Trade plate drivers

no idea how I came across it but during the lockdown I found the following bbc iplayer, about trade plating.

real life experience from a variety of people, sounds a bit tough....

linky thang

I live not far from BCA at Blackbushe so there's always jobs being advertised. The pay seemed very opaque, the gist of it seemd to be you got minimum wage, then a 'bonus' equivalent to the difference between the cost of getting home again and what you actually spent. i.e. you got £55 for driving the 5 hours from Blackbushe to Newcastle, then £200 to get home.

I did think it'd be a good gig if you were into Audax style riding!

I did it for a couple of years, as something to give me a bit of breathing space. You're not going to make good money doing it and it is a very random way of working. Very early starts and long days. You need to be able to cope with random occurrences, such as the car you were supposed to picking up from Cornwall to get back to the north being un-roadworthy, or it was picked up yesterday, or the customer decided to extend the lease etc. You get to drive some nice cars, but also absolute heaps of junk.

Looked into it during covid. 25p a mile was their pay rate. So you need to drive 2000 miles a week. Odd night out so had to carry a go bag. Plus alot of bus or train trips between jobs., covered by company but your not adding miles.
Apparently it was rare to not have a return job within ab hour travel of the previous. Folding bike seems ideal, weekend works were optional.
Taking cars home also ok if you wanted an early start.
Last ditch job imo, they were charging £1 a mile to the client to organise a 2 b car moves

Sod that, the guys that came to collect my dad's car had to sit around whilst the payment went through (Toyota notified us it would be in the next days statement leading to a Mexican standoff as nobody wanted to give up ownership). That was followed by a however long drive down to Darlington. I'd imagine there's a lot of time spent not getting paid. So again, sod that.

I’m also considering trainee enviroment officer, and prison officer!! 😀

Prison officer???

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

No, don’t.

I looked into it during the autumn and winter of 2020/21 while waiting for my HGV course to happen as I like travelling and driving so seemed like a decent option. I would try and talk to any platers I saw at services about the job, even gave the odd one a lift if I was going that way anyway, and they all described long days, low pay and frustrating customers that just sounded not ideal. I did used to talk to our regular one in my old job who picked up and delivered our vans a few times a year and he said he would regularly get stranded out at night when he was meant to be taking a vehicle home but it wasn't available for whatever reason. He wasn't enjoying it though so might have been a bit skewed on his views. I know one of the members on here used to do it from Avonmouth Docks (Countzero maybe?) and has the odd story to tell about their time as a plater. Decided trucks were much more my thing if I could find the right job which I thankfully have.

I know one of the members on here used to do it from Avonmouth Docks (Countzero maybe?)

Ha! Sort of - In and out of Royal Portbury Docks, BCA had a small part of one of the ship unloading areas as a drop off/pick up hub there.

I did it for two years as an agency driver for BCA. It was easy because we operated as a team of five with a driver/team leader who received all of the next day’s jobs, worked out the order we were to be dropped off in, then picked us up when we dropped off the cars. Difficult to say how many miles a day I actually drove, but possibly around 4-500. The drivers who come in to where I work now are only picking up motoring school cars which are going to an instructor, but they can cover fairly high miles - one recently was taking one up to Scotland.

I was in and out of Cornwall several times a week, picked one up to take up to Liverpool once, I really enjoyed it, but I couldn’t deal with all the planning involved with doing it solo, I have to be honest, I just don’t have the head for sorting out those sort of details. And yes, the days can be long, my longest was 17 hours, due to a van with a flat battery. Most mornings I’d be setting off to drop a car off at around 6am, getting home about 6-7pm.
Still fun, although, as pointed out above, you really do get some shitty cars and commercial vehicles. Motability cars can be shocking. I did about 450 miles in a Maserati Ghibli, it was only seven months old, and a lovely car to drive. A Merc C63 AMG, Audi Q7, top end Range Rover Sport, so the nice cars make up for the crap, stinky ones.

A lot of the drivers are retired, so they’re in a position to pick and choose where and when they drive, it’s basically beer money - you have to be doing a lot of miles to really make a living at it, I think; it’s not for everyone, but some drivers keep at it for quite some time.

I still do twelve-hour days, but on a 5-5-4 shift, and I’m indoors and only really driving to work and back now, I couldn’t go back to doing it.

I can only suggest you give it a try, it may suit you down to the ground, but after a few days it might easily prove to be more of a pain than it’s worth - it’s certainly not for everyone.