toonsy:
This may come as a shock but some of us do it
No issue with that but then they’d obviously be fully aware of common fuel prices applying in at least western europe and under 1.9 Euro per litre for E5 ain’t common probably less common than over 2 Euro per litre.Having said that a diesel V8 Range Rover looks like a good bet now for distance touring.
As for the ‘exchange rate’ we sell at around parity we buy at 1.5 Euro to the pound says it all.
While a look at the job ads shows exactly who and how many get to ‘do it’ for a job.Nothing new there.
tmcassett:
So you are generalising the whole industry and every job because of your one bad experience?
I’m certainly generalising the degenerate UK road transport industry.Which is mostly based on the premise of minimising truck/tonne/miles run putting it’s driver workforce to work doing anything but driving as a result.
All of which is about to get far worse with the plan for rail combined with the truck road usage levy.
Speaking from your vast amounts of first hand experience in the last 30 years!
You still fail to answer how if you were so desperate to just drive all day and do distance work you were unable to get a job doing that from the thousands that are out there?
Some of these companies only requirement or experience is that you have a pulse. I’ve worked with drivers who barely have one and certainly can’t string a sentence together, yet found employment so shows just how crap a driver and employee you must be.
Carryfast:
I’m certainly generalising the degenerate UK road transport industry.Which is mostly based on the premise of minimising truck/tonne/miles run.
Serious question; how do you reach that conclusion?
Every company I’ve worked for have striven to maximise profits. If doing for example five local jobs created more profit than one long run then I’d be doing the five locals. If one job to southern Spain would generate more profit than all of the equivalent local jobs I could do in the same timeframe then I’d be saying Hola to the customs people.
It really is that simple; transport operations exist purely to generate profit, not to serve as a vanity project for a man who has watched Convoy too many times!
I honestly don’t get why you find that so hard to reconcile.
For the same reason that I use E5 here.Because the thing pinks like a zb on 95 octane E10 crap.
Vauxhall ain’t going to pay for a new engine and recovery from Italy or locally owing to a set of holed pistons and/or cooked engine and/or the higher fuel consumption caused by the engine management trying to auto ■■■■■■ to avoid the above.They can obviously afford to talk bs in that regard.
Carryfast:
I’m certainly generalising the degenerate UK road transport industry.Which is mostly based on the premise of minimising truck/tonne/miles run.
Serious question; how do you reach that conclusion?
Every company I’ve worked for have striven to maximise profits. If doing for example five local jobs created more profit than one long run then I’d be doing the five locals. If one job to southern Spain would generate more profit than all of the equivalent local jobs I could do in the same timeframe then I’d be saying Hola to the customs people.
It really is that simple; transport operations exist purely to generate profit, not to serve as a vanity project for a man who has watched Convoy too many times!
I honestly don’t get why you find that so hard to reconcile.
So all of those foreign reg trucks rolling on and off the ferries around UK and running all over Europe are running at a loss compared to the typical UK local dross.
I’d suggest that new entrants to the industry aspire to work along the lines of the opening scenes of Convoy or Il Bestione rather than running around the local housing estates for Travis Perkins or final miles rail freight movements for Tesco etc.Going back a bit further Nachts auf den Strassen v Hell Drivers sums up the difference between the UK v Continental idea of road transport. Obviously nothing changes in that regard.
Carryfast:
Unfortunately just had to cut short a trip to Italy and the Alps around a GT car race event at Monza.Not because of no holiday pay but because the rip off banks are stealing 30% of the value of every pound every time it’s spent in Euros or CHF in bent exchange rates.To the point of £200 + per night hotel bills and around £2 per litre fuel bills.Added to extortionate ferry fares of £180 to cross the channel ONE WAY.The WTD and paid holidays are moot in that economic environment.
My thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time. Stay strong friend x
Carryfast:
I’m certainly generalising the degenerate UK road transport industry.Which is mostly based on the premise of minimising truck/tonne/miles run putting it’s driver workforce to work doing anything but driving as a result.
Carryfast:
I told the bank the pound is laughably undervalued at almost parity with Euro/CHF should be at least 1.5 Euros to the pound.
Oh I bet you did
Youre right, Ill bet he told the banks exactly where they were going wrong.
The last time the GBP was actually 1.50 euro was early 2007. Last time it was anywhere near to 1.50 euros was the beginning of 2016, it was then about 1.42.
Later in 2016 it was near 1.11. Never been above 1.20 since then.
Carryfast:
I told the bank the pound is laughably undervalued at almost parity with Euro/CHF should be at least 1.5 Euros to the pound.
Oh I bet you did
Youre right, Ill bet he told the banks exactly where they were going wrong.
The last time the GBP was actually 1.50 euro was early 2007. Last time it was anywhere near to 1.50 euros was the beginning of 2016, it was then about 1.42.
Later in 2016 it was near 1.11. Never been above 1.20 since then.
In 2007 the prices in Euroland were nothing like they are now.You seem to have missed around 2 Euros per litre for fuel and over £200 per night for the same hotels that were around £75 per night then and still less than £100 per night in 2016.You also seem to have conveniently missed the fact that it’s the banks that are actually selling Euros at around parity but conveniently that changes to 1.50 Euros to the pound to buy them back.
So since when was there such a 30% difference in the sell/buy exchange rate ?.
The fact is it’s a 30% tax on our cash when changed to Euros let alone the CHF which is an even worse rip off deal.
Carryfast, do you ever look back and read your comments and answers?
If you did, you might suddenly realise why you were such an incredible failure, your incompetence knows no bounds.
I didn’t know exactly what day I was leaving or coming home or what route I was going to use.I’d deliberately left all that open.Precisely because I had my suspicions about the hotel rates that I was seeing before I left but unfortunately underestimated even those.
The best flexibility in that regard was provided by buying the return ticket at the Calais ticket office on arrival. I used Harwich Hook of Holland outward to avoid the usual Dover bound traffic carnage which I booked the day before I decided to go.
Feel free to hand over your cash to an obscure ticket agency for a too good to be true ferry fare deal.Which at best provides no flexibility and could also lock you into catastrophic hotel charges for the privilege of meeting set ferry crossing times and dates.
Star down under.:
Carryfast, do you ever look back and read your comments and answers?
If you did, you might suddenly realise why you were such an incredible failure, your incompetence knows no bounds.
I obviously make no sense to those drivers who prefer driving a builders wagon around the local houses or multi dropping stuff around the local shops to actually driving a truck.I’m equally obviously hated by employers who only have the former dross to offer which is most UK operations.
While you obviously like the idea of being ripped off to the tune of at least 30% of every pound you choose to spend when travelling to Euroland.
Although that obviously won’t be understood by anyone who doesn’t travel outside of the albeit large Australasian prison Island.
Carryfast:
.
Unfortunately just had to cut short a trip to Italy and the Alps around a GT car race event at Monza.Not because of no holiday pay but because the rip off banks are stealing 30% of the value of every pound every time it’s spent in Euros or CHF in bent exchange rates.To the point of £200 + per night hotel bills and around £2 per litre fuel bills.Added to extortionate ferry fares of £180 to cross the channel ONE WAY.The WTD and paid holidays are moot in that economic environment.
Wtf are you talking about? I just paid £1.37 a litre for petrol in Luxembourg, travelling around Europe, nothing like £200 a night.
Luxembourg has cheap fuel who would have thought it.
Unlike bleedin Swiss,Germany and Italy at closer to 2 Euros if not more than 2 Euros.
I just got a bill for the usual Milan Nord Novotel that I use for Monza events for what I thought was 320 Euros for 2 nights turned out to be PER NIGHT.
Novotel Bussingny in Swiss was bad enough at 246 Euros per night.Both hotels I’ve used regularly for decades never over 80 quid per night.
I told the bank the pound is laughably undervalued at almost parity with Euro/CHF should be at least 1.5 Euros to the pound.
They said that’s exactly what we will offer to buy them back back.Luckily I mostly relied on my debit card but still a rip off
That’s what I’m bleedin talking about.Some of us get a bit further than a cheap hotel in bleedin BeneLux.Luckily I’m using the Zafira at 35mpg not the Jag at 15 mpg.
You honestly couldn’t make this sh*t up! Exchange today at M&S money for £500 you get €573.2. Convert back to £ and get £445.4, a difference of 11.1% or in other words nowhere near the 30% you claim.
After your vociferous arguments prior to the big B vote in 2016 I think it’s at best hypocritical of you to complain about the cost of visiting Europe.
Lucy:
Any danger of talking about the actual topic please, lads? I really can’t be arsed to start splitting threads off into Bullys…
Yes, at least the job advertised has driving time paid by the hour and not paid by the mile like most companies in the US pay. Most companies don’t pay much for loading/unloading, waiting, breakdowns or layovers and when the driver has run out of hours and has to sit for 34 hours there’s no pay for that. That’s on general haulage, it’s better on ‘line haul’ running terminal to terminal.
