I applied GXO Waltham Abbey on Totaljobs HGV Class 2 which says from £32k to £35k, the day we met for a chat, say that I lacked in experience because I had been driving for 9 months with the Agency, and she offered me £32k.
I am terrible in maths at school, but I am sure it is near the minimum wage, I went home and worked out £11.18 an hour if I worked 11 hours per day what the advert says.
Pay being dependent on experience is pretty common in every field of work.
It sounds like you’d been had by the government propaganda about big wages for truck driving, there are lots of poorly paid HGV jobs around because the “driver shortage” was a myth.
If you’d been prepared, you could have had some fun getting them to explain "how is a job driving an in-scope vehicle, therefore subject to Road Transport Directive, able to be advertised as 11 hours per day, which assuming a five day week would be a 55 hour week, which as there is no opt-out of the 48 hour average under RTD, would be an illegal advert, and surely a big name company like GXO would be aware of that? "
I’m sure they’re not that stupid (or am I sure? I dunno…) It may be that there’s something you haven’t been told or have misunderstood.
was the hours advertised on the advert or discussed at interview. either way i would be highly suspicious of 11 hour days
the job i had was hourly paid and the annual salary was worked out at some number of hours per week however in reality you did a hell of a lot more hours than stated
Lorry driving can be well paid, theres some on here that earn 50K a year and a few that are topping 65K , they all have two things in common , they dont drive top of the range blinged out V8 Scanias and none of them drive for haulage companies - they drive low end trucks on own account work where transport is not the profit- you have got get into your head that any job where transport is the profit such as haulage your not going to make money, any job where what you carry makes the money - your an incidental , and you getting there on time regardless of cost is more important because what you carry makes the money, not simply carrying it. . It really isnt rocket science if you want to earn the money you work where transport isnt the business - but the faciltator , you wont get the blinged up motor but you will make the money
I have read all of your replies. The lady informed me that the working hours for GXO are between 50 and 55 hours per week. She also mentioned that I should not expect to drive for the entire duration of these hours, as most of the time is spent waiting at the yard. Therefore, I should not expect to arrive and take the lorry straight away. There is a lot of waiting involved before someone can go. I was wondering if anyone here works with GXO and could provide further insight. I am starting to think that the lady did not explain things to me very clearly. Additionally, the reviews on Indeed do not look very promising.
Reading and understanding are not the same thing - it isn’t legal for them to advertise a job where the hours expected are going to be between 50 to 55 hours average over a reference period, which seems to be what you have taken away from your discussions with them.
Many people go to work at 8am and leave at 5pm. They will have an hour’s lunch and a few coffee breaks. They will tell you that they work a 9 hr day, and many people will accept the underlying idea of this.
*You can all see where this is going"
If the person telling you it is a 55hr week doesn’t understand what is and isn’t work under tacho and WTD rules, then she could well be thinking that 5 off 11hrs days is 11 hrs work.
just for easy maths lets say its over a 10 week period (i know its not) i am contracted or have a minimum of 9 hours a day but it takes me 11 hours to do my round with an hours break so 10 hours worked per day that would be 500 in 10 weeks rather than 480 ie 20 hours over.
question is this when i have time off how is each day calculated is it counted as 9 or 10 hours
Which is precisely why an experienced, professional driver needs to ‘know their onions’ and be able to interrogate the company employee for accurate information, rather than just accepting what they hear.
Are you talking about WTD/RTD average?
Usually for an in-scope driver, the tacho analysis software handles the calculations.
Reference period for calculations is either 17 weeks (standard) or 26 weeks (needs to be voted on by workforce).
Can’t exceed 60 hours work in any week (for both WTD and RTD).
All the hours that count as “work” in a reference period are added up, then divided by the appropriate number of weeks, to get an average. We “mobile workers” are under RTD not WTD, so we cannot opt-out of the 48 hour average working week limit (as warehouse staff could, if they agreed to). The only opt-out available under RTD is the 10 hour night work limit (workforce agreement is needed) If you’re agency, you’re automatically opted-out if that is the deal with the non-agency drivers
Statutory holidays count towards WTD/RTW, so they cannot bring down the RP average, holidays beyond the statutory days don’t count. Being on the sick counts (8 hours per day), as do Saturdays (but not Sundays).
If it looks like a driver is going to go over his 48 hours average in a reference period, the only way to bring it down is to be on POA. One big name company I won’t name had a bunch of guys come into work and sit twiddling their thumbs in the canteen while recording POA, all to avoid going over the average WTD/RTD.
ok but how many hours in my example it was 9 hours minimum but on average i did 10 qualifying hours. so for wtd does 9 hours count towards the average or 10
Agreed.
In bigger companies especially the person doing the job interview will not be traffic orientated, so won’t know about driver hours and regs. Likely they will be from Personnel or Human Resources etc. They may have a list of figures relating to different jobs in the outfit that shows figures from the HR and Wage dept but not from the Traffic Desk.
If the OP is new to transport, and it seems so, it is hard to know what questions to ask. And to know when answers are bllx.
sorry just reread your post and its the software that handles this.
im just struggling to get my head around this because i have never used poa mainly because i have never known how long i am to wait. However i have done 6 or more months at a company doing 5 planned 12 hour nights (usually more) and sometimes stood down / canceled but would only ever record that as rest.
Days of not working but which do count towards WTD/RTD can’t be counted as more than eight hours.
So, if you’re off on a Saturday, that still counts as 8 hours towards your total, being off on a Sunday is not counted. Being off on a Bank Holiday should also not count as this should be in excess of your Statutory holidays (though this is often not correctly calculated in many companies)
I’ve never used POA either, not once in almost two decades of driving, but that is because most of my experience was the stuff that doesn’t require being reliant on someone else for loading or unloading (a lot of bin wagon, hiab and roro work).
It is not the driver’s responsibility to maintain WTD/RTD records, that’s all on the employer.
I would suggest have another read of the thread. Go over it with no time pressure.
When you get to apply for another job and you are told the pay, ask about the work hours. Ask for typical shift lengths and then work out (taking maybe 45 mins or 90mins off) how much work that really is? Ask if POA is used at the company?
Maybe the interviewer won’t know what you are talking about, so just possibly you will get to see someone who does know! Or maybe you will be shown the door.
What will not happen is that you start what you hope to be a good job but by the end of the first shift realise you’ve been stiffed.
Personally I have never been too bothered by pay per hour rates. I know many strongly disagree here.
If I am at work for a day then that day is mostly dead to me. I tend to look at the money I get per number of days at work, not number of hours.
But then again most of my work has been on distance work so going home for the night was generally not an option.
If you got your class 1 doing shop work you would be on considerably more than that.
I strongly suspect the 50 hours would include paid breaks. Worth considering because effectively you would be doing 45-46 hours work for 50 hours pay.
One annoyance may be that if you do overtime one day, you can be sent home early later in the week (as long as you are still meeting your weekly hours). Purely hearsay you understand, but certainly true at one location I know of.
