BigT_Burnley:
welcome my good sir!
so the above is your first post! wow
i agree with you on the breaks though, i wish it was paid.
[/quote]I mentioned on this site a while back, that I could not understand why drivers now do not get paid for their enforced breaks and got lambasted. I still do not understand that reasoning to be honest, if you were on a 45 and someone nicked your truck, what would the boss say ■■? where were you ■■? its your responsibility !, “why, your not paying me right now” penny pinching ■■■■■■■■ is what I call it.
SmashedCrabFace:
Saaamon:
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.Half of the posters on here can’t spell their own name or count how many fingers they’ve got; I think becoming medical professionals is a bit optimistic.
where have you been 
7 week round trip to Afghanistan? 
you’re right though
I’ve always been paid the hours from the tacho going in until the minute it comes out.
Maybe things have changed in the five years I’ve been out of the UK, can’t see how they can justify not paying you, it’s not as if you can pop home for lunch is it ffs.
Well I did not expect all that response after my rant, we all have good days and bad days, as for packing shelf’s that was just an example no disrespect to any person doing that job its a living.
At the end of the day it’s a personal choice for most people, there are days when you’re going along a motorway with your arm out the window and the sun is shinning the music is good on the radio and you only have maybe one or two drops left, god there’s no feeling in the world like it.
Then their are days when you think it will never end, or you are under stress because you’re running late, or you just had a bad experience with a good inwards person and the weather is bad, or you cant get a place to park, these are the days that make you think, god is it worth all the hassle doing this job. In the summer when ever we get one, the job is great even when you have a bad day; the winter is a total different story. Now I know there a few drivers on here working in Canada and I take my hat off to you guys for what you do in a real winter.
I still believe very strongly that a HGV driver is doing a job that takes a lot of skill and should be paid a rate that reflects that, I mean we are at the top of the tree when it comes to driving, you cant get any bigger in your field of work and you ether have a lot of experience or you are well trained, to put it better we are professional drivers doing a job that takes a skill. I am not talking about huge money just a respectful rate for the hours and overnights we do.
Anyway as a lot of people said on here it is a choice they made and love it, even if the hours and money is not great and the grass is not always greener. I was just telling it how it is, anyone who has a driving job and they are doing 8 to 10 hours a day and happy with there money and job, there is no place greener than that. As for some people saying how can you do 15 hours legally a day ye need to go back and study tachograph and working hours law, and as for anyone getting paid for there breaks try to hold on to that for as long as you can, you are a dying breed
SmashedCrabFace:
Saaamon:
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.
Half of the posters on here can’t spell their own name or count how many fingers they’ve got; I think becoming medical professionals is a bit optimistic.
He’s Back
JLS Driver SOS:
SmashedCrabFace:
Saaamon:
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.
Half of the posters on here can’t spell their own name or count how many fingers they’ve got; I think becoming medical professionals is a bit optimistic.
He’s Back
My thoughts too. A breath of fresh air. 
the maoster:
JLS Driver SOS:
SmashedCrabFace:
Saaamon:
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.
Half of the posters on here can’t spell their own name or count how many fingers they’ve got; I think becoming medical professionals is a bit optimistic.
He’s Back
My thoughts too. A breath of fresh air.
It’s like the film The Rock. You know the cheesy rubbish one with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage (all time favourite non-serious actor).
He broke out of Trucknet (Alcatraz Island) and has now had to break back into Trucknet on a secret mission to save us all from eating ourselves over subject matter such as:
“The hours for my job are too long” 
“And the pay you gain from it is not reasonable in my “professional” opinion”…again 
“I went over my tacho by 5 minutes because I got held up in an accident nearby to my depot. Will “VO - Schutzstaffela -A” be coming round mine tonight with the Gestapo to take me away never to be seen again”…(Let’s hope so for your sake. 
)
or
“Somebody cut me up on the M5 and swore at me, please look at my heavily edited video and assure me I was 100% innocent as I truly believe I am” 
As an aside, has it changed much since you left SmashedCrabFace…No I didn’t think it had during the period you left us for whatever reason…We’re still on the same record since when I joined the forum and haven’t finished/skipped the first track yet…
So are you with us for the long haul?
I await incoming on my sarcastic comments. As I am sure I will have offended someone, somewhere.
C
PS SFC: I am tempted to ask to use that as a quote!
nightline:
I still believe very strongly that a HGV driver is doing a job that takes a lot of skill and should be paid a rate that reflects that, I mean we are at the top of the tree when it comes to driving, you cant get any bigger in your field of work and you ether have a lot of experience or you are well trained, to put it better we are professional drivers doing a job that takes a skill. I am not talking about huge money just a respectful rate for the hours and overnights we do.
Top of the tree?
Who you kidding.
scaniason:
I was a sparky for several years, and although the pay was reasonable, the hours and travelling was a nightmare. I live near Colchester, and was working in Cambridge. In addition I was on call 1 week in 3, and for that we could, and did, get sent all over SE England at any time of the night or day. It was quite often that I’d get in from work at 8pm, only to have the phone go, and I’d be off yo Wisbech, then Kent, then Norwich, then anywhere else. Oh, and then be back in Cambridge for 8am for another full day.As for dealing with stroppy goods-in people, trying dealing with some of the dregs of society that I had to - explaining at 3am that the reason they’d got no power is because their meter was in debt because they’d injected all their money into whatever vein they could find, and no, I wasn’t going to lend them any money or jump the meter for them…
Driving a lorry may not be top of the list for pay or respect from others, but it sure as [zb] isn’t at the bottom either!
Gary
So true Scaniason, but they won’t buy into it that there are worser jobs out there.
I wish some more of the complainers would go on shelf stacking roles, so I can get the goods I want in Asda when I want to buy them.
Also like rob22888 said, in my 7 years of part time work in different shops (in one supermarket company that starts with a S) even during holiday periods and inbetween college and university holidays, it was nigh on impossible to get a 45 hour week in, even if you selected the rubbish shifts no-one wanted!
You try living on them wages when your average working week falls between 30-40 hours a week, dictated to by a manager, not a contract, as the contracts have nearly gone onto flexi-time now to meet periods of demand.
PS Whose going to donate their boots to us then? I take a size 12 if you have any to give me, just leave your keys in the left hand boot for me!
C
Lorn trakta:
Unread postby dozy » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:52 am
Look,you don’t have to carry on doing long hours/truck driving if you don’t want to,but what gives you and others the right to dictate as to what I do and others do,I’m quite happy doing 5/6 days a week,70/80 hrs a week,it’s not hard graft but getting up at midnight and getting home at 16.30 apx is tiring,but it’s my choice and others,so leave us to get on with our job,trucking and long hours and change your job,not try to change ours,were fine.
N.b if I do moan at work which is very/very rare it’s about the 7 hr shift not the 15 hr shift
Unread postby Saaamon » Mon Jun 17, 2013 4:36 pm
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.So lets see theres the likes of you two clammering to do the hours that those in the far eastern sweat shops are yearning to leave behind, and there’s those with ‘rose tinted’ glasses thinking wouldn’t it be nice if people like dozy and saamon would toddle off and the industry returned to the wage levels in real terms that prevailed before the arrival of halfwits like you two who helped destroy what we were all quite happy with, and its US who should go and get new jobs?, have I got that about right?, during the days of log book control your ilk would have been imprisoned for doing the hours you do, frankly for what you coolies have done to the industry its where you belong.
Lorn trakta, you make a few good points but I reckon there are two camps on here, the ones that have done the job a while that remember when the job was better, and the others that only know, so therefore put up with it, the way that it is now.
The first guy who approaches the job as if it’s some punishment regime and is happy with it, well each to his own, and that’s up to him, everybody is different but personally I reckon an actual life is a better alternative.
The second guy who comes back with the predictable "If you don’t like it…etc… etc , why should I after 30 odd years look for something else, just because the job has has been ■■■■■■ up over the years by people who have just willingly dropped their kecks and bent over without question
making the job what it has become today. So I’ll just carry on thanks make the best of it,continue to try and stand up for myself, and laugh at those that don’t.
ok here goes I worked as a KP for 10 years till the end of last year the work was dehumanizing and the pay was ■■■■ as time went on I wanted the finer things in life and since a pay rise was not going to happen in a few million years I chose to try my hand at something else how ever due to a lack of good grades and qualifications there were too few jobs I could do so I used my own money to pay for my HGV training…
my first gig back in November last year was a sweet gig I thought I died and gone to heaven I start off at 5:30 in the morning load up the meat (pigs mainly) and then at around 7 or 8 leave the yard to make the first drop of the day earliest we got back would be about noon time the latest 3pm ok so loading was not a great thing but it was a necessary evil… the pay was better the hours were great (no more random shifts) and I would be off at weekends down side was it did not last as long as I hoped 
I hate being unemployed
robroy:
Lorn trakta:
Unread postby dozy » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:52 am
Look,you don’t have to carry on doing long hours/truck driving if you don’t want to,but what gives you and others the right to dictate as to what I do and others do,I’m quite happy doing 5/6 days a week,70/80 hrs a week,it’s not hard graft but getting up at midnight and getting home at 16.30 apx is tiring,but it’s my choice and others,so leave us to get on with our job,trucking and long hours and change your job,not try to change ours,were fine.
N.b if I do moan at work which is very/very rare it’s about the 7 hr shift not the 15 hr shiftUnread postby Saaamon » Mon Jun 17, 2013 4:36 pm
If so many people are unhappy with the wage why don’t they go out and get a new job?.. Doctors earn, what 150k a year, you can certainly live reasonably well on that.So lets see theres the likes of you two clammering to do the hours that those in the far eastern sweat shops are yearning to leave behind, and there’s those with ‘rose tinted’ glasses thinking wouldn’t it be nice if people like dozy and saamon would toddle off and the industry returned to the wage levels in real terms that prevailed before the arrival of halfwits like you two who helped destroy what we were all quite happy with, and its US who should go and get new jobs?, have I got that about right?, during the days of log book control your ilk would have been imprisoned for doing the hours you do, frankly for what you coolies have done to the industry its where you belong.
Lorn trakta, you make a few good points but I reckon there are two camps on here, the ones that have done the job a while that remember when the job was better, and the others that only know, so therefore put up with it, the way that it is now.
The first guy who approaches the job as if it’s some punishment regime and is happy with it, well each to his own, and that’s up to him, everybody is different but personally I reckon an actual life is a better alternative.
The second guy who comes back with the predictable "If you don’t like it…etc… etc
making the job what it has become today. So I’ll just carry on thanks make the best of it,continue to try and stand up for myself, and laugh at those that don’t.
What gets me is that no one ever realises that 30 years ago the old hands were saying the same about you chaps and in thirty years time…and so on and so on.
It’s just the way of the world, some things change for the better some things don’t and many people get to a certain age and put the rose tinted spectacles on. Long hours are nothing new.
switchlogic:
What gets me is that no one ever realises that 30 years ago the old hands were saying the same about you chaps and in thirty years time…and so on and so on.It’s just the way of the world, some things change for the better some things don’t and many people get to a certain age and put the rose tinted spectacles on. Long hours are nothing new.
You know what? you are maybe right, and I know long hours are nothing new, as an owner driver in the 80s I not only had the t.shirt for running and fiddling long hours, I had the sweatshirt and hoodie also. The difference then was it was the done thing, but thankfully things changed, and the law clamped down to the extent it is now jail for a fraction of what we done in those days.
Maybe when we look back at those times, it is through the pink glasses, and having learned a lot, and grown up a lot since then you see things from a different perspective.
The job was different then, and the majority of drivers were drivers in real terms, and pay was better in relation to living costs. The problem is the job has not modernised from a driver’s welfare point of view with the times, it used to be as far as I remember a 12.5 spread over, 15hrs work days are not compatable with health and safety at the very least. I know long hours go alongside transport, but so did child labour with mining, but work methods move with the times. Some on here would work 24hr days if they could and ridicule those who dare to say the job needs improvement.
I have been musing over this thread and after reading all the views of the posters i asked myself what has this career of 25 years and 4 months given me…
well its kept me in work for all but four months of it.
i,ve seen things, the good, the bad and definately the ugly !!
i,ve travelled throughout europe and visited several capital cities, although in all honesty i was probably cursing them at the time( paris inner ring road) ( brussels ring road you know who i mean!)
Yes i,ve slept in the coffin (including leyland roadtrain sleeper hammock) but i,ve had the benefit of lots of hotels, b&b,s and a few other sleeping arrangements i wont mention without waterboarding.
the pays been crap… and the pays been good. So i generally agree with every comment on here but i really am too old in the tooth to go and do something other than this. You see i am one of these muppets who wanted to drive as a kid and i cant truly say i regret one bit of it.
Thank you.
GBD:
I have been musing over this thread and after reading all the views of the posters i asked myself what has this career of 25 years and 4 months given me…well its kept me in work for all but four months of it.
i,ve seen things, the good, the bad and definately the ugly !!
i,ve travelled throughout europe and visited several capital cities, although in all honesty i was probably cursing them at the time( paris inner ring road) ( brussels ring road you know who i mean!)
Yes i,ve slept in the coffin (including leyland roadtrain sleeper hammock) but i,ve had the benefit of lots of hotels, b&b,s and a few other sleeping arrangements i wont mention without waterboarding.
the pays been crap… and the pays been good. So i generally agree with every comment on here but i really am too old in the tooth to go and do something other than this. You see i am one of these muppets who wanted to drive as a kid and i cant truly say i regret one bit of it.
Thank you.
And after that you are still whatr we call a tramp
Still a lorry driver then nightline?
nightline:
most of the planet works a 40 hour week for a half descent living
Check this page out for some stats on global poverty.
To summarise, 50% of the world population live on less than £2 per day.
dozy:
I’m quite happy doing 5/6 days a week,70/80 hrs a week
What a difference a year makes, eh dozy.
Ian58:
nightline.
Any chance you could insert the odd paragraph? A few more full stops would help. As an added bonus; **** off.
It’s the willingness of people who except the macho argument Of "it’s long hours and quit if you can’t hack it, that keeps wages down. It’s the cutthroat nature of the haulage operators who price jobs to cheaply to be able to pay drivers decent wages. 500 quid or even 600 home may sound like good money if you worked in supermarket or factory but supermarkets couldn’t get people to work 80 hr weeks without attracting criticism from the media unions or general public. As already seen in great number overseas drivers are willing to work same hrs are more for worse money,will people still say but thats the job.