Class 1 Driver Agency in Castleford

Castleford sits on or near the M62, the road that carries most of the North's retail distribution and the operations along it run to volumes that make short-notice cover a weekly reality rather than an emergency.

The freight geography around Castleford runs on the M62, M1, M18, A1(M) and A63, the rail freight terminals at iPort Doncaster and Wakefield Europort and the ABP Humber ports at Hull, Goole and Immingham. Operators draw on Sherburn Enterprise Park at Sherburn-in-Elmet, on A1(M) junction 42 and the employers booking temporary staff here are typically steel, engineering and building-products manufacturers on flatbed and curtainside work.

Bulk cargoes through the Humber arrive on vessel schedules, which puts yard, tipping and haulage requirements outside normal working patterns.

Nights on the M62 trunk routes, running between the northern distribution centres and back before morning.

Nights and trunking dominate Class 1. Expect start times through the evening and early hours, 4-on-4-off patterns on network trunks and weekend cover on retail replenishment.

Site familiarisation is not a form. It is the gatehouse procedure, which trailer number is yours, which bay you have been allocated, where the fuel card works, how the customer's yard runs one-way and who answers the phone at three in the morning when a barrier will not lift. Twenty minutes built into the first shift is cheaper than an hour lost in the middle of it.

Before terms are agreed, every driver receives a Key Information Document setting out who employs them, how the pay cycle works and what comes off the gross figure. It is a legal requirement on an employment business and it is also the fastest way to stop an argument arriving in week three.

The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 give an agency worker equal treatment on pay and basic conditions after 12 weeks in the same role with the same hirer. That clock starts on the first shift and we surface the count so it is never a surprise on the invoice.