Prime Time Trucker Companies (acting illegal) RTE1

I.S.T.

Darragh29 wrote: »

I'm going to throw this out there...

There is a school of thought that is of the view that...

You mean this is what you think?

Rowley Birkin QC

Just watched the Prime Time episode there. Never seen a man so caught on the hop as that Jimmy Quinn, it was brilliant.

Have to say I found it extremely disturbing that the kind of work practice that can have a guy driving for 11 days straight is entertained. We all know, some more than others, the dangers that artic lorries pose on the roads. Combine that with the kind of idiotic management shown in PTI last night and it really is worrying.

Darragh29

IrishSpeedTraps wrote: »

You mean this is what you think?

No, I've a mate who is in the transport business and I was talking to him last night and this is what he thinks and he said a few other people have mentioned this to him as well... I'm not saying it is the case or it isn't. I dunno...

Cionád

http://www.rte.ie/news/primetimeinvestigates/

Tis online now

niceirishfella

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Jimmy Quinn has stepped down and is going to Sue RTE alledgedly..........

Cionád

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1202/hauliers.html

whiterebel

I'd love to see what he's going to sue them for......They seem to have tuckered him up pretty well.

felim

Anybody know how far into the programme Jimmy Quinn get's caught out? Can't watch all of it right now.

whiterebel

10-15 minutes, IIRC.

Bluetonic

whiterebel wrote: »

10-15 minutes, IIRC.

20 mins for the interview.

Iorana

As a foreign national I must sadly admit that the employment regulations, specially the cooperation between LRC and the Courts are nowhere so weak as in Ireland.
In Ireland it takes about 2 years time to get €500 from the company even the the decition was granted to you by LRC.
The is simply no institution in Ireland that would be interested in helping workers. It all takes too long also. That Brasilian guy for example, I mean he was not paid for over 3 months! If he goes with that to LRC it will take him about 2 years to get any money back!
Why Ireland can't take an example from another countries? Germany has separate work police unit that operates under the Office for Emplyoment (Arbeitsamt). Have you ever heart about abusing of workers rights in Germany?
No, because employers are afraid of doing this - regulations are so clear here, the company face a huge fines + prison even if the don't comply with the employment law. And after receiving a complaint, the work police is on the site next day.

I am very sad after this programm to be honest, I didn't realize how frequent is the abuse in this country.
Also the atmosphere - why do Irish people scream at foreign workers (specially restaurants, magazines), I have never met treatment like this anywhere else. Some supervisors I had were really cruel bastards. In some countries it's illegal also to humiliate the employees, if you are not happy with my work, you can let me go, why do you need to get all your frustration on me?
I must say, it was much more common among female supervisors to have this horrible attitude to foreign workers.

Do you want to have your country built on slave work and misery?
Why Ireland does not want to change anything?

Darragh29

felim wrote: »

Anybody know how far into the programme Jimmy Quinn get's caught out? Can't watch all of it right now.

I had to laugh though when it was put up to him, if ever there was a look on someone's face that said, "I want to get up off this chair and shove that microphone so far up your rectum that you'll be able to take it out your mouth and stick it behind your ear", that was it!

He looked like he was really going to snap!

derry

You only have to look at some the trucking accidents here to see that standards are nearly non existant .

One truck had a trailer get loose and wipe out a car .One truck was traveling so fast that it wiped out several cars .Lots of minors accidents all over the place but the truckers are rarely hurt.Bosses every day make dangerous demands get to there at speeds that exceed the speed limits .Driver crashes but bosses are never in courts .Having sleeping drivers is a major hazard.Companies it seems often make truck driver work extra hours on 3.5 tonne delivery vans which have no tacko as those are classed are cars and so drivers can be working sometimes according my friend in the trade an average of 80 hours plus a week . Also one day off in one month if they are lucky

The standard of the Vans and trucks out there is real scary from what he tells me and he has shown me some faults on what he was driving that day. There is not much he can do about it .If he says he wont drive a faulty truck he will get the boot from the more easy runs he has mostly Dublin region and be stuck back out on arsehole country runs to Derry or similar where he will have to live in the truckif he is lucky or maybe just get the complete boot as there are thousands of drivers ready to replace him screaming out for work now and will work for less than minimum wages

I seen lots of vans and trucks where I worked in 2007 in warehousing and most were clearly death traps.I seen the same driver come into the yard to collect or deliver stuff and clearly the drivers were working sometimes 18 hours days .I wasn't a truck driver and sometimes had to put in the 18 hour shifts in the warehouse yard With such close proximity I knew what trucks and what drivers I loaded with what . I can tell you 80 hours weeks seemd often to be a quite week for the truck drivers and there seemed to be no difference between Irish or non nationals .They both got treated as badly . I know talked to a the drivers a lot and the story was always the same if your have a big morgage wife and kids and on the drip for the car what you gonna do .

Then 2007 best I can tell direct employed van drivers stopped getting so much direct work and instead were getting paid for by the load to cirumvent all regulations even further .Then nearly overnight the majority of the vans started to become owner vans and the money they got was a lot worse than direct employed .Probably gone that way in trucks as well. Warehose changed location to cheaper county in stickville so I was laid off as I couldn't move counties and changed jobs instead .
So I cant say exactly what happened after middle 2007 but my mate told me its competly cowboy out there with trucks and vans from every country in Europe deliving stuff for buttons compared to 2005 rates. Now he says there is no rules out there now except take more coffee to hopefully not fall asleep at the wheel .
Irish companies are bad offenders but eastern Europe companies which operate all year round here just delivering in Irealnd can legally ignore nearly all Irish laws as they use their laws which are less severe than ours .Some Irish trucking companies have even become Polish to circumvent the laws here

Th victims in this mess is the drivers and hapless car accident victims in Ireland
Ireland is not alone with big problems in Germany close to eastern europe and my German friends are non to plussed about it .The carnage on the roads from truck crashes is becoming a huge issue with trucks crashing into cars houses busses trams whatever .Often it is from drivers with fake papers and over the legal drink limits and falling asleep working 100 hours plus a week often for one or two euro an hour pay rates

The new Lisbon treaty from Europe if we agree to it would best I can see have made it completly impossible for Irish trucking companies to exist so all of them would become registered as Polish companies and employ drivers at Polish minimum pay rates which are 1 euro an hour last I heard



If we think it bad now
Its just the problem is coming this way big time

WE ANT SEEN NOTHING YET


Derry

jvc

alias no.9 wrote: »

I don't know what your girlfriend does for a living but I'm assuming she's not a truck driver. The regulations for truck drivers exist to save lives, simple as that. Drivers breaching the limits are at a much greater risk of lapses in concentration and even falling asleep at the wheel. When you loose control of an 18 wheeler, there is a huge probability that someone will die.

This clip was shown on the program

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YljuZzngtc

Very frightening.
I dont know if driver fatigue was the cause of this but its entirely possible

peasant

jvc wrote: »

This clip was shown on the program
Very frightening.
I dont know if driver fatigue was the cause of this but its entirely possible

That clip did the big round through the internet after the accident. As far as I can remember, a broken front axle was the reason for the crash.

1966

Whatever the cause of that accident it just shows how important it is that lorries of that size and smaller are in "safe" hands !

David09

I used to work for one of those companies that were under investigation. The unfair treatment of employees, breaches of minimum wage regulations, non payment of prsi, breaches of health and safety, etc didn't just end with the drivers but also extended to the "in house" truck maintenance crew, of which I was part of...

unkel

jvc wrote: »

This clip was shown on the program

Not sure what kind of barrier that is, but a truck should not be able to go through a standard armco / concrete barrier

Seth Brundle

niceirishfella wrote: »

Primetime sensationize a lot of this stuff, with their DARK filming, clever editing and clever promos. And they know how to ambush inarticulate muck savages like Jimmy Quinn (its not hard to be honest) to make good telly.

Ambush? He was the head of the IRHA and therefore should be knowledgeable about his industry whilst also striving for the best standards for his members.
By all accounts he wasn't up to the job (given the content of interview)!

galwaytt

unkel wrote: »

Not sure what kind of barrier that is, but a truck should not be able to go through a standard armco / concrete barrier

'fraid so - we make truck bodies here, and I can vouch that a 49t truck, at 100kph, will jump just about anything............you're forgetting those guys never braked, and were on the throttle at the time.......

btw, tyres and brakes to pull those up, in yards, haven't been invented yet........

Amtmann

galwaytt wrote: »

'fraid so - we make truck bodies here, and I can vouch that a 49t truck, at 100kph, will jump just about anything............you're forgetting those guys never braked, and were on the throttle at the time.......

btw, tyres and brakes to pull those up, in yards, haven't been invented yet........

We have a road engineer over on the infrastructure forum, and he says the concrete median shouldn't budge if hit by a truck - it's that heavy. Post here (great read): http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=57991361&postcount=7

derry

Furet wrote: »

We have a road engineer over on the infrastructure forum, and he says the concrete median shouldn't budge if hit by a truck - it's that heavy. Post here (great read): http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=57991361&postcount=7

Watched the vidio several times . Looks like the axle broke apart as the swing to the left is so violent . It might be Italy .It looks like the dividing fence is not a concrete type probably only a bush plant type with maybe a low metal barrier type OK to take side swipe but not a head on attack . Certianly a concrete barrrier wont stop a truck like that .It will just jump over the barrier .No signs it jumped so seem to be less than concrete

The crash and the other crashes shown on the program would require Irish gauda to nail the trucking companies both Irish and non Irish to be contantly harrased for the TACO so as to reduce the risk to us .If there is accident the Bosses from trucking beyond TACO hours should be in court as the main people to go to jail and not the hapless drivers

All trucks should have sealed by RSA onboard camera going 24 hours a day to show drivers of truck with time frames so that would show when TACO lies were going on .


TACO should also be put into all commersial vans of 3.5 tons even the little compact vans as some of these service men such as security who transport the securty staff are working 36 non stop driving due to similar abuse from bully bosses along with the multi drop operators who abuse the drivers no end

What is not generally known is it is impossible to get insurance to do courir work with a van car or motorbikes .This means all those Courir vans you see on the road on using light delivery insurance and telling a porky.When there is a big smash up the Insurance company might decide not to pay up as they were told a mistruth and the drivers on the road or victims could be without compansation.This means that lots of courir companies now only want driver owners as they can say well it nothing to do with us . The result now is a **** load of old clapped out vans falling to bits working long hours for buttons sometimes grossly overloaded . So they are out there and you are maybe the next target and on dodgy insurance


Derry