HGV jobs

[George322]

My 40 year old daughter has been offered free training up to HGV 1 or 2 .
She currently drives a van and drives 25k or more a year and has a clean licence.
We must have a few HGV drivers on here so I thought I'd pick your brains on her behalf.
What's good and what's bad?
What's to grab and what's to avoid like the plague?
I've seen a lot more women drivers recently but is it safe enough for them?
Any information or advice would be welcomed.

 

[Sharon-Tina]

Hi, I just wanted to say Good Luck to her!
I come from a family of HGV drivers... Hubby- retired, and my Brother were both HGV 1 Drivers.. my Bro was a Tramper/Trans'con/Hazpak, 25yrs. (Trans Continental Europe Driver) now passed into the other world! And Hubby was a Class one Trunks Driver, on the clocks all day long!! So I've heard all the Story's of the Road from both of them in the past 30 years. A lot of Ladies are going into the 'Man's world'..
I don't think it's safe for us ladies, not something I'd like to venture into anyways.. But if she has the Balls for it, I'd give all my Blessings! XXX

 

[Snoopy11]

@Kenzie (Mary Poppins) is the man to speak to.

 

[Kenzie (Mary Poppins)]

No diffrent for men or women it's not a job it's a life style some do it for the live of the road some do it for the money
I personally take 42k a year I know drivers on 20k I know drivers 0n 55k it's all what you make it mileage wise I Cover 150,000 a year if there's any aspects you would like to know reliving to todays market feel free to ask or private message me and I will help best I can just had a lad 3 door down pass class 1 last week and have my neibour opposite siting his test in Jan who have messaged me every step of the way for help and advice e and solar all amassed flying colours and carnt wait to actually hit the road themselves

 

[P4ddy]

Can't wait till I get my licence (and my life) back so I can book lessons. I'm coming from 3 years of bus driving (aka cattle truck) so I'm looking forward to carrying a load that doesn't talk back. There's a lot out there at the moment offering good money without tramping. Unless she wants to or chooses to do tramping I see no reason for it to be unsafe as mentioned.
A lot of people don't like multi drop but after going from 14 years driving 7.5t then a van running around all day to sitting on my arse for 12 hrs a day I actually missed rushing around racing with the clock and began feeling lethargic.

 

[George322]

Am I right in saying that the wages are not as good as people might think?
Kenzie's example seems to indicate that £15 an hour is the norm.
Do most people work for a company or are they Agency workers? Which is best?
I'd be interested in having a 'jargon buster' to help her to understand what things mean.
eg Trunking
Tramping
anything else?

 

[Kenzie (Mary Poppins)]

I rhonk normal starter pay is between 10 and 12 a hour belive ot or not most supermarket stackers earn better than I do bit my wages are worked differently
Monday to Friday I'm on 150 a day so if I do 15 hours 10 quid a hour so on Monday to Friday I normaly park up after 10 hours bit on Saturday I'm on 13 a hour and Sunday I'm on 14 a hour so I will do 15 hour shifts as it benefits me if I do a extra shop it's normally Sunday to Friday and I also get the 25 quid night out allowance so 100 a week tax free

Our agency driver are on 14 a hour but are notmaly used to cover out local work and go home every day so don't realy get the hours in

My pay suits me as its guaranteed set amount everywhere and having the 4 kids and the life style we live helps us ballance the books

I know the m and s contract I'm on there drivers are on 18 per hour but will often get a 6 hour shift and no nights out

If you want to chase the bigbmoney for a new starter you need to get on fridges and on pay per hour as fridge work is never ending iv been on a container contract since August other than 1 week at amazon and I make my own times I book my slots aslong as m and s don't think I'm taking the piss and pay my boss at 700 per shift my bos is happy so Monday and Friday are half days as I have to leave my yard to travel to them and same in reverse when I finish at the end of the week it not uncommon for me to actually go to work at 6am Monday and go home Thursday at 8pm even though I have worked 5 shifts and payed for 5 shifts in 4 days so I get a long weekend of

No money in hazmat or tankers now same pay as general haulage and stgo heavy machinery tends to pay well if you know somebody to get your foot on the ladder

On the flip side I also know drivers that are payed more than me on class 2 work but I just carnt be dealing with cash and caries and running round like a lunatic

Think I may of coverd most things

As far as sleeping I prefer to stop at services in day for a wash n food and sleep in layby feel safer as there's normally not enough space to be robbed and other trucker will beep

 

[Safety Mick]

Am I right in saying that the wages are not as good as people might think?
Kenzie's example seems to indicate that £15 an hour is the norm.
Do most people work for a company or are they Agency workers? Which is best?
I'd be interested in having a 'jargon buster' to help her to understand what things mean.
eg Trunking
Tramping
anything else?

Look at AV Dawson, (local in Mbro), currently advertising earning up to 50K (same as a train driver) and with local runs the driver gets home each night to own bed.
Maybe too good to be true but that is the advert on TFM radio.

 

[Kenzie (Mary Poppins)]

Look at AV Dawson, (local in Mbro), currently advertising earning up to 50K (same as a train driver) and with local runs the driver gets home each night to own bed.
Maybe too good to be true but that is the advert on TFM radio.

Same as waitrose but the money the drivers take home is about 10k short a lot seem to base it of the highest earners and maxed out drivers

 

[Kenzie (Mary Poppins)]

Look at AV Dawson, (local in Mbro), currently advertising earning up to 50K (same as a train driver) and with local runs the driver gets home each night to own bed.
Maybe too good to be true but that is the advert on TFM radio.

Just looked at av Dawson 12 a hour for 10 hour so 120 a day x 5 is 600 x52 is 31200 year leaves 20800 to make up on over time 16 quid a hour is 1300 hours which equals 5 hours per day over so that is clased as doing a 15 hour shift every 5 days a weekor 12hours 30 average over 6 days

 

[ChunkyDave]

My boy has just got his class 2..didn't pay a penny piece as his employer put him through it.. he is now tied to them for 3 years... he's been doing his job for 7 years now so I don't think another 3 will bother him.. as a binman he absolutely loves the job and reckons it's for life.

 

[Kenzie (Mary Poppins)]

My boy has just got his class 2..didn't pay a penny piece as his employer put him through it.. he is now tied to them for 3 years... he's been doing his job for 7 years now so I don't think another 3 will bother him.. as a binman he absolutely loves the job and reckons it's for life.

My neibour loves it on the bins job n nock and we get specil collections every now m then

 

[George322]

I worked as a binman in the 70's and loved it!
I spent summer weekends getting in a bit of overtime driving a tractor with an open trailer down the beach.
All the lads in the team followed the tractor picking all the rubbish up and slinging it in the trailer.
Job and knock meant that we could start as soon as the tide allowed and finish when we's cleared a stretch of beach about two miles long.
In the winter I drove a pick-up and two of us toured an area emptying the rubbish bins in lay- by's
Good mates and good times. The Foreman was a great boss. As long as the job was done properly he just let us get on with it.

 

[Nevillerover]

I always thought I would have liked to be a bin man when I was a kid (60s 70s) but as soon as they stopped riding on the steps it lost its attraction.

 

[Mark76e]

Bin man is a dangerous job. Not joking, literally up the road here one poor guy ran over his mate and killed him. They worked together.

 

[Lpgc]

My dad had a job as a binman for a while as a young man before I was born, classed it as his side job because he always classed his main job as being an entertainer in bands etc. He liked being a binman to keep fit... Back in the day when bin men used to walk round the back of houses to collect bins full of ashes and carry them on their shoulder to the bin lorry. His mate liked doing it for fitness so much that one day when they made him have a turn as the driver (which he hated because it didn't help keep fit) he purposefully drove the bin lorry through a wall so they'd never ask him to drive again. One day when carrying a heavy bin full of ashes on a shoulder a dog jumped up and bit dad on the bicep, hanging on his arm holding on in mid air with it's teeth. So when he managed to shake it off his arm but the dog looked like it was going to bite him again he flattened the dog with the heavy bin.

 

[Sharon-Tina]

My boy has just got his class 2..didn't pay a penny piece as his employer put him through it.. he is now tied to them for 3 years... he's been doing his job for 7 years now so I don't think another 3 will bother him.. as a binman he absolutely loves the job and reckons it's for life.

Where's there's muck, there's money!
So an old mate used to say..retired binman, and made his money too!! X

 

[George322]

Where I live is on the north east coast and there's a bonus to that because the tide comes in and deposits small pieces of coal on the high-tide line. Sometimes there'd be lots of it so as a kid in the early 1950's one of my jobs was to go with my brother and collect this seacoal into sacks and take it home for the fire. Just about everybody in the area who could did this.
Scrape it into a heap, shovel it into sacks, put three sacks onto an old bike with no tyres on, push it across soft sand to the nearest track and then push it the mile or so home.

Free coal - and very clean burning - what's not to like? Two things for starters;-
1 It was often ruddy freezing!
2 The seacoal had just been deposited by the waves of the North Sea so was cold and wet and this leaked out of the sacks all the way home and soaked your leg as you tried to balance the sacks.

Then I grew up and got a job as a binman and found out what happened to all those ashes.
Round the back of the house, grab a bin, hoist it onto your shoulder? Not these bins! They weighed a TON and only the hard cases hoisted them. The muscle-challenged wimps like me rolled them to the bin wagon and waited until another wimp arrived so that we could help each other to empty them both into the wagon.
If you got one at 7.30am there was a good chance that the ashes would still be hot and glowing as they would have just been emptied from the grate before the man of the house set off for work. In the winter you could see which ones they were because they made the bin glow red.

 

[Safety Mick]

Just looked at av Dawson 12 a hour for 10 hour so 120 a day x 5 is 600 x52 is 31200 year leaves 20800 to make up on over time 16 quid a hour is 1300 hours which equals 5 hours per day over so that is clased as doing a 15 hour shift every 5 days a weekor 12hours 30 average over 6 days

So his advert is true but there is a big BUT to make it happen, typical.
I won’t be changing jobs anytime soon at that rate.
I choose to put the long hours in if it suits me and it is for my own business not someone else.

 

[Mark76e]

My dad had a job as a binman for a while as a young man before I was born, classed it as his side job because he always classed his main job as being an entertainer in bands etc. He liked being a binman to keep fit... Back in the day when bin men used to walk round the back of houses to collect bins full of ashes and carry them on their shoulder to the bin lorry. His mate liked doing it for fitness so much that one day when they made him have a turn as the driver (which he hated because it didn't help keep fit) he purposefully drove the bin lorry through a wall so they'd never ask him to drive again. One day when carrying a heavy bin full of ashes on a shoulder a dog jumped up and bit dad on the bicep, hanging on his arm holding on in mid air with it's teeth. So when he managed to shake it off his arm but the dog looked like it was going to bite him again he flattened the dog with the heavy bin.

We have bin"persons" now and some are very small. Built like tiny children.
And they won't wheel your bin the 10ft to the automatic lifter unless it's in the correct position and the handle is facing the correct way.

Then they like to leave the bins blocking the driveway so that I have to get out and move them, usually in the driving rain, before I can park on my drive.