???????

I think it varies enormously. I saw a job advertised for class 1 bulk tipper drivers & it said 28-30K IIR, (some nights away)
A colleague of mine is currently doing his training, (desperate to get out of the prison service) He’s currently on 29K so it must be comparable or better.

According to the Stobarts trucks I see about, they are paying £10 per hour.

Not what it used to I think would be a fair answer. Wages have declined massively and also working conditions/terms.

If you follow the Stobart hate group on Facebook you’d find out that its Stobarts that have killed the lorry driving business in the UK by paying just above minimum wage to price everyone else out of the market.

It varies a lot.I’m in Lancashire, drive for one of the supermarkets,we’re on approx 36k but it’s long & antisocial hours,piss poor work / life balance.It’s very stressful.I wouldn’t do the job for a gold clock in the South East.
Next year I’m taking 3 months off,I’d happily take a pay cut for less stress & better hours.
There’s a massive driver shortage at the moment & lots of drivers are East European.Just because the truck’s on UK plates doesn’t mean the driver is..

Not what it used to I think would be a fair answer. Wages have declined massively and also working conditions/terms.

Quite likely. I had a mate who did continental & was making big bucks, but this was yonks ago. Also, in the 90’s, class 1 tanker drivers for the likes of Shell, Esso etc were on over 30K. If you had your ‘Hazchem’ licence that is.

No idea what theyr’e on now.

Train driving’s where it’s at!

Not enough in my opinion. I did it for a while and unless you are really strict with yourself you can fall apart physically very quickly. No matter how you slice it you are sat on your ass pretty much most of the week. Commute + drive all day + commute home if you are lucky, then sleep and repeat. Hated it in the end.

It depends massively on the area you live really…as well as the industry you work in. It can be as much as 15-20k difference

Nielsonwheels…. Not a truer word said

Busta can I ask what the stress is ? Deadlines ?

The stress concerns where we have to manouvre.
Today for example I had to manouvre a 44 tonne artic onto the loading bay at a store but the access road was full of double parked cars,I negotiated that part no problem then had to do a 90 degree right hand reverse,should be a piece of cake but as I’m screwing the trailer around on full lock a car what was safely behind me decides to park on the inside! I just saw the car as I’m taking off the lock so I didn’t hit it but it’s stress you don’t need.I got the idiot driver to move it whilst there’s queues of cars all getting angry..
Tomorrow one of the drops I’m doing has had a load of building work going on nearby & I’ve been told the access is so tight that both mirrors touch the hoardings down the alleyway I have to negotiate.
That’s just today & tomorrows ‘challenges’.
A few years back one of our stewards was researching stress in the workplace & read something that went along the lines of ‘HGV drivers stress levels are right up there with airplane pilots’ 😯

Years ago I used to work for a waste management company (I hated my job) I was manager/internal quality audit/technical advisor, etc. We had a fleet of (new and expensive) lorries moving wastes of various types around the place. I often used to do journeys with the drivers. It was enjoyable to get out and about and sit in the cab for a chat. But I wouldn’t have swapped places for anything.

The overriding impression I gained was that it was one hell of a hard job and really stressful. The stress came from everywhere… Managers pushing you to do more loads down tiny lanes whilst hammering you if you even scratched the paint let alone damaged a mirror. Pressure to bend the rules (on max weights, driving time, loading while on a break, routes), managing tiredness, being ruled by the clock, traffic, avoiding accidents, dealing with other road users, loneliness, etc etc. they couldn’t even escape paperwork as there was loads!

It was also physically hard sitting down for hours then climbing in and out of a cab in crap weather to get covered in some filthy waste product whilst loading. They got ok pay – but less then I got paid – but it was not an easy life and they all wanted to move on to petrol tankers or milk tankers or get out of the business.

Our drivers work around 47.5 hours a week and all start at 7 and finish around 5:30pm. All local work and pull around 400 pw after tax, other local companies are paying drivers close to 600 per week but there up at 3am and running till around 4pm

lots of drivers are East European.Just because the truck’s on UK plates doesn’t mean the driver is..

So?

munrobiker – Member
lots of drivers are East European.Just because the truck’s on UK plates doesn’t mean the driver is..
So?

I’m guessing the comment is to support the prospect of lower wage rates in the race to the bottom, work poverty etc.
Not presuming this to be the case here but the current fashion of overzealous challenging of any comment with a racial reference is tiresome.

Well, why not explain it like that? The way it’s put, implying that eastern European drivers are a problem, isn’t racist, it’s xenophobic. And are they actually being paid less (please present evidence) or is their work ethic and ability to handle stress better than British drivers? Or, as I suspect is the case, there’s actually no difference at all and there is no need to bring up Eastern European drivers at all. They are just people driving trucks, same as all other truck drivers.

Stobart ad on Facebook at the moment –

LGV C+E Class 1 Drivers
Stobart Group – Tilbury
£84.50 a day
Permanent

@munrobiker – you’re possibly right. I’ve certainly seen rates for trades reduce in recent years due to an increased workforce following an influx of migrants. Rates then steadied, some migrants have left and rates are picking up again.
Xenophobia vs racism is a whole separate (and interesting) discussion!

Feel sorry for truckers. Must be one of the hardest and most stressful jobs relative to pay.
Having to deal with all the cars at rush hour, parents doing the school run,traffic jams eati into their time schedule, etc…

If it wasn’t for the trucks our stores would be empty.

x 5 x 52 would be £21,970 a year 😯

How long before it’s a jobs taken over by robots?…

Truck driving is hard work as others have said. The pay throughout the industry is crap considering the antisocial hours and stress involved due to deadlines, traffic issues etc. My workplace is the exception in that our HGV drivers are paid a good hourly wage (£12.20 + night allowance of £1.85 per hour worked for the whole shift if you work an hour between 0000 and 0400) plus the routes are strictly fixed so you know roughly what the shift entails and what time you’ll finish. One or two drivers did go to other companies for a short while but came back very quickly after they experienced crap pay and awful working conditions. He was expected to work every hour he legally could and cheating of breaks (loading while tacho is on break etc) was routinely expected.

I’m currently going through my test at the moment and I’ll be happy driving for my current employer but there’s no way I’d go and work on the supermarket runs etc, too much hassle.

@ Munrobiker the reason I mentioned the ‘East European’ drivers,is because in a discussion about wages it’s relevant.They undercut UK employees.

Not presuming this to be the case here but the current fashion of overzealous challenging of any comment with a racial reference is tiresome.

Agreed
Maybe I should have clarified things before posting.. 🙄

They undercut UK employees.

Evidence please.

Our own drivers are on around £38k if roaming ie being on the road for 3-4 days at a time. A 25% bonus for unsociable hours is included in this. Not sure about other haulage companies.

How long before it’s a jobs taken over by robots?…

not very long. I wouldn’t be trying to get into the industry. Although probably sooner in the US and Aus than Europe, since we have all these cute medieval city centres and whatnot:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-automated-trucks-labor-20160924/

They undercut UK employees.

We’ve had all this before except it was the building trade which was the topic.

Evidence please

None offered, but increased supply would lead to decreased rate of pay if you follow Keynesian economics. East Europeans come to Britain because the pay is higher, and as long as they are intending to spend at least some of it back home then all they require is a differential. This is no criticism of their capability or motives, and frankly why wouldn’t employers take advantage of it.

It seems that the tables have long turned against certain manual workers. When I were a lad any strongly unionised workers were doing massively better than other manual workers. Not women though, obviously.

I certainly wouldn’t trade my desk job to drive lorries for similar money.

I took my Cat C test last year and did the job for a few months until I broke my hand (fell into a bag of sand!) and moved back into insurance.

As a newbie straight Cat C work through an agency was £8.50p/h and when I got my crane Hiab certificate and was on the crane lorries £9.50p/h.

This seemed pretty standard.

The hours were long, the work hard. Quite enjoyed it though but as I broke my hand mid November didn’t work a full winter.

Cat C+E pays more £12-14.50p/h and then nights etc usually a bit more on what I’ve quoted across the board.

I should note jolmes’ rates for a proper out all the time general haulage driver is about the going rate but getting in to that kind of work means getting the experience for thruppence h’penny first.

Oh and until you’ve driven a 30’+ non-articulated crane lorry through the very centre of York you haven’t driven full stop!

Evidence please

I worked Milk tankers for a long time one company had put caravans in their yard for the poles to live in. pay was 8.00 quid per hour on nights no bonus no overtime.
on Nights most of the factory shift where I delivered was Eastern bloc 23 people in the canteen and only 2 speaking english, after a year the shift manager was a pole also,so no language problems as polish drivers delivered to polish workers you did not need to speak english, on the farms to make a collection you never saw any one on nights any way.

fast forward five years I tried to get a job here in France driving with my European driving licence,no chance agency people insisted on a french test and FICO certificate all done in French.

And the English wonder why the poor have voted Brexit but all this is racist bollox that I dare not post in the EU referendum thread for fear of being called a liar and racist.

As a newbie straight Cat C work through an agency was £8.50p/h

pay was 8.00 quid per hour

That’s some serious undercutting 😐

I also asked for evidence, not anecdote. Immigrants are not the problem here.

Assuming you take no holidays. I’m assuming it would be more like

x 5 x 45 = £19k

in reality. I know it says “permanent” but I bet that rate doesn’t get paid when you’re on holiday.

Some of the skillz I see, I imagine they’re on an absolute fortune. Being able to drive so close to a family saloon at night, in the rain and expect to stop without ploughing through the car is truly a skill.
As is the overtake pull out without using mirrors.
The dark art of finding blackspots so they don’t have to look for cyclists.
These are skils that make these guys truly epic and I hope they receive the right levels of recompence.

@cs. I’m with you on some of those for some drivers. The pulling out to overtake-until you’ve driven an hgv you won’t realise how little umph they have at the top end so actually you do check you rmirrors, everything is clear but you can’t give it a bit of right to go any faster so cars invariably end up right on your arse and getting annoyed.

On even mildly busy motorways it is almost impossible to pull out and overtake without impeding someone…

@cs. I’m with you on some of those for some drivers. The pulling out to overtake-until you’ve driven an hgv you won’t realise how little umph they have at the top end so actually you do check you rmirrors, everything is clear but you can’t give it a bit of right to go any faster so cars invariably end up right on your arse and getting annoyed.

I forgot to mention the drive and determination that the driver needs to make the 10 mile overtake. It takes courage to attempt an overtake when going 0.00001mph faster than the truck in front. 😆

You would be surprised how much difference that 0.00001mph makes!