Good for you Goff, i am about to to something very similar!.
like you say very daunting at first but i think it will be good for me, I’ve gotten too comfortable in my work role, and i hate the Mon-Fri grind. Life is too short to live it at work.
Going to set myself up with a Van to start with, light haulage and move onto bigger things once i’m established, will also offer holiday/sickeness cover for a few firms around my way in the meantime. Should be enough to keep us ticking over for a bit… Enjoy & best of luck to you!
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Have to agree there. I live more or less on the doorstep of a logistics park but choose a commute because of the hours.
I do 4o4o , average 10/11 hours a night. I consider it part time when I hear the days and hours some drivers work.
Fair play if thats your bag. Granted there are times when I’m relatively skint but I cut my cloth accordingly. Don’t drive an expensive car, weekends away rather than weeks…
There does seem to be a few more firms offering 4o4o or similar shifts now but still not many.
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Yep, at the moment an ideal working week for me is 3 or 4 days, and even with 3 days I am working around 35 hours, so earning slightly more than I was doing Monday to Friday in office.
The childcare cost is now 40% less as a result, so I don’t need to earn as much either.
Being supermarket work, I am hoping that the consistency continues throughout the year as it has so far!
There’s not much point doing more than a 48 hour week now, as the pay if the going rate is anything to go by - will take you into higher rate tax if you do.
I do 3 on , 4 off. Same days every week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I run an old banger, have a much higher mortgage payment than I did 3 years ago, but I can just about keep my head above water because I stay out of higher rate deductions.
There’s full timers where I work doing 5/6/5/6 each month who earn barely another 100 on top of what I’m pulling in for the three shifts across the weekend. - Their gross is nearly double mine, but the 45% tax and 10% NI means they are losing half of it, whereas we lower earners get our first 260 per week tax free… Go figure.
Less is more.
It is a changed economy we live in now.
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Yes, that is what I am finding. A week where I earn £1000 isn’t really much better than £600 or £700, so 3 days could be a sweetspot. I’ve almost paid off my student loan now (aged 34), so that’ll be an extra few quid in the pocket.
The only thing I would be wary of is supermarkets swap agencies very regularly. The contracts are up for tender every 2 minutes and what was say Staffline’s becomes Pertemps or whoever at the drop of a hat and you go from being one’s regular to anothers newbie at the bottom of the list.
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Thanks for the heads up. This one has been in place since I started 2 years ago, and for quite a while before that so fingers crossed it’s not up any time soon!
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I’m inclined to disagree there. I spent 15 months with staffline @ Waitrose and they dropped me like a hot brick when lockdown started.
At the place I’m at now, different agency, different yard - I’ve been tuped over once already, and face another contract rollover in July.
I’ve decided to stay on with both the outgoing and incoming agency however, in case the work dries up suddenly, and I find myself needing to go back to farm work again, like I did during the lockdown.
Not all agencies are run by objectional zum beispiel and at a guess, I’d suggest it takes about a year to get one’s feet under the table at any new agency one might want to sign up with.
One thing that puzzles me, is why do supermarkets keep swapping agencies, if the rate they pay doesn’t go down sharply in the process? I can understand a new incoming agency “Undercutting”, but not replacing the incumbent one for the same money?
It often involves multiple sites, nationwide agreements are reviewed, the 3PL’s swap as well often and they have their own individual agreements.
Morrisons was always a complicated one, supposedly ADR ran them all but then some became DHL, some Wincanton, some Stobarts. Stobarts had their own in house agency so didn’t want ADR around so suddenly there’s exceptions to what was a nationwide agreement. Tesco seem to be the worst for it, I’ve known sites swap from Pertemps to TRG to Staffline to ADR etc etc.
I still don’t get why they keep chopping and changing about all the time, if a “Re-Tendering” isn’t taking place?
Possibly a senior management change and the incoming knownowt brings his mate’s agency with him.
Somewhere else and sometime else…
A major company I know ruled that supplier contracts must be changed every x years to stop there being a too cosy relationship between the supplier and the person(s) giving the contract.
I can see where they are coming from on that.
Maybe they will cut off their own nose sometimes (how many noses does a big company have?) but then again it might stop the scope for “best buddy” fiddles?
As long as they are all in the Freemasons…
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I still don’t get why they keep chopping and changing about all the time, if a “Re-Tendering” isn’t taking place?
Ok, let’s say a Co-op site use ABC Recruitment. Then DHL take over running the transport and their preferred agency is DEF recruitment. Then DHL lose the contract to XPO or whatever they are called these days and they use XYZ recruitment. 9 times out of 10 the new supplier just has to honour the previous t&c’s re pay rates etc so you don’t see significant change. Where it gets frequently silly is each supplier will have a diifferent assessment/induction process. One day you’re good enough to drive for a site, the next you’re apparently not qualified, madness.
i would argue that if you had to be reassessed then it would be a new contract etc ie you have been let go and rehired.
In the end, the difference between one agency and another is the management system of any ■■■■■■■■ they give you to try and cover the less-desirable shifts.
There’s plenty of work right now, but that’s not guaranteed to last, especially if interest rates don’t come down soon, and expected Labour government does NOT do anything about that…
People will have less money in their pockets, and will spend less… Recession - is inevitable.
We are merely on the last gasp of a “Boom and Bust” cycle as we speak…
Next year is likely to compare to 2011, 2002, 1994, 1981, and 1975 before that…
I’m old enough to recall the misery of ALL those years, economically…
My two pennyworth would be regarding how all weekend working can affect the family. The majority of school/village fetes and other annual attractions are at weekends, some of which the children may want to go to with mum and dad. The same can be said for most sports.
The average age of lorry drivers in the UK is 57. For most of us the kids have left school and don’t want to be going out with parents on a weekend.
It’s all cyclical. Agencies boss drivers around with shifts/pay rates when it’s quiet, the opposite when it’s busy. I constantly see the “I wouldn’t get out of bed for that posts” on the FB groups and fine if you’re financial position allows you to take that stance but hauliers etc are struggling like never before. You are absolutely more than welcome to say "I will only work for > £18ph but there are huge swathes of the country where a company will stand a unit down and/or refuse work because it just isn’t worth their while to take a job on paying a driver that.