Van Driver Agency in Bilston

Bilston sits inside the densest concentration of distribution warehousing in the UK and density cuts both ways — there is more work here than anywhere else and more competition for the person who can do it.

The freight geography around Bilston runs on the M6, M5, M42, M40, M54 and the M6 Toll, Birmingham Airport and the rail freight terminals at Hams Hall and Birch Coppice. Operators draw on Fradley Park and the A38 sites around Lichfield and Burton and the employers booking temporary staff here are typically contract logistics providers running client-dedicated warehouses and fleets.

Contract wins and losses in big-shed warehousing move labour requirements in blocks of dozens and the ramp-up runs on agency staff long before permanent recruitment catches up.

Nights across the big sheds, typically 22:00 to 06:00, which is where the shortage runs deepest and the premium highest.

Sortation and load-out start before dawn, with routes out by mid-morning. Grocery and evening delivery slots run through to late evening, including weekends.

Before an agency driver takes a company van, somebody has to confirm the insurance covers them, that the licence check is current and that the walkaround defect check has been done and signed. It is a five-minute question that stops a shift dead at six in the morning if nobody asked it the night before, so it gets asked when the booking is taken.

A route rate does not remove the National Minimum Wage floor. Hours are recorded on every assignment whether the shift is priced by the hour or by the route, so when a round takes far longer than the route was built for, the arithmetic is visible instead of being absorbed quietly by the driver.

Under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, a worker reaches parity on pay and basic conditions after 12 weeks in the same role. Breaks in service affect the count, which is exactly why it needs tracking rather than estimating.