Fuel shortage, What fuel shortage??

[The Rovering Member]

Originally Posted by victorgte

The industry has been subject to a welcome introduction of a new professional addition, the driver CPC which makes the job safer and keeps drivers knowledge up to date.
Unfortunately older drivers decided to retire rather than go through more classroom time. Younger or new drivers had to go through another written test to get a licence. Would you be happy to do all of this for £8.88 per hour?
I agree with the CPC but if you are going to take the job to another level of professionalism you need to pay a wage that recognises it.
Right now ALL hauliers are having to pay more for drivers. Even the one paying £120 has just increased the rate to £131 per day. Still peanuts.

I think the general reception to the CPC has been rather less than welcoming.
Maybe as a few days paid sitting around if your employer is paying for it.
Until recently you could take the same module five times & get your card.

A surfeit of emogees there methinks.

[MSS]

Originally Posted by The Rovering Member

They are quoted 'up to' figures. The absolute top rates will no doubt carry some conditions which will probably involve extra working hours. It will be quite a precedent they'll be setting if that is a basic salary commitment though very good for us drivers of course.



It depends. With long hours it may have been but I doubt the average basic wage has been anywhere near that. Transport companies are very keen to quote possible rather than basic driver earnings.

Happy to accept that the figures I quoted may have been 'refined' at source.

I am genuinely interested - what would you say is the average HGV driver salary?

[Gigagator]

I actually genuinely am interested in a change of career to HGV driving for a few reasons:
1. I don't enjoy my current job working in IT
2. I love driving and I love big vehicles like trucks and buses
3. I would feel like I'm helping the country a bit in this moment of crisis

However, I know a handful of people who are already in the industry and they keep telling me to not even think about it as the conditions are terrible and the pay is @rse.

I also do worry about the long hours and being away from home as I have a daughter who is nearly 1 and the idea of spending so much time away is hard to swallow.

I guess if there were assurances to people like me (28 years old with a young family) that the conditions were good and the pay worth it, far more people would jump into the profession, including me!
I would do it tomorrow if I had confidence in it not making me miserable.

[The Rovering Member]

Originally Posted by MSS

Happy to accept that the figures I quoted may have been 'refined' at source.

I am genuinely interested - what would you say is the average HGV driver salary?

I don't rightly know. Remuneration across the industry is extremely variable. A lot of overtime is possible & in many instances it's simply part of the job so gets factored into the average calculations. You can get pretty good money but generally that will mean long work shifts. A nine to five job it isn't.
As mentioned further up, hourly rates can be very poor indeed from some companies. I've been on agency work for twenty five years or so. Rates vary but on my current 'contract' which is regular pre-booked work & taking into account holiday pay, pension plus a moderate night bonus I'm on a shade under £20ph with overtime around £23. I think it's the best rate out of my agency's contracts & l started on it just after the first lockdown began. It's pretty good but rates at those levels haven't been the norm in recent times (except maybe Royal Mail at Christmas) & normally there wasn't an overtime rate at all, you earned the same across the whole shift. I probably won't be hunting one of these 'superjobs' as although l do some long shifts, my current position can be very 'untaxing' & being in my sixtieth year, l quite like an easy time.
I was working for Travis Perkins on & off until lockdown & their night drivers were on a salary of £38,000 which was considered a good wage but the flipside was that there was a bit of restructuring in 2019 which entailed a fair few redundancies when the Tilbury hub closed.
So rates are climbing at the moment of course in the same way that they stagnated & actually fell when the country was opened up to European labour. That's the market but the general treatment of drivers has in general been pretty shabby, not least by the supermarkets & the general cut-throat practices across the board. Being treated like cattle in depots, put on the bay, keys handed in but not allowed to sit in your cab, for 'safety reasons'. Into the often pokey, dirty waiting room sometimes for several hours at a time, a seat if you're lucky. Not enough truckstops & those that exist are mostly expensive, shabby & poorly run. Even the lay-bys are being closed because of local Nimbyism.

Some years ago Tesco told the agencies that they were going to drop the minimum eight hour daily shift to six hours & very often they will do their best not to have you working past the minimum shift (l don't know what financial sense this makes, someone has to deliver the loads). The agencies got together & told them that the drivers simply wouldn't bother getting out of bed for six hours pay & Tesco backed off. Now they're offering four figure bonuses for new drivers. Funny that.

They, among others, sowed the wind & are now reaping the whirlwind.

Saying all that, l still enjoy it but l am picky about what l do. I don't tramp, l don't work days, l generally don't work for supermarkets. If l'm booked l turn up & l'll drive wagon & drags too. Many won't.

[Borg Warner]

An issue (among many) is, that we do not train as many as we should in this modern world. Far cheaper to employ a trained and experienced individual, in whatever field, rather than invest in them in the long term.

As people are rather shallow and have less loyalty toward their employers (which of course is true in the reverse) at the first chance of a better option, or if things deteriorate, then they are off. And who can blame them.

Travelled pretty much the length of the A14/M6, in both directions, twice this past week. Heaving with HGVs, both UK and EU registered.

Oh and cars too.

It doesn't take long for things to go wrong in our modern, integrated, JIT, society as these past few days have shown.

[victorgte]

Originally Posted by Gigagator

I actually genuinely am interested in a change of career to HGV driving for a few reasons:
1. I don't enjoy my current job working in IT
2. I love driving and I love big vehicles like trucks and buses
3. I would feel like I'm helping the country a bit in this moment of crisis

However, I know a handful of people who are already in the industry and they keep telling me to not even think about it as the conditions are terrible and the pay is @rse.

I also do worry about the long hours and being away from home as I have a daughter who is nearly 1 and the idea of spending so much time away is hard to swallow.

I guess if there were assurances to people like me (28 years old with a young family) that the conditions were good and the pay worth it, far more people would jump into the profession, including me!
I would do it tomorrow if I had confidence in it not making me miserable.

Get your licence and you will never be out of work.
I too enjoy driving which is why I found it so easy to switch from consumer finance to HGV driver all those years ago.
It has its pitfalls but if you are flexible and find a good agency they will keep you busy.
I was with my first agency for 11 years. Great team of people and I still keep in touch with my old boss.
Im now self employed, mixing my time between moving cars and occasional HGV work for customers direct.
I doubt I will ever go back to PAYE with an employer. Just get that licence.

Sent from my POT-LX1 using Tapatalk

[edwardmk]

Originally Posted by Gigagator

I actually genuinely am interested in a change of career to HGV driving for a few reasons:
1. I don't enjoy my current job working in IT
2. I love driving and I love big vehicles like trucks and buses
3. I would feel like I'm helping the country a bit in this moment of crisis

However, I know a handful of people who are already in the industry and they keep telling me to not even think about it as the conditions are terrible and the pay is @rse.

I also do worry about the long hours and being away from home as I have a daughter who is nearly 1 and the idea of spending so much time away is hard to swallow.

I guess if there were assurances to people like me (28 years old with a young family) that the conditions were good and the pay worth it, far more people would jump into the profession, including me!
I would do it tomorrow if I had confidence in it not making me miserable.

I joined Shell Expro, Aberdeen when I was 28 as a company dentist. The conditions were excellent for many of the Shell staff. If you could get accepted as a Tanker Driver, that was well paid. It was a fair few years ago now, but might be worth looking in to. Good luck in your deliberations.

[MSS]

The Co-op have announced that they are going to prioritise key workers for fuel sales at certain times at their stations.

I've suggested to the Mrs a trip to Ann Summers for a nurse's outfit but she's not convinced that the white PVC really goes with her XF-S.

[The Rovering Member]

I think the two would go together very well indeed.

Originally Posted by edwardmk

I joined Shell Expro, Aberdeen when I was 28 as a company dentist. The conditions were excellent for many of the Shell staff. If you could get accepted as a Tanker Driver, that was well paid. It was a fair few years ago now, but might be worth looking in to. Good luck in your deliberations.

Back when l got my HGV licence around 1990, the Shell boys were top of the tree on around £35,000 pa.

[Arctic]

How about this for a theory or thought thinking process, go back 12 months or so when we were all in lock down, told to stay home, work from home, and when the streets were empty of cars etc.

No petrol or diesel being sold because our cars were not being used, now think of all the diesel & petrol lying in massive storage tanks, and all the fuel these giants have on theirs hands because of that lock down etc.

There is a sell by date on fuel isn't there? we know that diesel can get a bug in it, lets just say you are sitting on millions of gallons of fuel which is about to go bad, now these giants don't like to be it in the pocket by losing fuel due to it being old and not good, what is the best way to get rid of it.


How about saying we are struggling to get drivers to fill up the garages with fuel and create a massive fuel shortage, problem solved because joe public, are like sheep and will panic buy, no more stale fuel so no loss for the giants.

Could it happen