What gets to me about it?
Job and knock for a start, paid for 11 hours but normally do 13. This means the job can be £crap per hour even if you work through your break.
Customers expecting us to be unpaid storesmen “can you rotate the stock according to date?”
Carrying 1t of flour up woodworm infested loft ladders wont be healthy when the ladder breaks.
Juddian, no driver has done 25 years but the longest serving one loves carrying and hates us “lazy gits” for using sacktrucks and pumptrucks…
I have taken a pay cut to move to a firm that suited me better.
I wouldn’t agree to a pay cut at a firm I was staying working for though.
I remember a chat with a boss and him telling me the rates were rubbish and there was no money to be made anymore. We were standing talking in the yard and when looking over his left shoulder I could see 6 not even registered r620 toplines.
Now I know that trucks need to be replaced but he could have picked a better place for that conversation lol!
Muckaway:
What gets to me about it?
Job and knock for a start, paid for 11 hours but normally do 13. This means the job can be £crap per hour even if you work through your break.
Customers expecting us to be unpaid storesmen “can you rotate the stock according to date?”
Carrying 1t of flour up woodworm infested loft ladders wont be healthy when the ladder breaks.
Juddian, no driver has done 25 years but the longest serving one loves carrying and hates us “lazy gits” for using sacktrucks and pumptrucks…
Hmm he told me lies then, said he’d been there 25 years.
Sounds like you have enough of the job and wish to move on, when it gets you like that its time to go.
Scanner:
All of this is correct.Except he’s not talking about working for the same firm for less money.
Even so … To be seen by future employers as taking a job with lower pay can be taken as a sign of weakness … and that didn’t come from me but from one of my old employers who gave very good advice. If n future the man applies for a job somewhere else and the new company see’s he has changed for a lower paid job they will think less of him.
I don’t ever remember having a pay cut, still with the same company I’ve had quite a few pay rises and I’m taking home the same money as I got 15 yrs ago ! 
I took a pay cut to go driving. Some could say I had a cushy number working in a frozen warehouse doing 7.5 hours a day over 5 days over a set rotating shift (6-2/2-10). Had an excellent basic rate with the option to earn bonus and overtime was nearly always available. I always knew what I was working as I had a rolling 12 week rota, had my foot well and truly in the door so knew exactly what I could and couldn’t do, I even knew what the managers could and couldn’t do even if they didn’t know it themselves!
I’ve now started driving with a company as a complete newbie, on a lower hourly rate working nights, working longers hours, never knowing in advance what my hours will be (I mean I know to a certain extent but not like before) but do you know what, I’m really really loving it. No way could I go back to working in a warehouse doing the same shifts, going around in circles in the same building day in day out. It’s a blummin challenge this driving lark, especially going to places I’ve never been before and the tricky manoeuvring that comes with it, but I’m thoroughly enjoying overcoming the challenges that I get faced with every day!
switchlogic:
Happiness is much more important than a few extra quid in my opinion. So do what makes you happy
^^ This again!!
I have been offered a couple of jobs over the past couple of years that pay a little bit more than I am a present
However I have stayed where I am because I really like the job I do!
you’ve come from a Tipper firm for the job your in now. Thought it was the dogs nuts■■? Why back too Tippers■■? 
switchlogic:
Happiness is much more important than a few extra quid in my opinion. So do what makes you happy
+1
Muckaway
I have left a job that weekly, paid more than the job I went to, IF everything went OK through the week and bad weather didn’t slow the customers down. The job I moved to paid slightly less but was consistent,so at the end of the year I was no worse off without worrying about a week of bad weather or not getting the right load to push the wage up.
One firm I worked for was taken over and in a short space of time was turned from a good job into one that I hated going to. The new boss had to honuor the existing pay and conditions but as soon as that time expired he came up with a pay offer that would in his words make us quids in.
No matter how I juggled his pay offer around I could only make it come out as a pay cut. It would have been a pay rise for the drivers from his original firm but not for us.
When this point was raised he said not in so many words, take it or leave it.
I took a weeks holiday and did an ADR course and started looking around, I was determined that I wasn’t going to cut my nose off to spite my face and take anything to get away and a few weeks later I found something a lot better.
As Pat Hasler has said you don’t take a pay cut, your labour is all you’ve got to sell, but if another job ticks the boxes but is a bit less well paid the decision is yours.
I would do the same again, it doesn’t matter how much more a job pays if you hate doing it and they can be awfully long days doing it!
Cheers Bassman
tango boy:
you’ve come from a Tipper firm for the job your in now. Thought it was the dogs nuts■■? Why back too Tippers■■?
I was moved off tippers to help drive quarry plant and wasnt allowed back on the road when I asked. Said a few naughty things, got the chop. Went straight back on the road with a small tipper operator but got laid off as some work didnt materialize. Got this job because tipper work was quiet just to keep the money coming in. Never wanted to handball, I’d rather tip the load off the back!
There’s a lot of truth in Bassmans words. I did once leave a well paid job for a job that was not worse pay but much harder work and worse conditions… I left Tesco which had amazing benefits, extremely high pay for just a few hours a day to work in shows and exhibitions for high pay but no extra benefits and far more longer days basically because I found the Tesco job so boring it drove me mad, a lot of the time I just ended up doing 3 trips a day from Brickmills to Kiln Farm and back, any more and I was ‘cutting the job up’ I did about 8 hours each day but it was annual hours so some weeks I didn’t work at all for the same high pay, other weeks I might do 2 days for the same. I left there and went to a job which involved me being away for weeks at a time, that was very hard and physical work when building or taking down show, but showed me more of life than I had ever experienced before, it gave me a feeling of achievement with every show I did and the rewards at the end of each venture made the sweat and hard graft all worth it.
Muckaway:
tango boy:
you’ve come from a Tipper firm for the job your in now. Thought it was the dogs nuts■■? Why back too Tippers■■?I was moved off tippers to help drive quarry plant and wasnt allowed back on the road when I asked. Said a few naughty things, got the chop. Went straight back on the road with a small tipper operator but got laid off as some work didnt materialize. Got this job because tipper work was quiet just to keep the money coming in. Never wanted to handball, I’d rather tip the load off the back!
Fair enough. Hope it goes well for ya!!!Nowt like pulling a leaver to discharge your load 
Pat,
I think that jobs like Tesco’s require a certain mindset. Everything about it seems so right but can you switch into Tesco (or Sainsbury’s or Waitrose) mode when you clock on ?
I did 5 years doing Leeds twice a night for 4 nights and Rugby one night a week and never gave it a thought until I was put on another run for a few weeks . After that I couldn’t settle back into it , the routine had been broken and I wanted to see other places ,I was out of the mindset for that job.
Breaking loose and doing a job that is outside the normal run of things must be very “liberating” but I think that you have to have basics like money and homelife sorted first.
I alway’s wanted to have a go at heavy haulage , the old type Pickfords work, where you were part of a team, but apart from one or two poorly (IMO)paid jobs that I couldn’t afford to take, no opportunities were forthcoming. I have sometimes wondered if I should have said sod the money I’m going to have a go.
Looking back ,I am reasonably satisfied with the firms I worked for , except the occasion mentioned on the earlier post.
Cheers Bassman
As most of us are working for quite a low wage anyway I dont see how a pay cut is possible.I would perhaps agree to working less hours when the work was slack.
If you’re offered a paycut, then the best thing to do is take redundancy instead.
The rate payable cannot be “minimum” UNLESS the firm is being wound up - right?
So… If the firm just want to get rid of a few bods that happens to include you, then sell your seniority for as much as you can get. If you don’t, you’ll end up being got rid of on sick record, insubordination, or poor timekeeping in the near future anyways.
Don’t forget the rate for redundancy will be based on your wages to date, rather than what they’ll drop to for everyone else who stays - another reason to take the money whilst it’s hot. It won’t be so hot next year! 
Pat Hasler:
NEVER … Agree to a pay cut from any company, it’s all BS, does the boss take the same percentage of pay cut ? … you can bet your life he didn’t and even so the same percentage amounts to not much for someone already making a lot more than you or me.
I have worked for a few companies that tried the 'We all need to tighten our belts" speech but it doesn’t wash with me and they soon backed down when you point out their flashy company cars etc, my company hasn’t even tried to get us to take pay cuts, in fact it has increased our rates, which is just as well considering they now have an executive jet to flit about in
The main rival in the refinery where I work out of already paid well bellow ours with no benefits, holiday or sickness aid and has told it’s drivers they have to take a pay cut so they were making about 15% less than us even without the little extras and now are on about 20% less due to our increase. I can’t get through to those idiots how much their boss is ripping them off.
I wonder how many have been palmed off with the offer in writing “Take a pay cut of 25% for a year, then get a 28% “catch-up” pay RISE guaranteed the following year” thinking they are being offered 3% over 2 years…
Let’s look at day rates for example:-
Reduce £120 by 25% and it becomes £90. Increase £90 by 28% and by the end of year 2, you’re on £115.20
Soooo… You’ve actually had a pay CUT of 4% - and that’s AFTER your so-called pay rise, and BEFORE 2 years of inflation have been factored in.
There are plenty of people who can’t count, somewhere comparable to those that cannot spell.
Never take a pay cut. A pay freeze with inflation @ 4% is a real-terms pay cut of around 4% as well.
To increase pay in real terms by a mere 1% per year, you’d need an offer MINIMUM of 10% over 2 years - or consider walking. 
Winseer he’s talking about changing jobs to one on less money, not taking a pay cut in his current job
I have to do a lot of handballing into different places myself,
it is tough going at times and i often think to myself id love to get another job that involves more driving and less drops but then I
think well it is keeping me fit and im always kept busy so the day just flys by and there will be plenty of time for driving all day when im older and not able to do all the heavy lifting and will probably wish I was back doing what im doing now so it could be just a case of the grass looking greener on the other side.
Tarrman:
I took a pay cut to go driving. Some could say I had a cushy number working in a frozen warehouse doing 7.5 hours a day over 5 days over a set rotating shift (6-2/2-10). Had an excellent basic rate with the option to earn bonus and overtime was nearly always available. I always knew what I was working as I had a rolling 12 week rota, had my foot well and truly in the door so knew exactly what I could and couldn’t do, I even knew what the managers could and couldn’t do even if they didn’t know it themselves!I’ve now started driving with a company as a complete newbie, on a lower hourly rate working nights, working longers hours, never knowing in advance what my hours will be (I mean I know to a certain extent but not like before) but do you know what, I’m really really loving it. No way could I go back to working in a warehouse doing the same shifts, going around in circles in the same building day in day out. It’s a blummin challenge this driving lark, especially going to places I’ve never been before and the tricky manoeuvring that comes with it, but I’m thoroughly enjoying overcoming the challenges that I get faced with every day!
And its warmer 