AMAZON drivers forced to deliver 200 parcels a day -- with no toilet breaks!

a reply to: SprocketUK

Not in the U.S.. Here these are union jobs with collective bargaining agreements that include premium hourly pay, fair hours that include lunch or dinner breaks. My brother in law used to work for UPS. I had friends that worked for the U.S. Postal service. Good jobs with good benefits. They get overtime for hours over forty.

a reply to: Sillyolme

don't remember the ppop one but there was a story on the news an amazon delivery guy put the package on the porch and then back to the camera whipped it out and peed on the wall all caught on the camera and he was fired

Amazon delivery is a travesty. I like amazon, however I stopped using it because everything was being delivered by their carrier service.

Going by how bad their customer service is I am not surprised that the treat their staff like crap too.

a reply to: seasonal

its too bad this is their CHOICE to work for an organization like that. its not like they were drafted, if its that bad then they should just stop but they dont because they like the money , therefore I feel no empathy for them.

Most definitely not a sanitary option to handle parcels while having to relieve yourself in a work truck...
There is plenty of options to get these guys/gals back to humane working conditions. Provided they are willing to fight for them. But that's a whole other issue in itself.

But as for the long workdays - that's a good thing. I know quite a few people barely scraping by on reduced hours. I myself have never worked less than a 12 hour day in life, especially now that I have my own business.
First it was as kid for free on the farm, then later as a carpenter. To me it's a part of my life , but to each his own.
We could probably take upon ourselves to tip these people, knowing they work alot harder than the average stoned pizza delivery kid we tip regularly...

originally posted by: DerBeobachter

originally posted by: Trueman
a reply to: seasonal

I wake up at 02:40 every morning and I'm back at home about 18:15. I barely take a 2 day vacations, never a whole week. Using most of my personal days and vacations when I get sick or have something to do. I've been doing this for last 13 years.

Those drivers wouldn't last a week in my job.

I thought only german and japanese people are like this...

No own life, just living for working, to make others rich. And very proud of it...

Or are you a millionaire or billionaire yet? Looking at the lifetime you spended the last 13 years, you should be!

hahaha...., I have a family to feed. Wife cancer survivor, oldest kid in college and a daughter in high school. Plus a dog, 2 birds, a turtle and a fish.

originally posted by: Sillyolme
a reply to: SprocketUK

Not in the U.S.. Here these are union jobs with collective bargaining agreements that include premium hourly pay, fair hours that include lunch or dinner breaks. My brother in law used to work for UPS. I had friends that worked for the U.S. Postal service. Good jobs with good benefits. They get overtime for hours over forty.

Kind of strange that. I get it though. Over here pretty much every new courier job is self employed now. When an employed driver retires or leaves, they are replaced by a self employed one.
To give you an example of how much of a rip off it is, when I worked for DPD as an owner driver they did this-
To start with, my stop rate was £2.45 so they paid that for each address I delivered to. Including when they made me deliver 30 or 40 things to a business which often took upwards of half an hour. So the pay dropped way below the minimum wage. It was the same for collections.
When I had a good couple of weeks with mostly single drops and I managed to get ahead of the 85 deliveries a day that was my decent profit level, they would lower my stop rate so that where I was earning £600 a week for 85 drops a day, I now had to do 100, then 110 and on and on. The harder I worked the lower the rate they paid.

If you struggled though, as I did when they switched my route from a busy city to a spread out rural one, they never raised the rate, so that where I was doing 140 a day in Swindon, I ended up only managing 54 in rural Worcestershre (and burning way more diesel than before) This meant that, DPD still made money, I ended up working a whole month just to pay for the van, fuel etc. The shifts were frequently illegal too. It was super rare that I was done in 11 and 1/2 hours and I NEVER was able to take my statutory breaks.
Pretty much every other owner driver was in a similar position.

originally posted by: SprocketUK

originally posted by: Sillyolme
a reply to: SprocketUK

Not in the U.S.. Here these are union jobs with collective bargaining agreements that include premium hourly pay, fair hours that include lunch or dinner breaks. My brother in law used to work for UPS. I had friends that worked for the U.S. Postal service. Good jobs with good benefits. They get overtime for hours over forty.

Kind of strange that. I get it though. Over here pretty much every new courier job is self employed now. When an employed driver retires or leaves, they are replaced by a self employed one.
To give you an example of how much of a rip off it is, when I worked for DPD as an owner driver they did this-
To start with, my stop rate was £2.45 so they paid that for each address I delivered to. Including when they made me deliver 30 or 40 things to a business which often took upwards of half an hour. So the pay dropped way below the minimum wage. It was the same for collections.
When I had a good couple of weeks with mostly single drops and I managed to get ahead of the 85 deliveries a day that was my decent profit level, they would lower my stop rate so that where I was earning £600 a week for 85 drops a day, I now had to do 100, then 110 and on and on. The harder I worked the lower the rate they paid.

If you struggled though, as I did when they switched my route from a busy city to a spread out rural one, they never raised the rate, so that where I was doing 140 a day in Swindon, I ended up only managing 54 in rural Worcestershre (and burning way more diesel than before) This meant that, DPD still made money, I ended up working a whole month just to pay for the van, fuel etc. The shifts were frequently illegal too. It was super rare that I was done in 11 and 1/2 hours and I NEVER was able to take my statutory breaks.
Pretty much every other owner driver was in a similar position.

If it works across the pond, then the US will follow suit.

It is a race to the bottom for everyone but the people at the top.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: SprocketUK



Is it a coincidence that record profits can also mean, in some cases, record low pay?

Absolutely and, when you consider that the EU freedom of movement directive means that if you decide not to work for such exploitative conditions, there are a hundred other people ready to step in, it skews the power balance all the way to the big corporation's side of the fence.

It was Tony Blair and his New Labour party that set all this in motion and pretty much destroyed unionised labour in the courier sector. Funny that.

a reply to: SprocketUK

Agreed.

Corporations love poor workers who are deeply in debt. Very very easy to control and are scared to loose what little money the job brings in.

a reply to: seasonal

Isn't that what big business is all about..profits..f#ck the poor slave/worker bee.
Thats why I laugh when some of you adore dear leader for being a great businessman and how he should run the country like a big business, he doesn't give a squirt for the little guy, because it aint about the little guy..

a reply to: vonclod

Yes corps are all about creating "value" for the stakeholders, but they don't use as colorful language as you.

Eventually the race to the bottom harms more than it helps.

a reply to: seasonal

AMAZON drivers forced to deliver 200 parcels a day -- with no toilet breaks!

I doubt anyone is being 'forced' to do this job.

originally posted by: Metallicus
a reply to: seasonal

AMAZON drivers forced to deliver 200 parcels a day -- with no toilet breaks!

I doubt anyone is being 'forced' to do this job.

Food and shelter are free now are they?

a reply to: Metallicus

Bills have to be paid, and there is a stratification of skills. These jobs will be done by some one, and there is a large number of people who can drive and read well enough to force the pay down.

Coincidentally this works in the third party delivery companies favor.

a reply to: Trueman

So because you're on your feet 16 hrs a day that makes it alright for drivers to drive under unreasonable conditions.

What if one of these drivers was involved in an accident with one of your loved ones?

a reply to: seasonal

they don't use as colorful language as you

I know, I can get carried away..some people use flowery speech, I'm more blunt force trauma

I knew this couldn't be a US story...

All commercial vehicles in the US are scrutinized by the USDOT as well as the state DOTs to ensure compliance with NTSB regulations. Part of that scrutiny is random inspection of log books, which are now mostly electronic. Anyone driving more than 11 hours in a shift is risking fines for both themselves and their companies, and it is not unusual for company fines to exceed a cool million bucks per offense. In addition, one violation typically means additional checks of the logs and safety records.

The 11 hour limit is for safety... don't want sleepy drivers in the drivers seat.

Not sure how the UK handles it, but apparently much laxer.

Here is the big problem for the drivers though:

They say they earn a fixed rate of £103 a route each day, while being offered van hire and insurance costing £200 a week.

They claim they are working as long as 12 hours each day, sometimes as much as 14 – despite UK law dictating that drivers must not be on duty for more than 11 hours in any working day. One 50-year-old worker told us he took home just £160 after forking out for van costs plus £140-worth of fuel, reimbursed later at 16p per mile.

Amazon claim the routes are calculated using “sophisticated software” which takes into account speed limits and traffic patterns.

The insurance situation is common in the US for local drivers. Insurance can cost over 50% of the pay. I know because I drove a dumpy-truck (tri-axle) for a few months. Politically connected owners of these local companies can get the state DOT to look the other way many times.

In the US, drivers are not normally required to front money for fuel in a company vehicle. However, mileage is monitored closely and can have an adverse effect on the loads one gets. Not all routes are equal.

The "sophisticated software" is a pile of bovine feces. I drove OTR for 8 years, over a million miles, and not once did I find a fuel stop calculator that was worth it's weight in crap. It might save the company a few cents per stop, but the consequences when it screws up are serious. On one load into WI, it put me out of fuel 100 miles from the nearest 'acceptable' fuel stop, forcing me to call and get an override so I could get fuel at 150% of what I could have gotten it at that morning, just so I could make it back to a cheaper stop. That one screw-up cost my company more than they had saved on my driving in the past year. I have a fuel gauge... let me use it.

As for traffic patterns? Nope, will never work if you want the load there on time. A good driver can anticipate traffic patterns usually, much better than a computer can calculate based on present patterns. Not to mention not all commercial vehicles can travel all roads. I'd say 90% of the times you have seen a truck stuck under a low-clearance overpass, it was because the driver was blindly following that "sophisticated software."

Bottle and bags are just a fact of life... I always kept a bottle, usually a gallon jug, with me, and I always kept a couple of plastic bags for emergencies. I rarely used the bags, but the bottles were common. The problem is not that drivers use the bottles, but many then don't care how they dispose of them. The proper procedure is to pour them out in an isolated, grassy area, or at least toss them in the very back dumpster of a truck stop, as far from others as possible.

The UK needs to get their act together on transportation rule enforcement.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Sounds pretty much the same as here. for HGV's (Trucks).
Most of this thread relates to 3.5 ton vans though, which have much more lax enforcement.


Like you, most of the drivers I know keep a 2 litre milk jug for emergencies.

One lad I knew as lazy and, rather than pouring his down the nearest drain or emptying it on a grassy verge, just wedged it into the corner in the back. An emergency stop later, everyone's parcels were damp.


I would throttle him if I was one of his customers

It's interesting that in Chicago, UBER drivers are switching to Amazon delivery. Was just reading a local forum. Apparently $250 for delivering 170 packages is an attractive alternative for them.