shirtbox2003:
not a good place to be.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one 
shirtbox2003:
lived in france for a while.whole system is crap.your life is controlled from start to finish.cant work sunday except certain deliveries.cant work overtime.regulated salaries.high priced routiers 12 e min .plenty of junk trucks wouldnt pass mot here,not done by government but hgv garages.high cost of parts.very high priced used trucks.not a good place to be.
Ah, just like the failed Australian £10 Immigrants, keen to tell everyone just how bad it was/is.
Pat, any discrepancies in the UK/EU costs/rules…they are down to the poor quality politicians of all parties. WE, the GB, could have led Europe, except for the stupid inter party fighting in the UK. never has the statement, “the country gets the politicians it deserves”, ever been so true.
shirtbox, why neglect your family/personal life to work■■? Family life, and the family unit still remains paramount in French culture, and long may it so do. Work to live, not live to work!!
France, and its people are a great place to live and work…sadly so few realise that we are so similar.
Bon Nuit mes Braves, Cheerio for now.
sitting here bored ■■■■■■■■■ 3 days left on the fimo coarse.not bothered pole emploi is paying.been class 1 for 20 years but i,m glad i did this coarse as lots of different regs and rules in france.when you live in france you just go with the flow
I’ll be working in France for a few months soon (not driving), did the same in 2011 and loved every minute of my time there. The French people we MIXED with were great and the kids were much more polite and respectful than a lot of the British booze soaked chav kids I have met. Not much litter or graffiti where we were, and stunning countryside, with clean lazy rivers.
Pat Hasler, if I was talking about Indians or Pakistanis the way you were speaking about the French, you might call me a racist!
In France they allow the owner driver or employed driver to park their unit/trailer or just the unit in the driveway or outside the drivers house, imagine the Nimbies in the UK objecting to that.
I have noticed how well the French like to dress, more so on a Sunday,the children are alllowed to start drinking when they are younger, so when they are adults they have been accustomed to drinking and can hold it and not get drunk like they do in the UK.
Walk down any street on a weekend night, you will see UK youngsters being sick and abusing passers by, they can not take a a drink.
You will eat with the local farmers and all his family and all the locals at the Rouitier restaurant if it is open on saturdays or sundays.
If you take an interest in them, they may eat with you and join in with the conversation.
the french just want you to get your fimo/fco so they can weed out foreign drivers.i did my fimo and beleive me it,s not easy.it,s a load of old tosh.
health and safety don,t exist here.did a drop in valence …(82) yesterday at conforama depot run by an english distribution company high vis boots chock the trailer hand the keys in normal safe working practice.then went to gifi warehouse in villeneuve-sur-lot for 26 pallets .no high vis keep the truck running while they load.they didn’t have all the pallets at that depot so drove 2 k to other depot for a couple of pallets the loader said don,t bother closing you rear doors just go back and collect the rest of you load…unbeleivable as i had high value electrical good onboard.i could just see me doing that in england
axeman:
the french just want you to get your fimo/fco so they can weed out foreign drivers.i did my fimo and beleive me it,s not easy.it,s a load of old tosh.
Well, it didn’t weed me or you out
All very interesting guys. I took my EC here in France along with FIMO in 2004. Couldn’t find good part time work herein Brittany (29) so ended up working in the UK, London area, supermarket deliveries etc through an agency in Hatfield. It all worked out brilliantly until my wife became very ill in 2010, nearly lost her, did the odd month here and there, this worked badly because of the added costs of traveling and digs etc. She’s now on the mend so seriously looking for work, social benefits here are poor, made worse by my working in the UK so not accumulating unemployment benefits etc. Frankly the difference between UK and French driving standards are huge, the FIMO and FCO are far superior to UK DCPC in my personal experience. I have my drivers card, valid until 2019 and am fortunate that I did my FIMO too otherwise many of the different French regs would never have been known about (along with other European country regs). The problem is that my geographic location couldn’t be worse, I live in Plouyé (29690), I’m a good hour from any real chance of regular work, many drivers are working on Interim or CDD at best, this equates to short term and rolling weekly or monthly contracts in the UK, thankfully the dreaded zero hours contracts are something the French haven’t cottoned onto yet! CDI’s (full or part-time permanent contract) are very difficult to find and the pay is almost always the national minimum.
So my question is, for those of you who are already working here in France and finding work reasonably easily, where are you? I am becoming more and more disillusioned with Brittany which seems very different form the rest of France (a bit like the Welsh nationalist attitude - no criticism implied) but it does make things very much more difficult. Have been toying with the idea of moving back to the UK but would rather find an alternative area of France having invested a lot here and settling for what seemed a preference for the things French culture still holds dear like family/community and a generally slower pace of life. However nowhere is perfect and I can see where shirtbox is coming from to some extent, and cliffystephens I wish, probably just all sitting around the table having lunch, talking to one another and discussing things rather than grunting and staring at their iPhone/iPad - each to their own - mutual respect and all that. Héraultais, presume you’re in the Hérault region? Would be interested in talking to you, if you are up for it (please PM me with your land line number) same goes for anyone else driving here in France, I really need to find some decent work soon am more than wiling to relocate from Brittany. Would ideally like to get signed on with a firm like STEF or similar.
Whatever your location or vocation, let’s stay positive, Happy New Year to you all.
Regards, Paul
Sorry to read that you’ve still not found anything Paul, do you recall we had a fair old chat on the phone a couple of times early last year? A CDD is likely all you’ll get, especially at the moment. I’ve got a workmate up in dept 29 who works for STEF out of the Bigard factory in Quimperlé, he was two years on the agency and finally got a CDI not so long ago. I can ask him which agency he was with as Quimperlé is still using agency drivers and apart from the one échange they do with our depot the rest of their work is national runs to Paris and the Cote d’Azur . . . not bad when you factor in the 60 euros per night tax free subsistance, two or three nights in the truck suddenly looks more interesting! My mate lives an hour inland from Quimperlé but tels me that, as you’ve found, good work is hard to come by so there’s little option but to travel, unfortunately (or you could move down here to Agen: cheap houses, good weather, etc)
~ Craig
Craig 111:
Sorry to read that you’ve still not found anything Paul, do you recall we had a fair old chat on the phone a couple of times early last year? A CDD is likely all you’ll get, especially at the moment. I’ve got a workmate up in dept 29 who works for STEF out of the Bigard factory in Quimperlé, he was two years on the agency and finally got a CDI not so long ago. I can ask him which agency he was with as Quimperlé is still using agency drivers and apart from the one échange they do with our depot the rest of their work is national runs to Paris and the Cote d’Azur . . . not bad when you factor in the 60 euros per night tax free subsistance, two or three nights in the truck suddenly looks more interesting! My mate lives an hour inland from Quimperlé but tels me that, as you’ve found, good work is hard to come by so there’s little option but to travel, unfortunately (or you could move down here to Agen: cheap houses, good weather, etc)~ Craig
Hi Craig, thanks for the information along with your backup phone call this morning, you’re a top man and your efforts are very much appreciated.
As I told you, and thought it might be worth repeating here for the benefit of others, I have managed to finally secure a job through Adecco in Brest as an ‘Avitailler’ at Brest airport (Guipavas). I have said all along that the right job would come along and would be worth traveling the one hour or so each way. Hours are not wonderful but could be much worse and the pay is very good for this part of the world for a job where busting your n*ts is not a pre-requesite! Shift pattern is earlies or lates, 05.15 or 13.15 starts for an 8 hour shift, 7/7/365. Bank holidays are paid at a premium but everything else is pot luck depending on rota. Of course I expect to do all the ‘worst’ shifts and certainly most weekends which is not a problem being sans kids etc. Strange thing is that it is a maximum of 18 months, this may be broken down into several shorter stints, the first in my case being up until the end of September (assuming a mid Feb start) I am well chuffed, will give me the rights to unemployment payments, a security I have never had before. I will of course look for something else between Sept and Jan (the current estimate given). Security is of course the biggest problem, lots of form filling already done, I see no reason why there should be a problem but this is France after all - God bless 'em!! I will of course keep a mental note of the STEF situation and will be on the agencies doorstep the minute I’m out of work again, a move to Agen sounds fine, bit sick of the rain in Brittany - did you know we get a lot of rain here, lol!!
Take care all, hope this info is of help to someone else looking for this type of work.