robroy:
Will this be OUR year do you reckon.
Firstly we all have the dcpc so we are now officially professionals now (yeh I know, I’m kidding)
A lot of us employed drivers have got pay raises, maybe not enough but we’re getting there.
You agency lads say that you are (like the old days ) starting to call the shots on wage rates and showing those [zb] by playing them off against each other, and picking and choosing, (personally I would like to see them all go out of business and [zb] right off, but that’s another thread entirely)
Will Transport bosses realize that they will need to get out of the Victorian mill owners zone and start treating drivers like grown men (or women) as they had to and did when I started.
Don’t turn it into a thread for slagging the Poles coming in, as the bad ones do and will stand out and the better ones raise to the top.
So is it to be our year… or true to form as drivers will you turn into another [zb] up after 6 months by being conned, and bending to artificial pressure set by bosses to prevent us from winning, thus culminating in a severe [zb] storm, and general [zb] up…we all know what drivers are capable of and what they are prepared to do without question.
So here’s to a good 12:months for drivers ,…I hope.
You have a point here ,my brother has given the star driver a £100 per week pay rise ,and deliveries to London and construction sites seem to be busy for us in these last 4 months and bookings for January are looking good .
bonnie lass:
My reading of your post wasnt of clear understanding, I seem to have got lost on the first couple of lines.
If you are on about them going over the speed limit gaining points, well they have been doing that for years anyway, so nothings changed there.
Exactly, nothing has changed, no more work will be getting done, the only difference will be that they now won’t risk getting points for what has been a perfectly safe speed for decades. Just how much extra work do you think you’ll be doing on a typical nine hour drive day on a mixture of roads, where only some of them are single carriage way, with all of the obstacles to constant 50mph running that I described above. You’re in the UK for God’s sake, you can’t go more than 3 miles before having to stop or slow down for one thing or another. The extra 10mph you’ll be able to do on some of the roads that you’re on some of the time will serv e no other purpose other than to make your truck less of rolling road block for no other purpose that it was deemed to be a safe maximum speed in our grandparents day.
Generally on a shift you may drive a mixture of some signal carriageways & motorways, it would depend on what your trip or trips/how many drops etc are set for that shift. If you have a nine or ten hour driving day, & the speed limits are increased, then you should get finished a bit quicker according to the planners& they will be looking to increase the trips ( even if its another short one) where they can to maximise productivity.
Really ? 20 years ago maybe but in today’s climate with all the red tape and rate slashing I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole ill settle for a good regular income and when i leave work ill sleep much better
bonnie lass:
For some it works and others it doesn’t, like any self employed business it takes a lot of thought, hard graft etc etc. Twenty years ago it was a different era,
Yeh different, but maybe not in the way I think that you mean. It was easier then than today, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
I stopped being an owner driver 20yrs ago, but given the choice with all the extra regulatory b/s since then 20yrs ago was a better time to start than it would be today.
I understand what you are saying, a lot of things where easier twenty years ago, I was in the agricultural industry then. I doubt if I will ever be a o/ driver, though I don’t like the word never( it’s too final ), & you never know what can happen in the future.
bonnie lass:
Generally on a shift you may drive a mixture of some signal carriageways & motorways, it would depend on what your trip or trips/how many drops etc are set for that shift. If you have a nine or ten hour driving day, & the speed limits are increased, then you should get finished a bit quicker according to the planners& they will be looking to increase the trips ( even if its another short one) where they can to maximise productivity.
You’ll still only be doing nine or ten hours drive though, so no more actual work apart from angling your foot half a centimetre more towards the floor on some roads, some of the time. Why shouldn’t a commercial company utilise its employee’s in a more productive way? You won’t be doing “another” trip, no matter how short, you’ll have a few minutes a day gained, that’s it. You’ll be getting paid for your time like now, you’ll be less of a rolling road block, unlike now and the company won’t really be getting anymore profit out of you because no one in real life works all of their hours and minutes anyway, you don’t finish each shift at 8:59 driving, you’re not worked and planned that efficiently because such a thing is impossible and as such the very very small difference to over all times the increase in speed limit will make, will be lost throughout the day with all the stopping and starting and what may now result in a driving time next Tuesday of 8:43 in a 13hr spread will now be 8:37 in a 13hr spread. What are they going to do with the extra six minutes that they weren’t going to do with the 17 minutes of excess time you’d of had anyway in this hypothetical situation?
bonnie lass:
Generally on a shift you may drive a mixture of some signal carriageways & motorways, it would depend on what your trip or trips/how many drops etc are set for that shift. If you have a nine or ten hour driving day, & the speed limits are increased, then you should get finished a bit quicker according to the planners& they will be looking to increase the trips ( even if its another short one) where they can to maximise productivity.
You’ll still only be doing nine or ten hours drive though, so no more actual work apart from angling your foot half a centimetre more towards the floor on some roads, some of the time. Why shouldn’t a commercial company utilise its employee’s in a more productive way? You won’t be doing “another” trip, no matter how short, you’ll have a few minutes a day gained, that’s it. You’ll be getting paid for your time like now, you’ll be less of a rolling road block, unlike now and the company won’t really be getting anymore profit out of you because no one in real life works all of their hours and minutes anyway, you don’t finish each shift at 8:59 driving, you’re not worked and planned that efficiently because such a thing is impossible and as such the very very small difference to over all times the increase in speed limit will make, will be lost throughout the day with all the stopping and starting and what may now result in a driving time next Tuesday of 8:43 in a 13hr spread will now be 8:37 in a 13hr spread. What are they going to do with the extra six minutes that they weren’t going to do with the 17 minutes of excess time you’d of had anyway in this hypothetical situation?
Okay sounds good , so I won’t be overworked , or dye of exhaustion after all ,
bjd:
I don’t see much changing to be fair ,and the reason is i don’t think we that is to say drivers will change ! until we start acting like professionals and actually thinking of our self s as professionals we can hardly expect to be treated as such can we ? and to be fair you only have to read some of the nonsense on here and look at the standards of driving on the road ie tailgating , speeding , running through road works like lunatics allowing planners to apply pressure ect and allowing company’s to pay low wages by working for that rate anyway thats my rant done stay safe out there chaps
burnley-si:
the end of the 40mph speed limit 8th april and counting
Yeh, cos that’s gonna solve all our probs in the job ain’t it I can just hear it now ‘‘You will easy get that last drop off now and get back’’ , 9hrs x 10mph = 90 mile extra per day (in theory) for the same money,and fewer nights out paid to boot, yeh, spot on, can’t wait mate
well buy your own truck and you dont need worry about things like that do you
bonnie lass:
Okay sounds good , so I won’t be overworked , or dye of exhaustion after all ,
Nope. Your truck will use a bit more fuel so in a way its not in your employers best interest at all, but you as a driver won’t notice anything in my opinion with regards expected work load. I’m sure some firms will try it on at first but when they’re having drivers run out of time 6 miles from the yard because they were planning like an idiot based on an increased speed limit and a theoretical time gain of 8 minutes per nine hour drive, that will come to an end.
bonnie lass:
Okay sounds good , so I won’t be overworked , or dye of exhaustion after all ,
Nope. Your truck will use a bit more fuel so in a way its not in your employers best interest at all, but you as a driver won’t notice anything in my opinion with regards expected work load. I’m sure some firms will try it on at first but when they’re having drivers run out of time 6 miles from the yard because they were planning like an idiot based on an increased speed limit and a theoretical time gain of 8 minutes per nine hour drive, that will come to an end.
Happy days for everybody ahead then , well …once the planners come unstuck
Just for the record RH, the extra 90miles per day in my post was stated as ‘in theory’ it was a slight exaggeration to stress and illustrate a point that the 40 to 50mph increase was not all good in terms of workload and potential extra employer pressure.
now (yeh I know, I’m kidding)
I can just hear it now ‘‘You will easy get that last drop off now and get back’’ , 9hrs x 10mph = 90 mile extra per day (in theory) for the same money,and fewer nights out paid to boot, yeh, spot on, can’t wait mate 
