I see on here more posts referring to the hourly rate as the Holy Grail of what to look for in a job, not much love for a fixed salary. I realise a fixed salary has the potential for seeing you shafted as you do 60 hour weeks for no benefit, but I wondered if, in reality, it’s actually how you earn the most money and have peace and security in your life.
If you want to answer the poll, feel free to answer how you are paid or how you wish to be paid.
stu675:
I see on here more posts referring to the hourly rate as the Holy Grail of what to look for in a job, not much love for a fixed salary. I realise a fixed salary has the potential for seeing you shafted as you do 60 hour weeks for no benefit, but I wondered if, in reality, it’s actually how you earn the most money and have peace and security in your life.
If you want to answer the poll, feel free to answer how you are paid or how you wish to be paid.
Hourly rate is the only way to avoid smoke and mirrors.
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Hourly rate for me everytime,.at least then you know you are actually getting paid for what you do.
I can see the attraction of a salary if you were getting paid for in essence more hours that you actually work, but I know this industry enough to know that those on those terms are in a very small minority.
I know a guys who do all their alloted 15 hour days, with minimum 9 hours off every week, starting at stupid times and parking up in the afternoon rather than the evening.
Why tf would anybody do that when they could work a 13 (at an absolute maximum) or less every day and still get paid the same? 
It’s a 50/50 for me I’m currently hourly which sees my wage jump around quite alot but at least I get paid for what I work.
Previous job was salary for 36hour week but you rarely ever done that was usually about 32. So it worked out better.
Salaried positions with no paid overtime are usually in favour of the employer not the employee. Unless the salary was excessively large with terms that didn’t bring you under minimum wage etc or see you working excessive hours for it then it MIGHT be worth looking at. But generally anything like that is a benefit to the employer as I said not the employee.
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Im salary Monday - Friday then hourly minimum 8hrs for Saturday and Sunday, suits me.
Salary is fine if you know what hours you are going to be working otherwise I’d go for hourly rate.
The only salaried job I’ve had in road transport was fixed hours on a regular run and it worked fine for me and the employer.
I don’t think you can really say one is better than the other it depends on the job and the employer you’re working for.
tachograph:
I don’t think you can really say one is better than the other it depends on the job and the employer you’re working for.
Absolutely. There are so many variables in transport jobs, that generalizations are of limited use.
In a previous salaried job, a weeks work could be knocked off in 4 harder days, rather than 5 easy ones, so I opted for a longer weekend. No local shunting available, so it was simply jobnfinish. Others chose to work shorter days or have later starts, the boss didnt comment either way.
Another job had a mix of long and local work, and hours were much more closely monitored, so hourly rate worked well there.
The devil is in the detail.
Salary is good if you have a decent employer, planners who dish out work fairly (this will always be an issue for a variety of reasons) and the type of work that tends to shorter than usual days, probably best on own acccount type operations, more likely to get stitched with excess hours up on hire and reward.
Hourly pay is probably the fairest pay method for most jobs, do the hours you get the pay, but if work goes slack money takes a dive.
I’ve had all the pay schemes going, straight percentage, proper hourly pay with dark money shift money, proper weekend and OT rates, continental shift hourly pay (very lucrative), and a mixture of hours and more bonus complications than you could shake a stick at (typical car transporter pay), on salary where i am now which works well.
Depends what the salaried hours are set at. Where I am I think the salary is on a 53hr week. Day drivers usually do more so get paid overtime or TOIL. Night drivers usually do less so end up owing hours and when that happens then they end up being put on all the longest runs much of the time or put on the shunter for 12hrs a shift, 5 nights a week. Being on agency I’m on hours on nights and it works much better. I may not earn as much because I’d be getting paid for less hours, typically 45-50, but I’d not be sat there worrying about how many hours I owe and how they’d be recouping that.
It’s what works in a particular job. Personally I prefer hourly, but then I’ve also done 4 on/4 off where it was salaried so all weekend premiums etc were added in and divided by 52 and you git a fixed sum each week regardless of what days you worked or whether you worked three days or four days in the particular week and that worked well too.
Try working for tesco with the most convoluted and complex pay cycles and calculations ever.
Thanks all for your answers, I think I’ve really landed on my feet with my role.
I was salaried once on a nightshift job. Paid for 10 hours but was always finished at 6 to 7 hours shift. That worked well for me and the gaffa was happy as he was guaranteed the lorry was back in time for the dayman to use. He always said if he paid an hourly rate we would drag the night out to earn the money and bugger up the day run.
I have a mate who used to work for BOC out of the Immingham area back in the days when it was a really cream job pay and condition wise and he was on annualised hours ( x number of hours per year). He drove a W&D delivering cylinders all around Scotland and the islands so because he was tramping he’d max his hours out constantly until come September time he’d reached his yearly hours target and would then be off on full pay until the following April when it started again.
I was a tad envious.
All depends on what hours are expected of you per month for your salary.If your not getting paid o/t then you don`t do anymore than the hours required set out in your salary
Do you get paid for o/t or do you accrue the o/t hours and have paid days off.
Some younger drivers might prefer to work all hours that they can and get paid the o/t where as some older drivers might prefer to have paid time off.
All down to personal needs.
Most jobs I would pick hourly rate as planner take the pee etc
My current job is salaried and it suits as hours are good , not many early start late finishes and most Fridays I’m finished mid afternoon , also good boss and bunch of coworkers
A mixture of the 2 is good. That way you can get freebies if you get back early and overtime if late.
I get paid salary my hours are 7-4 on fuel but usually always finish at 2, sometimes the odd day 3. So I’m usually betweenn5 and 10 hours a week up. If we have a bad day we bring jobs back and finish at our time. Saturdays ot we get paid for 4 hours even if we dont do them, and do around 1 in 4 Saturdays.
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Currently doing around 50 hours per week, never any more, but a lot of the time less, and salary is good for me.
Ken.
Am on a 50hr contract. If i work less per day i still get my 10 hour day. It has been so quiet for the past 4 weeks am rarely doing 6hour days