Train drivers are, as we all know, UNIONIZED.
HGV drivers have naive ideas about “all sticking together”, like some kind of 60’s hippy love-in fantasy.
That’s why the haulage industry gets away with what it does. You can’t have unity without proper organization, which doesn’t happen by itself, and needs to be funded in some way.
Well my ideas are more realist, there aint a chance in hell of HGV drivers sticking together, although if they did things could be a lot better.
That aint naivety more wishful thinking…but as you say it needs proper grown up organisation and funding, but I cant see it happening anytime soon.
btw each to his own, but the idea of a ‘love in’ with a load of sweaty arsed truckers never entered my head, and certainly would not float my boat. 
I certainly feel that lorry drivers could do themselves a big favour and the industry by refusing on principal to work for derisory rates of pay or for firms where the treatment of drivers is appalling.
In principle yes, but many drivers I’ve known have been totally unprincipled; leaving defects (massively cracked windscreen) to be fixed by the next guy who gets that vehicle, dumping work on others because they think they can get away with it (BS excuses that the boss wants B to do the work instead of A). Worst of all, those who are pally with the planners and arrange the easy routes for theirselves, while others get three times as a many deliveries to do.
Meanwhile, there’s countless newbies desperate for their first sniff of work who will gladly take those jobs regardless of pay or conditions.
The marketplace is saturated with “HGV entitlement holders”, thanks to people believing what they read about the alleged “driver shortage”,
zac_a, I think it gets to the stage of mutual contempt. If a driver feels he has been messed about with the runs, he would be more likely to not be arsed to report a defect on return, and so it goes on. The guy that then gets that vehicle feels he has been messed about, so hangs his run out and doesn’t wash the vehicle on return, and so on.
Also if a firm treats their drivers with a policy of general contempt (as many do) points cameras at them, charges them for damage etc, drivers with anything about them who can see what is going on, will not be in any hurry to either ‘work in with them’ or do them any favours.
Others will even go as far as to ‘get their own back’ in many ways, maybe in the ways already pointed out, and so it goes on.
If a firm treats you with respect,.a driver will.reciprocate.
You reap what you sow in both ways.
And this is what I meant about the fantasy of drivers “sticking together”, it’s never going to happen because it only takes one of your “colleagues” to eff it up.
Like the one guy where I used to work, who lost all of the rest of the drivers our job-and-knock deal, because he flagrantly abused the policy
i assume the company couldnt of pulled that one person aside and told him to pack it in or there’s the door rather than treating everyone the same
They didn’t, that’s all I know.
He was a lost cause; the laziest truck driver I’ve ever met, he’d phone you up and tell you the boss had told him to hand some of his jobs over to you because he had been given some “special” work to do. Total BS.
Also, he was a prime example of Dunning-Kruger syndrome
off topic but this is one of the issues of protected classes the boss cant get rid of him/her because of such and such so the majority suffers.
i am a firm believer of i can take a horse to water but i aint applying suction to its arse to make it drink
In this particular case, when the need for a redundancy came up, it was not last-in-first-out.
They created a “value matrix” and the person who scored lowest on that was selected. One major criteria of the matrix was something to do with commitment to the business, flexibility in the approach to work, and some other specially designed waffle that, clearly to all, put one particular person in the frame.
Mind, that wasn’t actually needed, even the briefest comparison of his tacho downloads compared to the rest of us painted a clear picture
He got a job at a big-name company doing similar work to us, except that Big-Name had vehicle trackers, whereas we did not.
He was a lost cause; the laziest truck driver I’ve ever met, he’d phone you up and tell you the boss had told him to hand some of his jobs over to you because he had been given some “special” work to do. Total BS.
I didn’t realise we had worked together Zac 
Well, if you live in Hartlepool: "How are you, you lazy fat B’stard? " 