Biggest mistake of my career - getting a job in general haulage - something I swore I’d never do but since this was the only job I could find that didn’t involve night work or nights out and paid more than £1 over min. wage I saw myself with no other viable choice.
3 days done over 40 hours already, one 15 hour with a 9 hour rest where I only had time to get home to eat, shower, brush teeth and mix up some porrige for next day breakfast, leaving me with 5 hours for sleep before having to get up 1 hour before start of next shift…
Spoke to a few drivers and they all shrug and assure me that’s how it is and that’s how trucking work is (for some reason they think I’m a new pass first time in the biz) they’re so brainwashed they don’t believe there’s plenty of other work out there where you don’t have to work 70 hours a week an never know what time you’ll be finishing and always on minimum rest with 3x reduced guaranteed each week for a change over 40k per year
I don’t know how long I’m going to last in this but I don’t know if I should feel pity for drivers in this sector it’s just I look into their eyes and all I see is resignation and indifference. A wise one once said when entering a new job take a good look at your colleagues and you will see your future self.
Stay away from general logistics unless you hate your wife and are looking for excuse to get away from her but don’t want divorce.
Never do general as a day driver !
I would have stayed in the cab and had 9 off not waste valuable time going home
If you want low hours and home every night supermarket work is only option
Agreed. Only other option I can think of is daytime pallet network deliveries, unless you can find own account. Both will require manual handling however.
Contrast your post, (I’m 100% in agreement that these working practices are unacceptable) with this other post. The fact that people are not only willing to do the latter, but seeking help to continue doing it, is what has led to you experiencing the former. Is there any other industry more mired in Victorian-values than haulage?
Whereas you obviously think it’s in drivers’ interests to maximise their hours and workload to maintain a large supply of under employed or unemployed drivers.Thereby reducing wage levels to subsidise running costs like fuel tax.
to be fair to the person wanting to work extra hours and asking if it was legal (if thats what they are doing) in most other industries someone can do as much overtime as is available. there are lots of reasons why someone can find themselves in debt not all are their fault. the only true way to get out of debt is work hard. in the logistics industry it is mired in laws (correctly) to manage the hours one can work so i dont have an issue with someone asking if they can work hard.
as to why the conditions at the o/p’s work place are like that it isnt down to one person wanting to earn some extra money its down to droves of people doing it.
9 hours off between a 15 hour shift?..and at home, including a commute both ways, tea shower and a little sleep?
Not an effin chance.
They only have you doing it and other stuff because you will…you should have set your own pace from day 1.
And take no notice of the clowns and f/wits who tell you it is normal,… that is slso only so because of them…
The job does not need to be an endurance test because of a load of clowns.
It was a remark concerning your aversion to any interaction with the load, rather than hours of duty.
Unlike you, I’ve never been work shy, be that physical hard yakka or 168 hours duty per fortnight.
I’ve had a varied “career path” over the decades, and no where else but in haulage have I seen people wanting to work the maximum amount, week in, week out. It’s unique in my experience.
Is it? I disagree. Again, unique to haulage, nowhere else have I seen a situation where one person agreeing to sacrifice their entire life to the job is held up as “the norm” which everyone else is then expected to comply with.
Haulage is geared up to be exploitative, this seems to be entirely predicated on HGV drivers being generally averse to unionisation, seeing only the short-term impact of paying subs, over the broader benefits of better working conditions.
so you agree with me then that it is the fact that there are droves of people doing it.
go walk around a where house or manufacturing plant where the english arent the dominant race. go look at the one man bands that work hard to get their business off the ground.
but off the top of my head there are lots of jobs where long hours are expected.
nursing
doctors
teachers
lawyers
police/fire
etc etc
besides all that have you never asked for overtime or seen someone else do an extra shift?
No, I’m saying it only takes one to give in to the pressure, and then it becomes “expected” of everyone. That is a compltely different scenario
Those are “professions” not “jobs”, anyone entering a “profession” is likely to be well aware of the difference between that and “a job”, they’re also likely to be salaried and isn’t doing it to job-hop over 50p per hour more than their current employer.
Show me a discussion forum where any of those people are asking for advice on how to work ridiculous amounts of hours? These people are all either unionised or will have voluntary membership of a professional governing body, they won’t be complaining about 35 hours in the classroom over a five year period, or complaining about police enforcing the law on the roads (like not using phones when driving).
You know the best part? The 15 hour shift (actually it was a bit longer since I had to debrief for another 10 mins past the cut off line but that’s another subject…) followed by a start 9 hours later into a 14 and a half hour shift followed by ANOTHER early start (9 hour rest again) at this point I was ready to throw in the towel but decided to muscle on and I’m not proud of it…
Is it supposed to be some kind of badge of honor I’m not sure. There was this guy on here dozer who used to boast about doing 60-70 hours for the Stobart agency, I feel like everyone here (at the company) is a carbon copy of him
And don’t even get me started on all the corporate ■■■■■■■■ they start shoving down your throat from day 1. Which is a shame as many of the people in Transport seem very decent which was another shock but they’ve swallowed the corpaganda for too long and too are biting their tongues and bending each every way to avoid saying the wrong thing
The problem is clearly working too many days per week not too many hours per day .At the expense of someone else who could and would like to share the job.
Ironically the maths of paying a driver for a 15 hour shift, of which only 9-10 hours max can be actually driving the truck and load anywhere, is the really weird thing about the industry.
