Fruit and veg in the early '70s was on a package rate IIRC, there was a lot of money to be made if it was your own work, but it was downhill from then once it started being backloaded.
With the quarrying industry (the only one I was involved with) rates were not bad while the companies ran their own fleets, however it changed in the late eighties/early nineties when one by one they sold them off. Tarmac were probably the first to do that, later Tilcon in the central region sold the tippers over a period of time, they first gave drivers the option to buy which some drivers did, and then later sold the remainder in one hit. Our TM bought most of them (Fewston Transport did the same in Yorkshire) but Tilcon retained the powder tankers for a while longer, eventually they were purchased by Via Gellia transport though (they had already taken over Tarmacs tankers in our area) and that was the end of a large fleet. 
Only RMC (later Cemex) of the ‘big players’ retained their own transport.
Pete.
Bewick:
There is a lot to be said for the "pre Cell phone, pre computer, pre H & S, pre PC brigade, pre Tachos days ! Those were the days when common sense permutated through the operation and traffic desks were ( usually) operated by individuals who had “done the job” . Happy days long gone ! Cheers Bewick.
.
Mr Bewick has said it far better than I could, that was how the job was done
I started in 1959 (Fred Chappell, Batley), on the coal job for about 3 years, Fred gave you your work for the following day and that was it, you just got on with the job
I got a lot of job satisfaction from my career, I enjoyed it, sure, there were bad days but you took it all in your stride and got on with it. I wouldn’t go into road transport in todays age, the driver these days doesn’t have to think and plan…it’s all done for him on the end of a cell phone.
As I posted earlier as a driver I had to run my job via a mobile phone, when work was slack a quarry might find you a start but after that it was either go home with no money or phone around trying to find another load! I’m only glad that they were not around when Tommy Wibberley ran the dispatch at our quarry, life would have been a nightmare! Malmic if he reads this can confirm it! If you weren’t back when he thought you should be all hell broke loose, Tilcon fitted two way radios in some of our tippers in the eighties so he could check up on where the driver was but luckily mine wasn’t one of them! You could also hear the conversations he had with other drivers. I remember having Jack Clarke’s truck one day, he had a radio and was on my way back from Coventry when I heard “243 where are you?” and I ignored it. He kept on and on, after about an hour when I was almost back to the quarry he shouted “Peter *****, where the bloody hell are you?” and I twigged then that it was the call sign for the radio of the truck I was driving and answered that I was coming through Ashbourne so would be back in ten minutes. “That’s no bloody good, I wanted you to go to Meriden for sand down to Pershore so why didn’t you **** answer me?”. I tried to explain that I didn’t know Jack’s call sign but wasted my breath. That was me on ‘jankers’ for a couple of days and much ■■■■ taking from the other drivers. 
I suppose ‘trampers’ were much the same though, I was offered a job with a local firm on a Clydesdale four wheeler flat and they found you a monday start and then you were on your own after that until you arrived back on saturday and my friend who drove for another firm in the sixties said he had to do the same and had a big book full of numbers.
Pete.
Whilst learning the ropes i the early 70’s on vans and 7.5 tonners, i started on artics in 76.
I’d already started buying my first house then so money was the prime driver, rather than all flash no cash outfits, so my first 10 years were spent where possible on old school work on old school oufits which paid better.
The lorries were hard at the end of the 70’s, so was the work, lots of handballing, all roping and sheeting, day cabs so in digs where possible or it meant bedding down on two planks, didn’t get a motor with power steering for several years, those who started 30 years earlier would have known much harder.
By mid 80’s purely by luck having snatched a chance when offered managed to land one of the best night trunking jobs of the era, that came to an end as things do around 1990 and i morphed onto car transporters.
Now seeing out my last few years on tankers, been lucky to have been at the better paying end of things mostly since the mid 80’s with an odd few hiccups along the way, most unionised jobs had and still have better terms than those without a good union set up, i’m still in the union and luckily have a good job to see me time out.
Looking back, i think the 80’s were the best years by far (not just in transport either, the country was in a better place overall, and people were still fairly normal), 70’s would have been better had i been a few years older and managed to get a start on a dead mans shoes jobs earlier, but the 80’s gave drivers much better vehicles which still needed to be driven rather than steered.
90’s and noughties have been ok for me, mainly because car transport was such a specialised job, and up until recently mobs like the green death (got their fingers burned there, how sad) didn’t try their practices, so generally and having a strong union helped here, we were left generally alone to get on with the job, hardest i’ve ever worked mind on the cars and its still a hard game.
Luckily i got out of the cars at the right time and found something better, pure luck again.
My experience isn’t everyone’s of course, but i think the lorry game over the years hasn’t changed as much as people think, at least from a driver’s point of view, though these days there can be lots of sitting around vegetating where before it was far more physical, hence the game now attracts too many people who arn’t really lorry driver material due to idleitis, the worse aspect of now comes from the plethora of managers steeped in winc/dh methods of justifying their own jobs, mainly bombarding drivers with buzz word memos telling them how to do the job they’ve in some cases been doing competently twice as long as the twerps now instructing them, the one size fits all based on the lowest common denominator management method.
Finding the right job has always been the hardest part, but if you have the right attitude and take a pride in your work then now just as in the past opportunities tend to come your way, a driver who earns the right reputation and a good work history for themselves re competence loyalty discretion reliability etc will find doors that might otherwise be firmly closed magically open, the secret then is to look after that good job, sadly this is where some of the drivers, including those on second or third careers, let themselves down, not long enough in the game to realise what they have stumbled upon so don’t take enough care of it and that too joins the list of once decent places that ends up ruined in the hands of one of the identikit logistics giants.
Bewick:
vwvanman0:
Does anyone have any comparison of haulage rates from the 70/80s compared to today?For me a driver in the early 2000s looking at the photos on the Paul Gee thread brings home the changes in traffic volumes, would have loved to drive on empty motorways and no limiter.
Steve.
Mid 70’s Milnthorpe to London area and Kent-- over 15 ton---- £16 per ton.
To buy today what £1 bought in 1975 would require £8. Your 20 tons load at £16 / ton in 1975 gave you £320 for the trip, equivalent to £2,560 today, but, today that customer would get a 28 tonnes load from Milnthorpe to London for £850, and half that as a backload rate for a Londoner wanting to get home.
Another way of looking at it is to consider the cost of a new fleet-spec tractor unit in 1975 in comparison with one today. Using a 1975 Leyland Marathon, because I know what they cost in 1975, which was £8,000 gave or take £100. So that Marathon today would cost £64,000. Strangely enough, given the high-tech specification of a modern fleet spec unit. A buyer with some “clout” would get a new DAF XF, Volvo FH, etc for about £80 - 85,000. Of course 99% of today’s “buyers” would be financing their acquisition by some means, probably by leasing.
gingerfold:
Of course 99% of today’s “buyers” would be financing their acquisition by some means, probably by leasing.
Something will have to give sooner or later in that regard.
A whole industry based on the residual values of unreliable over complicated junk which no one wants when it’s out of warranty isn’t sustainable in the long term.Effectively the figures are based on the false supposition of a 10 year useful working life from something that’s only got a useful working life of 3 or 4 at most.
So everyone wants a new or nearly new vehicle with no capital outlay, from a rate that’s then based on a totally false depreciation curve to do it.Which explains why there’s an equal industry based on trying to laughably nit pick the return condition of leased vehicles to try to at least salvage some extra on top the quoted figures.The poor ‘collection driver’ ( unpaid vehicle assessor ) then told it’s his responsibility to ‘diffuse’ the resulting argument and hand back time.
Well I have been sitting back and reading and watching the input here, next year see’s us in our 50th year in transport and the latter 40 odd years doing International work. Would I want to go back to those early years certainly not but having said that back then we knew no better and just got on with the job in hand. 1986 was when I bought my first new truck and up to that point always bought second hand about 5yo and did them up to my standard but buying your first new truck was a hell of a commitment but once you have done it once it becomes easier.
Throughout the years we have what we call bubbles that is working on a particular well paid job but they never last forever so you have to make hay while the sun shines as they say, then one day you find you lost the work as someone has undercut you and usually not by a shilling but 30 bob but that’s the way it was and still is today.
Although now retired I still keep an eye in on what’s going on with two sons both now middle aged and well capable having being brought up as kids within the industry and things are definitely a different world to when I was running the company, today there is far more technology both in the office and with the trucks, remember the first mobile phone I had it was like half a brick but this followed on from a pager which alerted you to phone home but this first phone amazed me as I could talk to a driver in Greece while driving in my car in Somerset and it was like he was sitting in the back seat of the car and not a wire to be seen. As for modern trucks well they are complicated and if they go wrong invariably they have to be plugged into a computer to sort the problem.
Another main player are the chaps who actually drive for you, they are sometimes underrated but play a very important role to your success and we have one who this year will have been with us 25 years which is a rarity especially on International work. Of course at the moment we no longer require permits to work within Europe but I remember trying to buy up permits and EEC blue books to enable us to do the job and the first book I bought was K10 then all of a sudden overnight they were worthless and every Tom, ■■■■ & Harry got in on the action, also all the customs paperwork and clearances went as well but that saved valuable time so in practice you could get more done.
What happens when we do actually fully leave the EU at the end of the year no one really knows but from where I am looking not much will change as they still want our business weather we have a deal or not and the way the remaining members of the EU are refusing to fund a Covid19 recovery fund has certainly got Macron and Merkel very worried as they fear the whole thing is going to collapse but when you look at the cost of just running the show its no wonder.
In summing up my input the industry has given me a lot, worry & stress is included in that but I have worked for some really grand companies and had many good drivers & trucks but also some nightmare ones as well, never a smooth road and occasional bumps but enjoyable never the less. In reality I am proud that from my first truck a TK Bedford all those years ago we are still here and very active 50 years on in the industry even along side with the big boys who dominate nowadays, loved the job and still do so long may it last for my boy’s, cheers Buzzer
PS. By the way life in transport was hard in the my early years but is a lot easier today but today I am only a spectator.
Buzzers post about buying new trucks got me thinking. When I started with Tilcon in 1975 the vehicles (all Foden eight wheelers then) were changed every six years regardless of mileage. The top drivers got a new one every three years or less and the other lads got their ‘hand me downs’ until they qualified for a new one. The tippers were sold as complete and soon snapped up by hauliers, the tankers were sold as chassis/cabs and the tanks sent to Metalair at Sutton Bridge to be refurbished and fitted onto a new chassis. Some tanks saw use on three different chassis. Then things changed: I had the last new Foden tipper in May 1986 and was told it had to do ten years (it actually did nearly eleven, and then an OD bought it) and there must have been a reason for the change of policy but I don’t know what it was?
Some of the OD’s had new trucks in the 70’s (four wheelers mostly, but a few sixes) and then around 1988 a lot started buying new six wheelers. Malmic had a new Constructor, several bought Cargo’s and one an AWD, my future gaffer bought a new 3000 series Foden, so I’m guessing something happened to encourage them to buy new but again I don’t know what! However, apart from the odd one, no more new vehicles appeared and some were still running the same 1988/89 purchases in 2002 when I finished and for a few years after that.
I know that fuel prices shot up, rates of course didn’t, but what else would have been the deciding factors around the late 80’s in owners suddenly buying new trucks and then reverting back to how it was before then? Changes of Government perhaps, I don’t know but I’m guessing some of you business men will? 
Pete.
windrush:
Buzzers post about buying new trucks got me thinking. When I started with Tilcon in 1975 the vehicles (all Foden eight wheelers then) were changed every six years regardless of mileage. The top drivers got a new one every three years or less and the other lads got their ‘hand me downs’ until they qualified for a new one. The tippers were sold as complete and soon snapped up by hauliers, the tankers were sold as chassis/cabs and the tanks sent to Metalair at Sutton Bridge to be refurbished and fitted onto a new chassis. Some tanks saw use on three different chassis. Then things changed: I had the last new Foden tipper in May 1986 and was told it had to do ten years (it actually did nearly eleven, and then an OD bought it) and there must have been a reason for the change of policy but I don’t know what it was?Some of the OD’s had new trucks in the 70’s (four wheelers mostly, but a few sixes) and then around 1988 a lot started buying new six wheelers. Malmic had a new Constructor, several bought Cargo’s and one an AWD, my future gaffer bought a new 3000 series Foden, so I’m guessing something happened to encourage them to buy new but again I don’t know what! However, apart from the odd one, no more new vehicles appeared and some were still running the same 1988/89 purchases in 2002 when I finished and for a few years after that.
I know that fuel prices shot up, rates of course didn’t, but what else would have been the deciding factors around the late 80’s in owners suddenly buying new trucks and then reverting back to how it was before then? Changes of Government perhaps, I don’t know but I’m guessing some of you business men will?
Pete.
Pete not the 80’s but in the early 90’s we started to buy new trucks at 12 a year and got the warranty extended to 3 years and outed them at that time so in fact they were covered the whole time we had them in the fleet, this pleased the drivers as well and a happy driver makes the job a whole lot easier. Coupled with the fact that in the early 90’s the interest rates on borrowing on HP were very low so made it almost a no brainer, nowadays the boys keep the trucks a lot longer but they are on maintenance contracts so are still covered but when they do renew the now 7yo trucks they are talking about a different approach which is contract hire mainly as a new Scania to our spec is over £120,000 a mouth watering sum even with low interest rates and with contract hire you can have a new truck every two years, food for thought eh Buzzer
When I discovered that £1 in 1975 was equivalent to £8 today it made me realise how poorly paid the transport industry is now. In real terms I was far better paid in the 1970s and '80s than I am now, and that applies through the pyramid upwards from drivers, planners, TMs etc. No doubt some owners and directors still feather their own nests. Whilst rates remain low, profit margins are low or non-existent for many companies, so nothing will change for the better any time soon. In the middle of my earlier post this afternoon I had a phone call about work, my 5th today, and I had to dash out to deal with a problem. Modern day transport is 24 hours,7-days weekly, 52 weeks a year. All for low rewards at all levels. We must be bonkers.
Just a thought for the owners and former owners reading this. A couple of weeks ago, purely by chance when I was researching something else, I came across documents for a Bolton haulier that was nationalised in 1949. It ran 25 lorries, mainly 8-wheeler ERFs and Fodens. It was an intensive operation, night trunks from Lancashire to London, and in the opposite direction, with day shunters at both ends. The balance sheet for its last financial year before being nationalised showed a net profit of £1.75 million at 2020 values. No further comment needed. The owners got the equivalent of £2.27 million in compensation from the British Transport Commission.
gingerfold:
When I discovered that £1 in 1975 was equivalent to £8 today it made me realise how poorly paid the transport industry is now. In real terms I was far better paid in the 1970s and '80s than I am now, and that applies through the pyramid upwards from drivers, planners, TMs etc. No doubt some owners and directors still feather their own nests. Whilst rates remain low, profit margins are low or non-existent for many companies, so nothing will change for the better any time soon. In the middle of my earlier post this afternoon I had a phone call about work, my 5th today, and I had to dash out to deal with a problem. Modern day transport is 24 hours,7-days weekly, 52 weeks a year. All for low rewards at all levels. We must be bonkers.Just a thought for the owners and former owners reading this. A couple of weeks ago, purely by chance when I was researching something else, I came across documents for a Bolton haulier that was nationalised in 1949. It ran 25 lorries, mainly 8-wheeler ERFs and Fodens. It was an intensive operation, night trunks from Lancashire to London, and in the opposite direction, with day shunters at both ends. The balance sheet for its last financial year before being nationalised showed a net profit of £1.75 million at 2020 values. No further comment needed. The owners got the equivalent of £2.27 million in compensation from the British Transport Commission.
The wealth gap is wider now than in the 70s and 80s. Been bouncing along for the past 20 yrs. ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation … nding2019#:
And look at the GINI: the UK is an inequatable society. 10% of the population hold over 50% of the wealth.
equalitytrust.org.uk/scale- … 0of%200.35.
And more to your point the UK is the worst European country regards income equality.
Being told the national economy is doing well isnt much help if all the new money ends up in a millionaires yacht furnishings, rather than a workers wage packet, or pensioners pocket.
I remember a chap locally who had a lorry before WW2 and he reckoned a run up to Hull empty from the Derbyshire area and returning with a load of fish meal etc made him a clear £2 profit daily. Five days a week, £10 clear profit for the week and his wife and he could live on that. Both lived to be over 100 years of age, but I believe that he didn’t operate a truck after the war for long? I suppose a tenner a week was quite good pre-war, I remember my father being on only around £20 a week in the late fifties and he had a wife and me to support! 
Pete.
Franglais:
gingerfold:
When I discovered that £1 in 1975 was equivalent to £8 today it made me realise how poorly paid the transport industry is now. In real terms I was far better paid in the 1970s and '80s than I am nowThe wealth gap is wider now than in the 70
s and 80s.
Being told the national economy is doing well isnt much help if all the new money ends up in a millionaires yacht furnishings, rather than a workers wage packet, or pensioners pocket.
That’s because people believed the millionaire’s propaganda that maintaining wage levels in real terms = militancy.The rest is history.
windrush:
I remember my father being on only around £20 a week in the late fifties and he had a wife and me to support!Pete.
youtube.com/watch?v=3gFhxhDdxnY 8.06 - 8.38