HGV Drivers paid more than solicitors?!

solicitors !

i'm in the process of putting my house up for sale--and i rang my solicitor--who i have used for 10+ years--for his costs to sell and buy similar. It came to £2600 with VAT--but excluding stamp duty.
Then i went online to get prices from conveyancing practices--and typically they are at least £1000 less !!

Yes Rob, and some drivers try to blame Boris, but successive governments of both main parties have pandered to their backers and not thought about the men and women who drive the goods to the shops to get food on the shelves.

HGV drivers deserve every single penny of their cash, hard grafters.

everybody wants more money!

Except me. I get an incredible amount of state pension...nearly £5 an hour over a 40 hour week. No complaints here.

And the poor rest conditions

Yes.
I used to do 3 x 15 then 1 x 13 then 1 easy one all with minimum rest breaks.
Most people have no idea how that plays havoc with peoples' health and mental well being.

I think those that tramp or roam are in the worst possible place crap food crap parking crap facilities.
Some say they like it.

Yeah, I did it for a year and it was the year that seemed to go the fastest.
As you say, it is no way to live.

What’s going on? Why the shortage? Is it that all the Eastern European drivers have slipped back to mainland Europe?

There are quite a few reasons:

There are some companies I am loathed to work for as an agency driver - Stobart's is the worst for me and many others too.
You do a 15 hour shift and the transport staff shout at you when you return to their base.
They plan 15 hours and the runs are too tight as they assume all drivers know what the drops are and plan everything accordingly.
On a couple of occasions, I have left the unit and trailer coupled and requiring fuel anywhere in their yard.
It's the pits, or it was about 3 or more years ago when I last drove for them as an agency driver.
They wonder why they struggle to get salaried drivers to stay with them.

LOL a 1 hour lecture on it. So the biggest factor is Brexit? Am guessing. Unless COVID has killed off a sizeable number of drivers?

This ties in with what has been happening in factories across the land. The factories are struggling to hire. They are having to go out of their way to advertise and offering more money. It’s a repeated pattern. The consumer is bearing the brunt of it all.

The consumer is bearing the brunt of it all.
the solution to that is simple--just stop consuming.

I think that haulage companies would attract drivers if the drivers were paid a better wage.
I have spoken to many drivers over the years who have told me "I got paid the same amount 15 years ago".
To me, this points to companies making profits and treating the workforce as completely disposable.
It is biting companies in the bums now because of the combined effects of the reasons behind why there is a driver shortage.

Morale in the haulage industry is very low and there is always a lot of moaning and complaining.
Money is the root of the problem for me.

Nobody gets a "pat on the back", financially speaking. Nobody gets a thankyou bonus, it is always seems to be how pay and conditions are continually degraded.

Imagine anyone knowing that, in real terms, they are being paid 25% less than they used to earn. It is a crushing blow.

On top of that, the public perception of drivers is always low.

British drivers should have been paid more handsomely for many years now. The fact that many Eastern European drivers have moved back to their home countries should increase wages for the British drivers whose driving tests were a lot more difficult than the ones foreigners had to take in their countries.

Better conditions too - drivers on the continent have much better places to park and eat.

That video covers all the reasons, John, of which Brexit is part of the problem.

This is a huge issue, bigmac.
The whole economic model is based on advertisers paid by companies to convince everyone why they are deficient if they don't have x or y.
It is nothing new https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising and I don't know how people will stop consuming (except for a recession) with the forces that are at work now.
People can try it on a personal level but the world keeps turning for everyone else.

Look at the out-of-town shopping malls and it is staggering to realise how many of the companies selling things are American owned.
Americans live with blatant advertising shoved down their throats every day, much more than the UK. We are catching up fast.

Go on then. You go first…