i think any company can change your terms and conditions of your contract if they give u the proper notice and there is nothing u can do about it.
If you are not getting paid travel time and u start a 8 am then you leave your house bang on 8am so when u get to your first job it will be or close to tea time?.And its the same at night time you are home at your finish time.
And if you are traveling down to a course and are not getting paid travel time then u should ask to travel down the day before in company time and request a hotel to stay in.If u have to leave your house at 5am or 6am to travel down to a course its not really safe beacuse you might not have had the correct amount of sleep and not be fully alert at the that time in the morning and im sure it advise this in the highway code book
But the reality of things in the forklift industry the pay for engineers is crap bottom line and really should be thinking of getting out of this industry if u want a better salary

Herald (beer in hand) Travel pay can be in your contract, retirement-pension has a great value over here.
My personal bs deleted.

Life is simple guys, as long as you work for someone else you follow and support their rules & policies. That someone else pays all the bills for the company you work for. Their customers are not you customers. If you are unhappy with your current company you can do 3 simple things:
1. Accept it for what it is and go on about your responsibilities and stop grousing about it - you'll be happier.
2. Constructively work to change it - this can be fun to watch things you had an input into make a difference. That behind the back stuff never works.
3. If you can't do 1 or 3, simply leave, but remember there is no utopia.

As a field tech working for the dealerships I always felt that it was my DUTY to save the customer from the "Dealership". Later- in product support sales, I also felt that the labor charged and the parts mark-up was not fair to the customer. These days our parts department (my wife) has to be encouraged to give the customer a break. Fixing a forklift is EXPENSIVE! Our office manager ( my wife) is quick to remind me that we will not be able to give anyone a break if we are not around next year. Good point. I make an effort to keep common wear items, a thorough selection of hardware and anything tooling wise that I can stock on my service van. I try to make informed decisions about repairs and attempt to bring with me the necessary parts if feasable. These are the ways that I can help my customer. It is encouraging to see so much "pro customer" attitude on this forum.
Steve

Yes its called "ghost time". Basically if your productivity rate for a 30 day period exceeds 100%, then they are overbilling and your customers are getting screwed! I worked for one independant dealership in So.Cal and their CFO and the service manager both stated that we as techs have NO SAY in whats attached to our work orders!! I started **** customers off because I would give them an honest verbal qoute on my part and then the company would turn around and stick it to them!! It got to the point where I started pricing out my own invoices. That got me in big trouble. If you cant look a customer in the eye and tell him what its going to cost, why bother trying to improve customer satisfaction. There is one big independant dealership here in So. Cal. that got sued for billing in this manner, not by the customer but a former employee who's trip sheets did not match his check stubs!!! Hmmm, go figure. Or how about taking your lunch at 70 miles an hour behind thew wheel of a service truck? And then they would count your thirty minutes against you, but at the same time bill the customer for an hour of "travel time". Give me a break! If you as an individual fail to stand up for your customer, then you can bet the farm anyone internal wont for dang sure. "That repair cost me what!!!!!!

free beer!!!!!!! my favorite brand of beer.... that is swell of you towmotor..

I hope everyone that is working through lunch AND their bosses recognize that working through lunch is not only wrong, it is stealing form your employer to give to the employer's customer, at no benefit to you.
That half hour is 16th of a normal days labor, 1/16th of what your employer (and you) should be earning income on in your work day, and equals almost 1 full day free labor every 3 weeks that your employer (and you) is not earning on your time. It does NOT benefit any forklift company to give away any of your time. Even if the work is on rental or "hire" units, the service department is not earning from the rental department what it is entitled to.
I am guilty of this also, but I try to ONLY give up my lunch 1/2 hour if I feel I have a need to make up for some misjudgment (a.k.a. a screwup) on my part.

herald the beer is on me ok pick edward t and justim on ur way over the pond to the great white north

what is lunch 20 years ago u stopped for lunch u got fired true story

herald did u buy lady godiva a beer from canada

i worked for a company years ago lots of screw ups warranty etc when all became subcontractors end of warranty and screw ups nobody perfect

well said that man.

I worked in London for a while and had to commute each day from Coventry it was a 3 hour journey some days, did i get paid whilst traveling?

Mslifty loader
If you had signed a contract of employment to say you would get paid to travel to your place of work(like i have)then yes you should have got paid for travel.

Kev i agree we are now told we have to stop every day for 1 hour and take a lunch which we don't get paid for,try doing this when on site with 3 trucks down the customer thinks you are taking the p***,most days i work through lunch and don't get paid for it,because i believe in get the job done quickly for the customers benefit.

Their a lots of people on this forum probley managers who have lost touch with working on the road who think we should all bow down and be grateful for the opportunity to fix their product with as much hassle as they feel fit to throw at us.
herald.

I agree with you kevin K.
I store parts at home to and work through my lunch break and keep a van on my front drive which i do not use for personal milage, then wash in my own time.
Perhaps we all need to lay down a set of rules and all unite against the companys that should be looking after us.

being depot based is a luxury some of us don,t have. daily access to waste disposals ,get to pick up just the parts you need for that day. access to a workbench is a luxury too. some of us out here only get to a depot maybe once a month. we have to store some parts in the house just to get room to move in the van. but you don,t get storage money. a lot of us work through lunch to get a customer going again but thats not seen by penny pushers up the tree. we are honest hardworking guys and we should be paid for doin that job

I think you are making 1 mistake in the calculation there, AC. you say "companies can not operate with out us".
When Sandra Day O'Conner (a USA Supreme Court Justice) retired she said something I have long known.
The test to see how much any one person will be missed is that you take a bucket full of water, add up to a kilo of sand, put your hand in the bucket and stir all you want, and then pull your hand out, the hole your hand leaves in the water will be equal to how much hole you will leave in the company.
I am firmly of the opinion that companies do not exist to create jobs for their employees, they exist to fill a need or demand their customers recognize.
All that said, on your side of the pond, what is the problem with joining "UNITE" (current name of the former TGWU)?