newmercman:
Why are we talking about international work? Did we all become Romanian? That game is over now.
I know Carryfast is trying to rewrite history, but it ain’t going to happen. The same as his international trucking career never happened and that’s a good thing for him.
Can you imagine pulling a Carryfast at a border? They’d have the lorry, trailer and load in pieces after 5mins of his arguing black is white…
It’s only a couple of weeks ago that he was lecturing Switch/ Luke on ferries. Bear in mind Luke has done European for years, but CF knew more about it as he had used ferries on …his holidays
Now he’ s an authority on being an owner operator, presumably because he saw every episode of ‘Movin On’ and 'BJ and the bear, not to mention being an avid fan of ‘Smokey and the bandit’
kr79:
Your not restricted as an owner driver unless under a contract however mist owner drivers especaly doing the kind of work you are talking about will Work mostly if not always for one customer week in week out but like an employee may decide to go elsewhere if another firm pays more or has work that suits better.
If you ring up and ask about work you will invariably promised the earth and be told what you want to hear. Fast payment quick turnaround no multi drop collection etc. The reality can often be quite different though.
I couldn’t possibly have seen any situation in which I’d have been working for just one work provider.At least unless the regularity combined with the type of work being offered made that worthwhile.As I said I’d based all of my options on just taking work on a load by load basis as and where suited to what I was looking for.Which still would have been consistent with working for any preferred regular provider ‘if’ it was in ‘my’ favour.However it seems obvious that there would be no place for anyone ‘dispensing’ with my services for picking and choosing what I did in that environment.
As opposed to working for an employer as an employed driver.In which case as I said there was no point in trying to pick and choose the type of job in an environment which by definition wouldn’t allow it.
IE no owner driver with a unit who’s turned up to take a trailer load of freight from A to B and bring a trailer load back at whatever rate per mile,is going to actually be ‘asked’ to do a local multi drop run amongst ‘other reasonable duties’ instead for whatever reason on arrival at the job.
Whereas as we all know it is more than likely that an agency will send an employed driver to do what is described as a class 1 trunking job that turns out to be a zb local multi drop job with a 4 wheeler on arrival.With the driver then being under pressure to do it or be ‘dispensed with’.While a similar situation obviously applies in the case of direct employment usually on the basis of the idea of telling new inexperienced drivers ( mugs ) that they need to ‘work their way up’ by doing zb work.
newmercman:
Why are we talking about international work? Did we all become Romanian? That game is over now.
I know Carryfast is trying to rewrite history, but it ain’t going to happen. The same as his international trucking career never happened and that’s a good thing for him.
Can you imagine pulling a Carryfast at a border? They’d have the lorry, trailer and load in pieces after 5mins of his arguing black is white…
To be fair I did say that I’m talking about the situation as it applied mid 1980’s-early 1990’s.The East Euro invasion and the fact that rail freight transport has now decimated the domestic long haul container transport sector has obviously created a totally different hostile trading environment for owner drivers.Having said that Harry doesn’t seem to be complaining about his lot.While at the same time like everyone else knowing that the best days are probably over in this country.Unless it’s a new start Romanian operation or for anyone who is a train driver.
robroy:
It’s only a couple of weeks ago that he was lecturing Switch/ Luke on ferries. Bear in mind Luke has done European for years, but CF knew more about it as he had used ferries on …his holidays
As I remember it the basis of my argument with Switch was that the reduction in ferry capacity and route flexibilty is causing much of the issues at Calais.Which is more or less exactly the position of Road Transport Industry representation like the FTA.Bearing in mind that car traffic and truck traffic all use and are dependent on the same services.
Ask any owner operator or driver doing euro work in the 80s and 90s how often it was one collection and home or half a dozen group age wine or produce collections then flat out one hit up to the boat.
There’s plenty of container drivers now that still find there self dragging containers from one end of the country to the other too.
However this is up there with herding cats so il leave it at that.
kr79:
Ask any owner operator or driver doing euro work in the 80s and 90s how often it was one collection and home or half a dozen group age wine or produce collections then flat out one hit up to the boat.
There’s plenty of container drivers now that still find there self dragging containers from one end of the country to the other too.
However this is up there with herding cats so il leave it at that.
It’s anyone’s guess why anyone would have been doing that when they were crying out for traction hauling full trailers to Southern Italy and back for unaccompanied transit to Malta for just one example of what I missed out on.
As for uk long haul container work I’d guess that would fit in with your example of do all the local zb or miss out on the few runs hauling the boxes that missed the train.
Geoffo:
I’ve never done traction work or pulled for another transport company, as they take their share first before you get yours.
Going by the usual advertised rates where is the problem assuming fuel costs - VAT .While the aim of being an owner driver is to make a decent wage with the advantages of being your own guvnor and choosing type of work.Not make enough profit to start up a logistics empire.
I’m not knocking people who choose to do traction work. It’s just not for me…
I make good money doing it my way ( ), that’s all…
If you’re making a good living working for others, then carry on… No prob’s with that…
Carryfast, to work the job your way, ie picking a load that suits you and gets you where you want to go is possible, but the only way you will do that is working for the likes of barronwood, borderfreight and the many others on sites like freightexchange or the back pages of trucking mags
The problem is though all , and i mean all of this work is paid at a backload rate and theres no way you could make a living at it hence the reason as said above that most owner drivers sub to a transport firm that pays half decent and sticks with them full time, the carefree way of life you describe just taking the loads that suit you as when you want them is a nice way to work but would see you bankrupt within 3 months
chaversdad:
Carryfast, to work the job your way, ie picking a load that suits you and gets you where you want to go is possible, but the only way you will do that is working for the likes of barronwood, borderfreight and the many others on sites like freightexchange or the back pages of trucking mags
The problem is though all , and i mean all of this work is paid at a backload rate and theres no way you could make a living at it hence the reason as said above that most owner drivers sub to a transport firm that pays half decent and sticks with them full time, the carefree way of life you describe just taking the loads that suit you as when you want them is a nice way to work but would see you bankrupt within 3 months
As I’ve said the type of rates which I was hearing in the day were around + or - £1 per mile.From memory I think contintental diesel prices were way below those here.While I didn’t reach the same conclusion of bankruptcy at those rates it was obviously not ideal and certainly tight.Having said that by my calculations even at uk diesel prices that figure still allowed enough for a better wage than I ever earn’t as employed and that was before I since found out that we’re talking fuel cost - VAT guaranteed.The key in those calculations being don’t go for the typical expensive new/nearly new wagon with loads of outstanding finance liabilities.
think carryfast has been watching that crappy trucking wars or whatever the programme is.
its either sub contract to a company and have regular work, or go and find a customer and provide the traction, I doubt either will ever allow you to pick where and when you want to go.
V40LLY:
If there’s the slightest glimmer of hope, that an individual can make any money out of running their own truck, surely the reward isn’t substantial enough to bother with it. Not to mention all the hassle and anxiety that you’d endure.
It depends on the definitions of reward.If it means earning at least as much as an employed driver hopefully a bit more and being able to choose from a better choice of work and being your own boss.Then the ‘reward’ certainly is arguably worth all the downsides.
Do you know anyone, who has his own truck, that can afford to live in a big house, drive a shiny new 7 Series BMW and books 4 exotic holidays from out of a Kuoni Brochure, each year?
kr79:
Ask any owner operator or driver doing euro work in the 80s and 90s how often it was one collection and home or half a dozen group age wine or produce collections then flat out one hit up to the boat.
There’s plenty of container drivers now that still find there self dragging containers from one end of the country to the other too.
However this is up there with herding cats so il leave it at that.
1986 Bristol to Malaga with a F12 /tanker . Tip and clean . Refill and back to Ipswich to tip. And start it all again !
£3500 per trip . £1200 for me and missus double cabbing it , £500 fuel . The rest went on ferry, truck , tyres and maintenance etc etc etc.
It was a bloody good living for a few years.
You would not get anything like that now …Glad I am retired to some extent.
If you could get a pound a mile to Southern Italy in the 80s then you were pulling something dodgy, the rates for full loads going down were diabolical, the money has always been in groupage, the rates have always been better. The better forwarders wouldn’t have you running around too much, you’d clear in the morning, get the groupage off after lunch and either do a delivery or make your way to one after that. The next day was spent doing a collection or two, back to the warehouse to top up and then giddy up home.
For a single owner operator to do one a week, which was how you made decent money, you needed to ship out Tuesday or Friday so that you could put a casual driver in the lorry to tip and reload it for you. This was the main reason I went with silly horsepower lorries at the time, they never stood still, so I wanted something that could take a beating week in and week out.
Running up and down in a week would’ve been a lot easier doing full loads, but they were all sewn up by the likes of LKW Walter and the like, pulling for them was a quick way to go skint as the rates were terrible, but they suckered people in with their quick pay schemes and fast turnarounds.
There was money to be made, but you had to have your wits about you and be prepared to put in some serious graft. I did OK as I had a total disregard for driver’s hours laws and duty paid fuel, I also topped up as often as I could and as a result hit some big numbers when they started weighing lorries before boarding a ferry.
I was not alone in doing this, not just owner drivers either, this is why I chuckle now when people complain about unfair competition for the Eastern European rate cutters, they may have some questionable practices, but believe me, they have nothing on the way we used to rampage through the continent.
we used to do uk spain, spain Greece, Greece Italy, Italy uk 10-14 days round robin think that iirc was about 7k all in.that was early 90’s.
think P&O at the time paid about 77p per km too, which was great when running not so great stripping tilts down to load steel. I refused once and saw my mileage go from 2500-3200km to about 1800.
think the desk clerk was a chap called pete wellham at teeside, I have never had so much satisfaction throwing paperwork back at someone and telling him to stuff his work as I did there.
but all places are the same and if doing subby work will often need reminding its your truck not one of their own.
newmercman:
If you could get a pound a mile to Southern Italy in the 80s then you were pulling something dodgy, the rates for full loads going down were diabolical, the money has always been in groupage, the rates have always been better.
For a single owner operator to do one a week, which was how you made decent money, you needed to ship out Tuesday or Friday so that you could put a casual driver in the lorry to tip and reload it for you. This was the main reason I went with silly horsepower lorries at the time, they never stood still, so I wanted something that could take a beating week in and week out.
Running up and down in a week would’ve been a lot easier doing full loads, but they were all sewn up by the likes of LKW Walter and the like, pulling for them was a quick way to go skint as the rates were terrible, but they suckered people in with their quick pay schemes and fast turnarounds.
I’m only going by hazy memory in the day which was definitely would have been the period between mid 1980’s-early 1990’s.Which as I said I think varied between ‘- £1’ ( 80-90p ? ) to at best around £1.10p at the later point in time ?.With fuel costs obviously being less during the earlier part of that period v later.I never even bothered looking at groupage work because it seemed to defeat the object of my reasons for wanting to work for myself choosing what I preferred to do.In that environment it wouldn’t have been surprising that full loads would have paid less than a groupage operation as you’ve described.Being that I’m sure that most owner drivers were looking for the former not the latter.
Although having said that I’d say that the majority of the work on offer was full loads anyway.With any lower rate probably more than compensated for in the form of more money earn’t running from point A to point B than parked up messing about loading and tipping at points C,D,E and F.
Multi drop is nearly always better for a one man band with a normal unit and trailer and even more so if you had an EEC book and could drop off on the way down and pick up on the way back, I did that a few times when things were quiet after Xmas and in August. A load of groupage from Italy with drops in Paris and Bruxelles on the way home, the money wasn’t fantastic, but it saved sitting around waiting for somebody to find enough freight to fill a trailer.
), that’s all…