degrees in middle management that work for 30k under stress I wouldn’t contemplate, getting grief from above and below.
POA and breaks paid here.
happysack:
Like a previous poster said, give farming a try. Quite often during lambing time I never went to bed. 20 hour days were very common.Or give gamekeeping a try. Believe me then you’ll know about long hours for low pay.
How about working in forestry? A lot of the machine operators around here are on 16 or 17 hour days.
And yes I have seen that [zb] nonsense someone posted about aldi paying more money. Really? You ever been in aldi? Does the shelf stacker sit in his or her arse, looking out of the window and listening to the radio? No. They are rushed off their feet all day long.
I do 60 plus hours a week. I’d rather do long hours when I’m away from home. I have no interest in a short day and then sat in the cab like a pleb watching telly for hours on end.
Drivers sticking together? [zb] that. I was asked to be drivers rep for the depot I’m at once. I nearly had to goto hospital I laughed that much.
Happy new year to you all x
Definetly agree about forestry. Did a stint of that when I qualified as a arb. Dear god it was long hours and seriously seriously hard work. Just got out of arb and that was a 10/11 hour day for roughly £7 p/h. Sitting in a cab for 10-12 hours seems a doddle now (excluding tipping). I’m happy with my lot and if I didn’t like it I would change, I have before and would again. Life’s too short to be unhappy 
beefy4605:
60 hours + for £37500 a year (or £721/ week)
what that really means to a normal person is just about twice the hours any civilised person with a life (kids ,wife , dog , bit on the side etc ) would be expected to work . So 2 weeks work for what looks like a "good wage " (£37500)
The reality a 30 hour week for £18750 or £360 a week .
The word that comes to mind starts with a C and ends with a P and has an R and an A in it as well .
What has fish. Well a carp got to do with it. 
I often read these posts about shelf stackers earning more money but it’s always the same people saying it, why not just go and do it if it’s such a fantastic job. I’m very new to this job and enjoying it after years of being stuck in a factory on production work, totally my choice as it suited my needs with a family etc but boring as hell & not well paid. It had the benefit of 9 hours a day but in the summer months that would increase to 12 hours a day and weekends all of it on my feet with the minimum of breaks, this is not unusual in any factory environment so it does make me laugh when you see people moaning about the WTD when it’s the same in all industries.
If you want to earn 40k for 40 or less hours a week then you probably should have picked a career that needs more than 12 hours training to become qualified at. I only had 4 x 3hour lessons to become a HGV Driver, it may have changed a bit by now but not a lot.
Its a bit like a burger flipper moaning that his pay isn’t the same as a Doctor or Solicitor (slight exaggeration but you get the picture )
Where does POA come into this?
And let’s face it, it’s not like it’s over 60 hours a week, 12/13 hours everyday of hard graft and physical labour is it. I often feel less tired after a 14 hour day doing this than have in an 8 hour shift in some previous lines of work. Yes it’s long hours but it’s a fairly easy long hours.
As for POA what other job are you allowed to sit about doing NOTHING for 3 hours but still getting paid?
I got sacked from a job once because it was 5 minutes before clocking off time and the boss walked round and saw me doing nothing as I didn’t see the point in starting anything so late in the shift.
You can do an average 40 hour week at aldi but still for a decent wage, but I bet you’ll feel like you’ve been worked at the end of every shift!
Rowley010:
And let’s face it, it’s not like it’s over 60 hours a week, 12/13 hours everyday of hard graft and physical labour is it. I often feel less tired after a 14 hour day doing this than have in an 8 hour shift in some previous lines of work. Yes it’s long hours but it’s a fairly easy long hours.As for POA what other job are you allowed to sit about doing NOTHING for 3 hours but still getting paid?
I got sacked from a job once because it was 5 minutes before clocking off time and the boss walked round and saw me doing nothing as I didn’t see the point in starting anything so late in the shift.
You can do an average 40 hour week at aldi but still for a decent wage, but I bet you’ll feel like you’ve been worked at the end of every shift!
+1
Conor:
stevieboy308:
How many jobs that say, a 3k, 2 week course or less will will give you 37k?For a 60hr week? Shelf stacking at Aldi with no need to spend the £3k and a lot safer work environment.
Aw, another new year wasted, maybe next year make a promise to yourself to stop famously getting things wrong on trucknet!!
albion:
Do I think hours are excessive yes, but no more than many other jobs for which you don’t need years of qualifications.
The average working week in the UK is 43.6hrs…
So I asked him seriously of his mates that left school at 16, how many does he know that earn 40+k, and he doesn’t know one.
And how many of them are working 60+hrs a week with nights away from home? How many lorry drivers are earning £40k+ with 5 nights out a week? How many are earning that without any nights out? Very few. A vast majority of them are earning very little more than the UK national average wage but they’re doing 60hrs for it, not 40 or so.
buses:
There are drivers at my place that only want 8&9 hours a night which is my eyes is silly.
I won’t entertain a 9 hour shift what’s the point.
You find out when you stop doing them and get your life back. I can now go out on a night during the week and do things without having to have less sleep in order to do them. You’re less knackered on a weekend. I’ve spent more time going out with the wife in the last couple of weeks than I have in donkeys years, a comment my son posted on Facebook when wife’s Facebook said we were at the Cinema was “You’ve gone out together at the same time! Neither one is asleep or at work.” I’ve seen my kids and grandson more. My wife can now cook meals at teatime because she knows when I’ll be there to eat them and we all sit down together to eat them. I can now start going to my club more often and no longer get the “bloody hell he’s still alive” comment when I walk through the door. I can see my mates more and not have to make a decision on a weekend between spending time with my friends or my family because I now have plenty for both.
weeto:
Where does POA come into this?
It is the thing put into the WTD (Mobile Workers) that still allows us to legally do up to 84hrs a week and do 60hrs a week every week even though the weekly average is supposed to only be 48. Its the thing that killed off a 20% wage rise the year the WTD was introduced when I was at Geopost. It is the one thing that keeps you working long hours for crap money.
Conor:
albion:
Do I think hours are excessive yes, but no more than many other jobs for which you don’t need years of qualifications.The average working week in the UK is 43.6hrs…
Which we all know is just a rubbish figure like the average wage in the UK is £28’000, if only it was that easy 
Whenever threads about long hours to rate of pay ratio, wtd, t.s and c.s, general crap pay, and all the rest of it appear on here, you always get the same old predictable responses from drivers. 
‘The.shelf stackers at Aldi, Lidl, Asda etc etc.’…
Who tf wants to chuck their licence away and be a pro shelf stacker, boring, not to mention rarely full time.
‘We get paid paid for …listening to the radio/on bunk getting tipped/ sat with finger up arse in a queue…’
So what, it is time at work, your employer has it factored in, so he aint conciously doing you a favour…so irrelevant.
You get other examples of jobs chucked at you that do long hours, for bad pay, mostly ones nobody want to do forestry, farm labourer, ■■■■ sewage worker…
Yeh they are welcome to it , but don’t use it as an example why a lot of drivers should be thankful for being run ragged for 7 .50 an hour or whatever.
‘It’s easier than some jobs for the money you get’
Maybe so, but there has never been a direct corrolation between how physically hard a job is and good money, otherwise a guy who digs holes in a road would be paid more than a solicitor.
In this job the facility is there for a driver to maximise his earnings by working 70+ hours.
Those that do fair enough, I personally do not want to any longer, but it has nothing to do with me if others do.
But that aint the problem.
The pay structures over the years have been drip fed back to schemes such as Single time straight through, time + a pittance after not 40 but 50 hours.
There are schemes like the thread subject, poa that some unscrupulous firms use as a vehicle to make you attend work and not get paid for it.
So we have a pay scheme in the job which has got to the stage where many drivers HAVE to, not CHOOSE to (a big difference) work max hours to earn a wage to live to a fairly comfortable standard of living.
When I started my first driving job the max legal day was 12.5 per day, inc a break, I was paid time and a half after 40 hours, and Sathurdays, and double Sun so by about Wed/Thurs ish I was on premium rate and bringing a decent wage home.
By the time the cluster ■■■■ of rules and excess daily and weekly hours that we have now came about, I was an owner driver, so I thought …bring it on.
If I had been employed at the time I would have been pretty ■■■■■■ that suddenly I was eventually working more bloody hours for less money.
So all you guys who boast about your take home pay for working in real terms a week and a half, that is why guys like me take the ■■■■ out of you. 
If I’ve annoyed you it is called self realisation and/or a lightbulb moment. So don’t make yourselves feel better about yourselves by having a pop back at me at me for making you feel bad about yourselves, cos I don’t give a one
…Sort it out instead.
Or you could just carry on in ignorant bliss, ignoring the facts, and boasting about your ‘‘good wage’’
buses:
As far as I’m concerned I want 12 hours a day.There are drivers at my place that only want 8&9 hours a night which is my eyes is silly.
I won’t entertain a 9 hour shift what’s the point.
There you go. One reason why the haulage industry is ■■■■■■ in three lines.
wrighty1:
Which we all know is just a rubbish figure like the average wage in the UK is £28’000, if only it was that easy
Its not a rubbish figure, its one from the Office for National Statistics. When you get paid your employer has to report to HMRC how much you got paid and how many hours you’ve worked since HMRC went on to realtime reporting a few years ago so the figure is more accurate than it ever has been because if you get paid every week then HMRC get told every week what you’ve earned and what hours you’ve worked. It is no longer a single figure given at the end of the year with no figure for the hours you’ve done.
Just because it happens to be not too far off what you earn for 60hrs a week doesn’t make it wrong.
Another point to consider for the folk who say " I know it’s only £8 per hour, but it’s the easiest work I’ve done ".
If you don’t stack shelves correctly, unlikely anyone would get injured. One minor lapse in concentration in driving a 44 tonner can kill a family of four.
In my book, you should be paid decently for the responsibility of our job alone.
Conor:
wrighty1:
Which we all know is just a rubbish figure like the average wage in the UK is £28’000, if only it was that easyIts not a rubbish figure, its one from the Office for National Statistics. When you get paid your employer has to report to HMRC how much you got paid and how many hours you’ve worked since HMRC went on to realtime reporting a few years ago so the figure is more accurate than it ever has been because if you get paid every week then HMRC get told every week what you’ve earned and what hours you’ve worked. It is no longer a single figure given at the end of the year with no figure for the hours you’ve done.
Just because it happens to be not too far off what you earn for 60hrs a week doesn’t make it wrong.
I take it you know how averages are worked out?