How pay and rates work
This page explains how rates are built and what moves them. Every rate is quoted against your actual booking, in writing, before anyone is confirmed.
The honest version
Most agency sites either publish no rates at all or publish a range so wide it tells you nothing. We are going to do something more useful than either, which is to explain exactly what determines the number and then tell you where to get it.
A rate that was accurate in one region three months ago is misleading everywhere else today. A range lifted from a competitor and relabelled would be worse than useless to you. So worker pay rates and hirer charge rates are both quoted against the specific booking, in writing, before anyone is confirmed. You get a real number for your role, your site and your shift pattern rather than a headline figure that moves the moment you ask about it.
Transport Temps is a trading name of Maine Couriers Ltd, a courier operator that runs its own fleet, its own drivers and its own compliance. The standards described on this page are the ones an operator applies to its own vehicles, applied to agency supply.
How you are paid
- PAYE. You are engaged and paid through Transport Temps, with tax and National Insurance deducted at source. No umbrella company is required, recommended or operated.
- Weekly. Pay runs weekly against the hours logged on approved timesheets, so the hours you worked and the hours you are paid for come from the same record.
- Holiday accrues on the hours you work. Almost all workers, including agency workers, are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year, which is 28 days for someone on a standard five-day week.
- Overtime and shift uplifts are agreed before the shift. Night rates, weekend uplifts and any overtime threshold form part of the booking, not a conversation afterwards.
- Your Key Information Document shows the lot. The rate or minimum expected rate, the pay interval, every deduction and a worked example down to take-home pay — before you agree terms.
- You are never charged a fee for finding work. Under the Employment Agencies Act 1973 an employment business may not demand or receive a fee from a work-seeker for finding them work, apart from narrow prescribed exceptions. Doing so is a criminal offence.
The variables that actually matter
Licence class and qualification
C+E, C, C1, B and whether the work needs ADR, a lorry loader card, Moffett, tanker training or a PCV Driver CPC. The scarcer the combination, the tighter the market.
Region
The same Class 1 shift does not price the same in the Golden Triangle as it does in a thin rural market. This is the single biggest reason a national published rate would be wrong.
Shift pattern
Nights, weekends, bank holidays, early starts and nights-out all carry their own uplifts, agreed on the booking.
Notice
A shift booked at 16:00 for tomorrow and a shift booked at 05:30 for this morning are not the same commercial proposition and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
The work itself
Drop count, handball, tail-lift, container work, whether there is a mate. A drop-heavy rigid route is a different job from a trunk run on the same licence.
Duration
A single shift, a block and a rolling assignment price differently — and a rolling assignment carries the twelve-week parity threshold, which is a planned cost rather than a surprise.
What a charge rate is made of
A charge rate is not the worker's pay rate. It carries the pay rate, employer's National Insurance, the holiday pay accrual, pension auto-enrolment where it applies and the agency's own margin. Any quoted comparison between agencies that ignores which of those are inside the number is not a comparison at all.
So every rate we quote states what it includes and it is given in writing against the specific booking before the worker is confirmed. Where an assignment approaches twelve weeks, the parity position is raised before the threshold rather than appearing as an unexplained increase afterwards — the mechanics of that are on the Agency Workers Regulations page.
Charge rates are quoted per booking. There is no published rate card on this site and there will not be one until there are real, current, honestly-labelled figures to publish. Ask for the rate with the booking and you will get it in writing before anything is confirmed.
Questions about pay
Why will you not publish a rate card?
Because rates move by class, region, shift pattern, notice and the nature of the work, so even a genuine national average would be wrong in most places it was read. A headline number would tell you almost nothing about your own site. Every rate is quoted against the actual booking, in writing, before anyone is confirmed.
Am I paid PAYE or through an umbrella?
PAYE, weekly, with tax and National Insurance deducted at source. No umbrella company is required, recommended or operated.
How does holiday pay work?
Holiday accrues on the hours you actually work. Almost all workers, including agency workers, are entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid holiday a year — 28 days on a standard five-day week. Your Key Information Document sets out your entitlement and how it is paid before you agree terms.
Is overtime paid at a higher rate?
Any overtime threshold and any night or weekend uplift is agreed as part of the booking before the shift, then shown on the timesheet. What it is depends on the assignment; that it is agreed in advance does not.
What does an agency driver cost my business?
It depends on the class, the region, the shift pattern, the notice and the work. Send the booking and you get the charge rate in writing before anyone is confirmed, with a statement of what is inside the number — pay, employer's National Insurance, holiday accrual, pension where it applies and our margin.
Does the rate change after twelve weeks?
It can, because equal treatment on pay and basic conditions applies after a twelve-week qualifying period in the same role with the same hirer. We count from the first shift and raise it before the threshold, so it is planned rather than discovered.
Tell us who you need
Give us the class, the count, the dates and the shift. We confirm what we can cover and say plainly when we cannot.