Lorry driver shortage

[Frank-the-Wool]

What's for tea luv?

Chips, grated carrot and 1 slice of pheasant.

Same as fecking always then.

You can Roast them or Casserole.
Had cold Pheasant tonight and very good it was too.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

You see @Kiwi Pete avatar is a troll? You should change yours to s West country version. Maybe holding a can of scrumpy instead of a club?

Bulldozing a rail off a pub toilet cistern?

 

[unlacedgecko]

Bulldozing a rail off a pub toilet cistern?

I didn't like to assume @Henarar was that why inclined.

 

[le bon paysan]

As Maccy d has run out of milkshakes, someone is happy

 

[Cab-over Pete]

It’s madness really. Food direct from the farm gate is so cheap compared to processed stuff shipped half way round Europe.
Pre covid my local livestock market sold fruit and veg from local farms/smallholders. I could pick up a 25kg sack of spuds for £6.50, and a bunch of carrots for about 80p. A brace of pheasants for £1. My wife and I reckoned if necessary we could eat happily for a week on a tenner.

We keep being told the consumer wants cheap food. What most of them actually want is ready prepared food, convenient that they don't have to put any effort into.

Just look at Deliveroo- if there wasn’t enough evidence that the idle West isn’t rotten to the core it’s that you can use a phone app to pay some overworked immigrant kid on a bike to bring you a slice of pizza and a beer while your backside doesn’t even leave the sofa.

The customer does put SOME effort in by answering the knock on the door.

 

[Nenuphar]

@D14 I am pleased it is a problem all over europe. They may realise they have caused it!! Or maybe not!!!
WB

There is absolutely no shortage in Ireland anyway, no shortage of any food in fact

 

[toquark]

What I'd like to see happen:
Businesses recognise that their drivers have been chronically underpaid for years, and begin to offer more secure contracts, more attractive wages and better employment conditions. The increased cost of this will borne by both the employer and the consumer. This will lead to inflation, but will only in part make up for the many years where inflation was held at artificially low levels due to a large immigrant workforce willing to work for bugger all. Longer term, businesses will begin to reassess their complex supply chains and re-localise some aspects of their manufacture and distribution.

What will happen:
Employers go crying to the government and demand a relaxation of the visa rules to keep the flow of cheap labour running. Existing drivers may see a temporary uptick in wages (poaching bonuses etc.) but it'll be back to business as usual just as soon as the MPs have had enough of being berated for allowing Nandos to run out of chicken and agree to a "temporary emergency relaxation" which will almost certainly last indefinitely.

 

[unlacedgecko]

What I'd like to see happen:
Businesses recognise that their drivers have been chronically underpaid for years, and begin to offer more secure contracts, more attractive wages and better employment conditions. The increased cost of this will borne by both the employer and the consumer. This will lead to inflation, but will only in part make up for the many years where inflation was held at artificially low levels due to a large immigrant workforce willing to work for bugger all. Longer term, businesses will begin to reassess their complex supply chains and re-localise some aspects of their manufacture and distribution.

What will happen:
Employers go crying to the government and demand a relaxation of the visa rules to keep the flow of cheap labour running. Existing drivers may see a temporary uptick in wages (poaching bonuses etc.) but it'll be back to business as usual just as soon as the MPs have had enough of being berated for allowing Nandos to run out of chicken and agree to a "temporary emergency relaxation" which will last almost certainly indefinitely.

Some businesses have increase driver pay 25-40% overnight. Just shows how much they have been exploiting their drivers previously.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

What I'd like to see happen:
Businesses recognise that their drivers have been chronically underpaid for years, and begin to offer more secure contracts, more attractive wages and better employment conditions. The increased cost of this will borne by both the employer and the consumer. This will lead to inflation, but will only in part make up for the many years where inflation was held at artificially low levels due to a large immigrant workforce willing to work for bugger all. Longer term, businesses will begin to reassess their complex supply chains and re-localise some aspects of their manufacture and distribution.

What will happen:
Employers go crying to the government and demand a relaxation of the visa rules to keep the flow of cheap labour running. Existing drivers may see a temporary uptick in wages (poaching bonuses etc.) but it'll be back to business as usual just as soon as the MPs have had enough of being berated for allowing Nandos to run out of chicken and agree to a "temporary emergency relaxation" which will almost certainly last indefinitely.

Reading on this forum, I think the conditions of work are disgusting too, not allowing drivers to use welfare facilities when they unload, and this idea of having to pay for your own training. Lockdown has taught the country one thing, that is the lower paid jobs are indispensable and the country ticks along fine with a lot of the higher paid jobs "working from home" and basically doing nothing! Those lessons are soon forgotten as we open up. The country grinds to a halt without supermarket workers, farmers, lorry drivers, bin collectors etc (all the lowest paid jobs). We need to recalibrate and lower the wages at the top and increase at the bottom. One of the problems, is all politicians seem to come now from either the law or PPE followed by lobbying then getting selected as an MP, very very few have ever had a blue collar type job, I know the joke about Peter Mandleson having a fish and chip supper with his constituency party and asking someone to pass the Guacamole (mushy peas!!!!) is probably untrue, but there is a deeper truth hidden within there which I think is very true.

 

[D14]

That can’t be true they haven’t had brexit, and all these labour shortages are our own fault for having a democratic vote to leave the EU

Yep the anti brexit have nothing to shout about. Oh what a shame.

 

[D14]

The Tesco in Lincoln sells chips made of Lincolnshire potatoes. Of course they don't mention that those potatoes are shipped to the Netherlands for processing, then bought back over as frozen chips. They go from Immingham dock to a 3rd party cold store in Boroughbridge, then to the Tesco RDC at Doncaster, then to stores from there.

It's all driven by money and profits.

You'd think though somebody with a bit of brain power would realise a processing factory in the heart of the uk could cut down so much transport cost. Even if its cheaper to process in the netherlands, it won't be for long as the cost of everything is catching up in every single first world country very quickly.

 

[Pieces_of_Eight]

I already have a PhD, so when the time comes I will go straight to the camps anyway....I might as well get another

I've often fancied a PhD, but these days it would all be in my own time and self-funded. Masters nearly killed me anyway.

I haven't driven a wagon for a few years and would be worried about making a massive cock of myself.

I wouldn't worry about making a massive cock of yourself, plenty of drivers have made a career of it.

As for careers advice they really should tell the truth

I remember our careers advice being absolute rubbish. If you didn't want to get into medicine, law, engineering, politics, dentistry or Sandhurst/Dartmouth/Cranwell, the school wasn't interested.

When I said I wanted to get into agriculture I just got a vague shrug from the careers department, and he threw me a UCAS book so I could find myself a Uni.

 

[Lowland1]

Reading on this forum, I think the conditions of work are disgusting too, not allowing drivers to use welfare facilities when they unload, and this idea of having to pay for your own training. Lockdown has taught the country one thing, that is the lower paid jobs are indispensable and the country ticks along fine with a lot of the higher paid jobs "working from home" and basically doing nothing! Those lessons are soon forgotten as we open up. The country grinds to a halt without supermarket workers, farmers, lorry drivers, bin collectors etc (all the lowest paid jobs). We need to recalibrate and lower the wages at the top and increase at the bottom. One of the problems, is all politicians seem to come now from either the law or PPE followed by lobbying then getting selected as an MP, very very few have ever had a blue collar type job, I know the joke about Peter Mandleson having a fish and chip supper with his constituency party and asking someone to pass the Guacamole (mushy peas!!!!) is probably untrue, but there is a deeper truth hidden within there which I think is very true.

It’s time for a revolution’Sten guns in Knightsbridge’ and all that a bit of wealth redistribution wouldn’t be a bad thing. Seriously though no one needs to be as rich a Dyson nor as poor as some are in this day and age. The raising of the minimum wage would benefit more than it would harm.

 

[smcapstick]

It sounds like I’d better start selling braziers, donkey jackets and Karl Marx T-shirts. The rabble is being roused!

Seize the means of production, lads. Power to the people!

 

[Ffermer Bach]

It’s time for a revolution’Sten guns in Knightsbridge’ and all that a bit of wealth redistribution wouldn’t be a bad thing. Seriously though no one needs to be as rich a Dyson nor as poor as some are in this day and age. The raising of the minimum wage would benefit more than it would harm.

The thing I liked when I lived in Denmark, was I felt the "spread" between the top and bottom was not as great as it is here. I believe there is no justification for the multiple times the average salaries that we have between the top and the bottom.

 

[Henarar]

Some businesses have increase driver pay 25-40% overnight. Just shows how much they have been exploiting their drivers previously.

could say the same about those that buy lamb,
perhaps they were just paying the drivers market price

 

[Lowland1]

It sounds like I’d better start selling braziers, donkey jackets and Karl Marx T-shirts. The rabble is being roused!

Seize the means of production, lads. Power to the people!

Right behind you comrade.

 

[Pennine Ploughing]

Reading on this forum, I think the conditions of work are disgusting too, not allowing drivers to use welfare facilities

And what percentage of farmers have welfare facilities for delivery drivers ?
You would be surprised if you knew,

 

[Ffermer Bach]

And what percentage of farmers have welfare facilities for delivery drivers ?
You would be surprised if you knew,

I remember reading a HSE advisory note on welfare facilities provision on farms, I think the gist of it was, if the farm employees fewer than 5 employees (I think), the toilet, wash basin could be in the farm house (provided there was access to this toilet from outside i.e. not having to traverse the "family" areas of the house), so this being the case I think most farms would have that facility.

I think there is a difference between a van driver dropping off a parcel and a lorry expecting to be loaded or unloaded.

 

[smcapstick]

Right behind you comrade.

Excuse ME! I’m no snivelling beta male commie socialist type, thankyouverymuch

I simply want to be around to relieve the proletariat of some of their hard-redistributed money!