• John was made redundant just before last Christmas, after
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more than 15 years' driving around Britain and the Continent as an HGV I professional. In all that time he has not been convicted once, and was one of his company's most respected employees.
Business is business, however. The latest haulage slump left John's company on the scrap heap and John out of a job.
By April of this year he had found nothing, despite making literally hundreds of phone calls and writing scores of letters. A few unscrupulous employers have used John for the odd day with a promise of a full-time contract at a later date. None of them kept their promises; some even sent him bouncing cheques. He now insists on cash payment for casual shifts.
He didn't give up and at one point got in with a firm hauling fruit out of Spain. He got out again in a hurry when it was made clear to him that half of his pay was bonus-related, provided he got back from the southern coast of Spain to London's Covent Garden market in 36 hours. "I've been around this game too long to kill myself for a measly hundred quid," he says.
Talk of skills shortages, driver crises and training blights make John angry: "The British haulage industry is a shoddy mess. It's full of pimps and con-men," he says. "'Ile industry is not short of trained 1-ICV drivers — it is short of intelligent management."
RARE COMMODITY
Commercial Motor decided to put all the talk on one side and asked John to sit in its offices for two full working days and to telephone as many haulage companies as possible to ask, "give us a job?"
The first thing he discovered was that the haulage industry's average telephone receptionist leaves a lot to be desired. Even basic courtesy seems to be a rare commodity. "Forget it," he was told time and again, before the line went dead. Few companies would even put his basic details on file in case a job became available at a later date.
The more polite rejections included: "Ring back at the end of next week. Or at the end of every week come to that. We might know a bit more at a later stage. Sony, I've no idea what the wages would be." Pony Express.
"No, sorry. Listen, it's a bad time, we've been laying people off." Coca-Cola.
"Nothing around now mate. Why don't you drop in and pick up one of our application forms?" Truebird.
"No, not at the moment, but you could call in and fill in an application form and we will keep you on our files. Wages?
. . well . . . you could reckon on about .2.300 to 210 a week." Kemmons.
"No, but do you want an application form?" Glass Glover.
"We don't at the moment, I'm afraid, ring back in a month's time." Interlink.
"Not at the moment pal, but I will take your name. The wage is about £230 basic." Calor Gas.
Davis E C Transport, Fastline, John Dean, Framptons, Geoffrey Rayner, PPW and Harris all finished off day one with "no, but you could send in a letter". None of them wanted to take down John's details, address or phone number, and not one single company thought it worth calling him in for interview or driving test. Only a handful even bothered to put him through to their personnel department, if they had one.
Day two was a little better, but not much. LPG was John's first sympathetic hearing: "Sorry, but we haven't got any jobs going at the moment, but we will post an application form to you. I have to warn you, there isn't much hope at the moment. Our wages for your kind of job would be about £16,000 to £17,000 per annum, OK?"
TNT was its usual efficient self too: "I'm very sorry but we really haven't got anything on the books at the moment. But
if I can just take your name we may have • one coming up shortly. If we have, rather than get you to put down all your details on an application form now and send them out to us, I would prefer to take your phone number and call you back when we have a vacancy, and you could come along and see us. Wages? . . . well . . if you work late shifts it will be about £189 per week to start with and after six months that would go up to about £196 per week for 40 hours."
After that day two was downhill all the way. John got some of his most negative turn-offs. The most polite of the son-ybut-no-thanks rejections that afternoon came from Hollis Transport, Euro Traction, Knights, Long, Franson, Veglers, Daly, Tarmac, Dodds, Maas, Swains, Salvesen and Pulleyn.
GETTING NOWHERE
What was John's reaction to two full days of getting nowhere at all? "I thought that I would have got a sniff of something, somewhere, coming in and using Commercial Motor's offices and files. You've got more names and numbers for trucking companies than anyone else I could think of, and I haven't found a thing. I thought I might get the possibility of an interview somewhere along the line, or at least hear of a vacancy coming up. I thought that I would feel better at the end of these two days. Actually, I feel worse. I'm very pissed off."
The end result is a sorry story: 78 haulage companies contacted without success. Less than half of those contacted were even polite, some just put the phone down without even a curt dismissal. John's only glimmer of hope was TNT, and in the five weeks since he made his calls from the Commercial Motor office he has not heard a word from TNT either.
He is still available, and he even slogged round Truckfest trying to pick up some leads. Anyone out there interested? Give us a job .'. .