Sorry to burst your bubble lads but I’ve been paid £19/hr for the last 5 years, guaranteed 10 hrs min.I have been on a DHL contract which paid a guaranteed 12hrs(£228/shift).
We get that because we’re worth it.
From Tuesday 1 October 2013 the National Minimum Wage (NMW) has risen in accordance with the recommendations set out by the independent Low Pay Commission (LPC) in April this year.
- the adult rate will increase by 12p to £6.31 an hour
- the rate for 18-20 year olds will increase by 5p to £5.03 an hour
- the rate for 16-17 year olds will increase by 4p to £3.72 an hour
- the apprentice rate will increase by 3p to £2.68 an hour
A good take-home artic driver’s wage locally is £480 a week if you are away all week, down to about £400 for a bad wage and away all week. Take-home pay hasn’t gone up for five or six years now.
Cabotage rules end soon and when they do, we’ll be earning eu average so expect a pay cut.
£10 hrly rate. Really?
Conor:
thetastytrucker:
We hear this word so oftenBut you are professional driver !
No you’re not. You are a vocational driver.
I think you,ll find if you get paid for doing it your a professional ?
4aaaa4dd:
Conor:
thetastytrucker:
We hear this word so oftenBut you are professional driver !
No you’re not. You are a vocational driver.
I think you,ll find if you get paid for doing it your a professional ?
Yes, if you do something for a living, you are a professional something. You could bake dog turds and sell them as ornaments, if that is what you do for a living then you are a professional dog turd baker.
macci:
£10 hrly rate. Really?
Yes, if not more depending on the job. I wouldn’t drive an artic for £10 per hour, I charge £15 for class 1, more if the works crap or the bloke’s a knob
GOG47:
I won’t be very popular saying this but some drivers have got an over-inflated sense of their own importance,steering a Tesco/Morrisons/Asda etc shopping trolley from RDC to a supermarket and rolling a few cages off the back is hardly taxing,likewise,trundling from a port to a warehouse and sitting watching dvd’s for 3hrs while your container is tipped hardly merits so called “professional” status(these are just examples I am using,nothing personal by the way),you should be paid what you are worth,if the jobs arduous,the kit you are using is worth mega-bucks and needs extra skills/experience to operate or even if you just get on with the job and use your loaf to sort problems instead of phoning the office every five minutes,then obviously your worth more
What you take there and what you do or don’t do with it once there are irrelevant. It’s how you drive it there that determines if you are a professional or not. Let’s face it, by your analogy no driver is anything more than a mobile warehouseman
OVLOV JAY:
GOG47:
I won’t be very popular saying this but some drivers have got an over-inflated sense of their own importance,steering a Tesco/Morrisons/Asda etc shopping trolley from RDC to a supermarket and rolling a few cages off the back is hardly taxing,likewise,trundling from a port to a warehouse and sitting watching dvd’s for 3hrs while your container is tipped hardly merits so called “professional” status(these are just examples I am using,nothing personal by the way),you should be paid what you are worth,if the jobs arduous,the kit you are using is worth mega-bucks and needs extra skills/experience to operate or even if you just get on with the job and use your loaf to sort problems instead of phoning the office every five minutes,then obviously your worth moreWhat you take there and what you do or don’t do with it once there are irrelevant. It’s how you drive it there that determines if you are a professional or not. Let’s face it, by your analogy no driver is anything more than a mobile warehouseman
No, it’s not. It’s depends if you get paid or not. I could be a professional footballer if someone was stupid enough to pay me.
I’m a sensible, disciplined and most importantly safe driver whether I’m being paid or not.
There is altogether too much focus on being a “professional” driver on this forum, surely being safe is more important than this pointless label. If I give my 12 year old daughter a tenner to drive my car to the garage to get a paper she is a “professional” driver, that doesn’t mean she’s any bloody good.
Harry Monk:
4aaaa4dd:
Conor:
thetastytrucker:
We hear this word so oftenBut you are professional driver !
No you’re not. You are a vocational driver.
I think you,ll find if you get paid for doing it your a professional ?
Yes, if you do something for a living, you are a professional something. You could bake dog turds and sell them as ornaments, if that is what you do for a living then you are a professional dog turd baker.
[edit]
In narrow usage, not all expertise is considered a profession. Although sometimes referred to as professions, occupations such as skilled construction and maintenance work are more generally thought of as trades or crafts. The completion of an apprenticeship is generally associated with skilled labor or trades such as carpenter, electrician, mason, painter, plumber and other similar occupations. A related distinction would be that a professional does mainly mental or administrative work, as opposed to engaging in physical work.
fredthered:
Monkeys. Peanuts anyone?Remember they’ve sent one to the moon - bet none of us have been there?!!
No they haven’t. The only animals (apart from bugs and microbes riding in/on their human hosts) to be sent to the moon were human beings.
Or were you referring to the peanuts?
I am an artisan 
A pi55 artisan?
Roymondo:
fredthered:
Monkeys. Peanuts anyone?Remember they’ve sent one to the moon - bet none of us have been there?!!
No they haven’t. The only animals (apart from bugs and microbes riding in/on their human hosts) to be sent to the moon were human beings.
Or were you referring to the peanuts?
Okay, okay!
I meant animal and I meant space (I think that you’ll find a dog HAS been rocketed into space) but it was just an analogy to make the point that the majority of us are not rocket scientists! :mr green:
More than one! Dozens of dogs have been sent up there (some more than once), plus monkeys, a few chimps, even a couple of cats, plus toads, newts, mice, rats and loads of insects etc.
Wouldn’t have called any of them rocket scientists though - and the best paid among them was I think an American chimp who had been trained to pull levers etc to get rewards (and avoid unpleasant electric shocks). He got bananas for his efforts.
I believe the closest any of them got to the moon were some mice who went on Apollo 17 - but they stayed in the orbiting command module rather than actually landing on the moon.
In that case then I’d rather have bananas than nuts!