Finding vehicle delivery driving/'trade plating' type work?

[vsonix]

Hi all,
I'm interested in investigating the possibilities of driving cars from A to B as a flexible supplementary income, as it seems like the kind of thing that might fit round existing commitments, get me out and about a bit, and pay reasonably well. I'm thinking from dealers to customers or collecting cars from other countries and bringing them back to UK (and vice versa) on behalf of client, etc etc.
However despite a fair bit of internet reasearch, I've found very little in the way of either more information I'd need about getting set up independently (I already have a trade insurance policy for other activities so could easily amend it to cover me for delivery work), or which companies I can approach to employ me to do this kind of work on a fairly flexible and ad hoc basis.
I've rung round a few companies that offer vehicle delivery services but all they could tell me is that they recruited through agencies but couldn't tell me which ones for data protection reasons, which I can appreciate is fair enough but not very helpful.
Is there some kind of web forum or community centred round this kind of activity I could refer to for insight?

TIA

[vsonix]

Connectors said:

I did some of this about 25 years ago, the pay was dismal, I can’t imagine it’s any better now. I drove some lovely cars though, so as a young car enthusiast the lack of decent pay was made up for by the nice cars. The leg of the journey when you were without the car was often tedious though, trains, coaches and hitching were the norm.

I appreciate that you’re looking to do it slightly differently as you’re freelancing, but I expect that as you’ve found, it’s all covered by agencies.

Yeah I'm under no massive illusion that the pay will be particularly great, but where I live, minimum wage is the reality of life for most people, more so those seeking flexibility. So basically the pay is dismal regardless, so if I can do something I enjoy, i.e. drive around a bit away from where I live, then it's less hardship than sitting at a desk all day. I did manage to do one job through Facebook a while ago driving someone's car to Bulgaria for them and they paid a decent enough daily rate, hotel and travel home expenses and a modest per diem for food also. That was a total random fluke however as it came about from complete random posting about something else on a totally different forum, and was a one-off job.

Edited by vsonix on Tuesday 11th December 19:10

[vsonix]

eliot said:

Cant see why telling you which agencies is covered by dpa - perhaps they were trying to tell you something..

Yup, 'Go away and don't waste our time asking us questions we don't know the answer to, and can't be bothered finding out', I imagine. But then revealing supplier relationships to randoms that call up isn't really smart either, is it?

Having worked in market research in the past I know all about people mumbling about DPA when cold-called.
Either they couldn't help me or didn't want to; the end result is the same.

Edited by vsonix on Tuesday 11th December 19:14

[vsonix]

stinkyspanner said:

I had to take a pretty flash Porsche to Germany a few years ago, and got paid £650 plus expenses. I think that kind of gig is quite out of the ordinary though

I'm sure it's a 'foot in the door' type thing; the more you can do it and not screw up/damage the car/get caught speeding etc the more work you'll be offered.
FWIW the price I got for delivering matey's nearly new Octavia to Bulgaria was about that.

[vsonix]

ninepoint2 said:

I would avoid the "trade plate" type stuff, I tried it a few years back after I took early retirement. Spent most of my time either walking or on a bus (at my own expense). Maybe it's because I am in Scotland but the office staff allocating the calls have bugger all local geography knowledge, the handheld devices they give with the app hardly ever worked (maybe again because of being in some remote areas of Scotland) If you have to phone them for help when the app doesnt work then you will be on hold for a very long time. You also need to spend a lot of time in the evenings planning your routes/buses etc for the next day. And the money was crap.. I lasted 3 days. I wasnt that desperate for the money. Working for a dealer is much better I believe as they work in teams and you don't need to rely on public transport.



Good luck!!

Thanks!

The reason I was looking at getting a trade plate is maybe it'd allow me more flexibility, whereas working for a dealer may require more regular time commitments rather than the freedom to take individual jobs on an ad hoc basis
But I'm aware my original post is probably describing multiple roles rolled in one.

[vsonix]

ninepoint2 said:

Ahh so you are thinking of buying your own trade plates and offering an individual service? You would be up against the established "big names" I suspect for the more mundane day to day stuff..but it might get you into some more exotic one off type stuff but not sure how you would get your "foot in the door" for that sort of work, a lot of the exotic dealers also use established transport companies who use covered trucks for transporting their stuff around

Edited by ninepoint2 on Tuesday 11th December 22:09

Either/or really. If I can get one job that pays well enough to cover a year's trade plate on top of the travel expenses then I might invest. Otherwise if I thought there was a driving job where I could just register my availability over a given time period with an agency, that would be good as well.
I'm not even that bothered if the vehicle is considered an 'exotic' or not; basic roadworthiness is enough, the fact that it's a fairly expensive service relative to the value of a car more or less guarantees that it will be either new and fresh and still pleasant to drive, or old and interesting.

[vsonix]

I know a few people who work in the recovery business and it has its advantages and disadvantages.
One, you need to be on call 24/7, busy every weekend and you never know when you might get a call out so basically if you're like me and like a glass or two with the evening meal you've got to basically either quit drinking or quit working. Secondly as you say you have to deal with a lot of non-starters and loading them onto a truck on my own (because 9 times out of 10 the client just stands there) in the dark and the pissing rain doesn't appeal to me, plus I have back problems and sciatica anyway so need to consider that as part of the equation. So I'd need to consider hiring a driver's mate to help me out.

The next thing is then factoring in return loads as most recovery trucks worth their salt tend to be quite thirsty so you don't really want to be eating into margins by driving around unladen if at all possible. So rather than doing back and forth trips you end up out for a few days at a time, sleeping in the cab working circuits. Otherwise you need to charge the client a higher fee to cover the cost of the trip home.

And finally, of course buying, maintaining, taxing and fuelling a commercial vehicle is a huge fixed cost which I prefer to avoid for something which I want to be a supplemental income not my main focus.

But also the thing with moving cars from a to b on a truck - it's OK maybe within a 300 mile radius or so but if you wanted to get from one side of Europe to the other and the car can move under its own power - driving the car one way and paying for a return ticket by Ryanair or whatever, has to work out more economical than sending a 3.5 tonne (or more) diesel truck both ways.

Edited by vsonix on Wednesday 12th December 15:37

[vsonix]

littleredrooster said:

I do this as a part-time job in retirement and enjoy it. It gives me a reason to get out of bed early three days of the week, if nowt else!

Pay is poor - just above minimum - hours can be long, but I occasionally get to drive some interesting metal (AMG, Maserati, Alfa QF, Jeep SRT-8 etc.) to far-flung places in the UK. It can be a brilliant job on a fine spring morning to drive something nice up to the Scottish borders, less of a nice job to be sitting in a traffic jam in Birmingham on a foggy November evening after it all goes wrong!

We never, ever hitch-hike or use buses. Normally we work in pairs following each other to deliveries/collections, but sometimes a train journey is needed, in which case the ticket is provided at the start of the day; transfers to/from stations is done in taxis.

We are based near Banbury but aren't recruiting at the moment - Nov/Dec/Jan are traditionally quiet months for the industry.

Big players in the market are ECM VDS who have hundreds of drivers with a mix of employed/freelance/agency; they are likely to be the ones you see hitching everywhere. I'm led to believe that they can make more money than us but with much poorer conditions.

Excellent, that's good info, thanks.

Like I said, not super worried about the pay not being a lot better than minimum wage as 99% of casual work (and a lot of full-time!) round here only ever pays minimum wage anyway! And yeah, I don't generally expect to be particularly busy over this time of year anyway, it's only really retail and hospitality that see solid business over the winter quarter. To be fair even sitting in a traffic jam isn't that bad if I can listen to spotify on bluetooth and relax in comfy seats. As long as I don't have to 'beat the clock' or anything that would add stress, I'm quite happy just bumbling along.

[vsonix]

ditto!