temporary 'driver employment agencies only as a last resort. They
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would expect to find drivers with varying degrees of availability, ability, experience and acceptability. Not surprisingly, many were reluctant to put their trucks, and even the future of an established contract into the hands of an unknown quantity.
Many WV drivers also saw agency work as a last resort, for reasons associated with working conditions and rates. There was also the knock-on effect. Who would employ a driver who had only been working for an agency? And if one did, how would the driver square it with his union?
Things have changed. These days major transport concerns are involved in operating LGV driver supply agencies. Some agencies offer full time employment, and one is even providing drivers with subsidised accommodation. Many agencies train their drivers, and the unions are accepting that temporary employment is often a step to a full-time job.
A CM poll of agencies supplying LGV drivers nationwide suggests that despite the recession 1993 was the best for years.
Manpower is one of the largest UK employment agencies; it now has some 5,000 WV drivers on its books and most of them are fully employed with all the associated benefits. "In the fast-moving consumer goods distribution sector of the industry the drivers are generally well paid," says Mark Wilcox, general manager for Manpower Driver Services in the West Midlands. "At the top end of the spectrum the drivers are in the £4500-a-week league. The cost of employing these is pretty high, particularly when uniforms, training and other benefits are taken into account.
"These extras and benefits can boost the cost by another 25%," says Wilcox. "It is this that makes the prospect of using a temporary driver more attractive." If an employee is earning 0-10 per hour, plus 25% for additional costs, the actual cost is £10-13. The company may be able to hire a driver for about £6 per hour Wilcox picks out Bristol and the surrounding areas as an example of where demand for agency drivers is on the increase. PL Workforce can vouch for this. It had an excellent year in 1993. It is an agency which is part of the Bristol-based Lane Group and general manager Ted Majors says development in the Avonmouth docks and new distribution parks has seen
'From an idealistic point of view we are opposed to the idea of using agency drivers.'
Majors says there is strong evidence that specialising and training the drivers leads to improved business opportunities. His business focuses on 'blue chip' tanker work for petrol, gas and black oil carrying companies. "At first, most companies think 'here comes another agency which will promise the earth and deliver nothing'," he says. "They now know that ours are employed on a three-month trial, the good ones become full-time and are trained up on hazardous package and freight regulations. Then they learn the job with our experienced drivers on petrol tanker work."
The Leicester/Birmingham/ Northampton triangle has been a particularly strong growth area for the supermarket distribution trade, causing a sharp rise in demand for LGV drivers at Round Peg Recruitment of Hinkley, Leics. Last month managing director Adrian Hobbs took the unusual step of fitting out a trailer as a recruitment roadshow to drum up drivers from outside his catchment area. The trailer doubles as a driver training and assessment vehicle.
Round Peg assesses drivers' ability with a 2-3 hour road test but once accepted it can provide subsidised accommodation in family homes for drivers prepared to move into the area to help meet demand from hauliers serving major retailers.
Trevor Lemmon is general manager of Amalgamated Distribution, the Leicestershire-based Lloyd Fraser Holdings subsidiary, which runs a dedicated distribution contract for Asda in Hinkley.
AD is a regular user of drivers from Round Peg. Lemmon explains that in addition to the traditional peaks at Christmas and Easter, there are others at every bank holiday and at the back end of each week to meet shopping requirements: "We use agency workers as any other transport operator would hire in a tractor unit when demand rises, to even out the demand. On regular seasonal peaks, however, we tend to employ our own temporary drivers on short-term contracts."
John McDonald is a Leicester-based transport manager with Tibbet & Britten's Marks & Spencer's operation, Transcare, which is another Round Peg client. McDonald says that in the short term, hiring an agency driver costs about the same as employing a full-time driver. "It starts to get less economical when you use a driver every day" he adds. "You could find that employing a driver on a short-term contract is cheaper."
Hobbs believes that companies are also making greater use of driver agencies because the quality of driver has improved over the past few years. "The old image of the driver is the beer stained tee-shirt, with cigarette in mouth and tattoos on the arms," he says. "Today image is important. We've modelled ours on the United Parcel Service uniform in the US.. .you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Our drivers have a collar and tie, a smart jacket and a name badge."
Every agency driver is a potential fulltimer: "If it's a green-field distribution site the company will have to process thousands of applications for driving jobs," says Hobbs. "By using an agency like us they can use a source of potential drivers they may later wish to employ. They can try all my stock, see how good they are and employ them if they come up to scratch."
NFC's BRS Taskforce knows that its drivers are good enough to employ full-time because that's exactly what it does. "Our selling point is that as drivers are permanent employees, clients are hiring a short-term driver with all the discipline of one on a longterm contract," says northern regional manager Nigel Collyer. Taskforce was set up in 1990. It has eight offices and expanded its staff from 40 to 100 last year. "We are not an agency in the usual sense of the word," says Collyer. "Every driver is a full-time employee—we don't hire and fire them."
It's not unusual for employment agencies to offer full-time work, but if you are thinking of registering it pays to read the small print: "Some claim they give holiday pay, but when you look closely they put £1 in the holiday bank every time a day's work is completed," says Collyer.
In the old days, confrontations between agency drivers, the company's own employees and the unions were a barrier to their growth. But Hobbs says that if temporary drivers can make a contract more cost-effective it actually provides the fulltimers with more job security.
While not completely accepting this view, the United Road Transport Union takes a pragmatic stance: "From an idealistic point of view we are opposed to the idea of using agency drivers," says general-secretary David Higginbottom. "But we live in the real world and cannot ignore that it is a convenient use of labour."
URTU is preparing a business plan for the launch of its own driver agency—but it will have the specific aim of restoring its LGV driver members to full-time employment. Most agencies charge a premium to clients who employ their drivers full-time; URTU will not charge for this service. The plan is to be presented to this year's URTU annual conference for endorsement.
In the past, "temping" has been sold to skilled workers in other professions as a means of adding variety and interest to their work. Whether professional LGV drivers will embrace this concept remains to be seen, but with agency drivers regularly working on dedicated contracts for household names working for the right agency is finally becoming a respectable job in its own right.
by Steve McQueen
Idealistic