warehouse worker

truck driver

transport manager

warehouse lead

team leader

Where do I begin, this is the most stressful, underpaid job that I've had the misfortune of undertaking in my life! 

First couple of weeks in and I had a parcel which exceeded the allegedly safe 25KG weight limit, when I raised my concern with a member of the management, I was advised to take it, otherwise not to come back into the depot the next day.

This got worse during my 21 months in the role, when I left 35KG+ parcels were the norm, I had parcels ranging from plain packaged inflatable spa's, pallets and lots of flat pack furniture left in my bay, each day. Photo's of the pallet etc available upon request.

DHL drivers (in the yellow vans love DHL Parcels which was the old UK Mail) as we got all of the toxic freight and they got hand sized or pallets, which were unloaded via forklift at the customer destination.

The Account Manager's say anything to get the business and then it's the drivers that get the 30KG++++ items daily to deliver. Health and Safety doesn't matter to DHL Parcels, they ignore it on a daily basis and use it when it suits, all that the management is interested in is clearing the depot each day, who cares if a self employed driver hurts their back and is off work unpaid for a month or more, they don't.

All you are to DHL Parcel is a number and that is all you will ever be!

Management look down on you as if you're insignificant, even though you've more experience and qualifications in your little finger than those who purportedly run things, have in their entire little mind!

Never challenge anything, even if just to sign off on a piece of paper etc to say that you agree with what is in front of you. It makes the management feel weak and uneasy and then the proverbial dummy gets spat and you're ostracised for months, if not forever.

You will be asked to sign service/information updates on a whim, often when you are at your busiest sorting and loading your run onto the van, you have little time to take in what you read, never mind retain the information. Furthermore, you will not get a copy of what you've signed, hence you won't have a leg to stand on once you commit a breach of something that you had 1 minute to read, weeks prior. My advice is to take a photo on your phone camera, oh wait, that was one of the new rules, no phones allowed in the depot during working practice is carried out!

You're given a one hour time window and can deliver to between 70-120 addresses per day, if you're caught in a traffic jam etc, or a road traffic accident you'll invariably go out of that magic window. The reward for that is no pay for drops outwith the window, which could easily be quarter or half of an entire run.

The pay is a disgrace, you will be paid per drop, whether you deliver one item or twenty items to an address. So you could deliver ten boxes of product weighing 350KG in total and if your drop rate is £1.99 that is all you will get. Do you think DHL tell the consignor that the entire consignment cost is say £10, I think not!

As an example I posted my four year old daughters pram last year, in two parcels, weighing a combined weight of 35KG across the two items, this cost me £43 (no staff discount either which is shocking) and the poor delivery driver would have received no more than between £1.50 and £4.00 (depending on what his/her drop rate was).

Regarding the money, unless you commit to working for DHL Parcel or in the parcel industry for at least four years, you will not make much money at all, fact!

I was on £3400 per month and after my costs (£210 for van, £200-£250 for fuel, £45 for all insurances (hire and reward, GiT and £5m Public Liability) and scanner and docking station hire, which were all weekly costs, I was left with £1250-£1350 per month, before paying income tax and NI contributions. Divide this by 217 hours per month and you'll only earn between £5.76-£6.22 per hour.

217 hours is less than I actually worked as I never included the 20 hours per month it took to travel to the depot each day, these hours are calculated from putting the first parcel into the van until you handed your paperwork and scanner back at the end of your working day.

More worryingly is the fact that the depot management knowingly send you out on the road on occasions with your van overweight, the weight carried is shown on your freight check sheets that you collect in the morning when you collect your paperwork.

The best thing that could happen would be for tachographs to be installed in all medium and long wheel base vans and for the police to start targeting vans on the motorways as they leave distribution depots and take them to the nearest VOSA station to be placed on a weighbridge.

It is only a matter of time before someone dies, DHL don't care. All they care about is ripping drivers off for as much as they can get away with and maximising profits. 

As for depot management, all they care about is having their massive ego's stroked and making their bonuses. Remember your a driver and no more than a pleb and an inconvenience, unless they want something from you!

I would arrive at work and have to unlock the building at 05:00 but my shift does not officially start until 06:00. I had to swipe in and open up my email account and read through any emails that were relevant before starting set up of the operation. These mails could include change in agency staff names for the rota or new health & safety briefs. Once I had identified all information I could change data on staff Rotas and print copies out for the team so they know where they are working. I would need to then migrate weekly booking plan onto daily booking plan and then add all information including container tipping times onto Inbound status board. This board is updated by the team all day with information such as time of arrival / Time of departure / Starting time / Finish time / name of person running the tipping team and any put-away times for completing the containers. 
At start of shift I would have to check to ensure staff are all accounted for and allocate out booking plan to teams. I would then need to make sure staff have all equipment they require to complete the tasks which would include Pallets / FLT trucks / Pallet labels etc. All staff have independent log in details and they need to be logged in for the full 8 hours of the shift but need to assign themselves to the tasks throughout the day like breaks / containers / put-aways etc. I would need to make sure any staff that were new starters were given induction and run through key site Health & safety regulations before they are allowed to start work. I would then need to create them a user account and password so they can log into the system. All the time they are logged in this is tracked in DHL labour management system and is supposed to give a Red / Amber / Green status to each member of staff so you can see how productive they are being. This system has serious limitations about the information and how it is calculated as staff may do a very good job but system flags them as not being effective which seems to be everyday even if all work was completed within KPI deadlines. I would need to ensure any issues staff have are resolved and aid them in the process themselves so they gain experience in this if the issue arises again. I would need to track all staff are updating the board correctly and are logging into the tasks on the system / High standards of housekeeping are achieved and deal with  and staff that have caused errors by carrying out records of conversation and logging errors on a access log. I would need to create next day staff rota and request any agency staff required for next days workload we are expecting. The Inbound Booking plan needs t be updated thoughout the day and I would be accountable for obtaining any information that was missed or any jobs that come up that were not on the log. I would also be responsible for KIT reworks requested by the customers which would be individual items that are bundled together to make a new model number for specific sales to certain customers. The hardest part of the job is  having a team of around 20 staff and have to manage Goods inbound accross 2 buildings for small electrical items and large TV / White goods and also any third party customers we have on site to ensure we are trying to hit any KPI targets set by the customer (which in my view were un-realistic as being a previous employee of Panasonic directly they could never achieve this level of Inbound in this timescale).
Any Inbound operations fall into my team and the management were very restrictive and not empathetic to the operation. They are blinded by what they think rather than what they know. The lack of support from staff and management in other areas of the building was a major issue as the sense of caring that DHL portray are not met by there actual actions. 
I enjoy working with staff and being able to empathise with them on issues and coaching them to overcome these hurdles but the staff turnover became too much as this area is not given the focus it needs to become a viable operation.

There are two sites (North and South) but I can only comment on my experience in the North. 

The job starts with a training session for the first week which wasn’t too bad, but a bit boring at times. During this week you will be trained for your role; I think everyone does picking but some people also do inbound or dispatch (as far as I know, you do not choose where you go). Picking seems to be a bit easier than inbound & dispatch because there is far less heavy lifting involved. 

You don’t have to worry about making mistakes as a picker because the handheld device won’t let you (most of the time). Your job involves working on floors 1-4. Each floor has aisles labelled alphabetically (starts at  AA then AB, AC,AD etc until AZ where the next aisle is BA). Enter your aisle then looks for the location in the aisle which is shown on your handheld device. Find the item and scan it. The device will tell you if it is the correct item or not. If it is correct then look at the display on the handheld device and check how many you need (it might say 1E which means 1 each’s, or one item or it might say any number(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,etc) followed by the letter E which means you need to take that number of items. Or it might say C which means container (you take a whole pack).  Then look at your hand held device to see which slot it goes into (1-9) and then press enter and scan the slot. 

Be careful if you are working on floors 2-4 because the items are in boxes and then also in bags; you will need to open the bags to get the item(s) out. Or if it asks for a container, take the bag. 

You might also be on box pick which is where you take a flatbed instead of a trolley (which holds 9 totes by the way) and take whole boxes instead of items. 

I didn’t stay on dispatch after training but it seemed like hard work. There was more team work involved but also a whole lot more hard work. Would not recommend really - not unless they pay more. Your day involves taking (sometimes heavy and overfilled)  totes off of a conveyor belt and sorting them by consignment (That’s the SBS number). This number is so small you will have trouble reading it unless you get really close to it. There are sometimes 5 or more different consignments for just one conveyor belt and when it’s just you assigned to that conveyor belt it can become quite hectic.

The dispatch team also receives equipment(think totes and dollies) trailers which need to be emptied out. As well as obviously loading trailers to be dispatched. The FLM(First Line Manager) there seemed like a nice bloke who cared for his team but it seemed like he had a lot on his plate (like late trailers from the South site) as well as M&S not proving him with the equipment he needs (basic things like pens and staplers).

After all this, I left for another warehouse where I do the exact same work but earn MORE money. It’s ridiculous that M&S couldn't match what every other employer is offering. I applied for lots of jobs and this was the first to get back to me. I would say accept the offer if you get one but keep your eye out for better paying jobs.

My day would start with a handover from the early shift informing me of any issues that had occured during the night or during thier shift that may impact how I performed my job. I would spend the day ensuriing that all orders were sent out, communicating with team leaders in the warehouse and in the office to ensure everything ran smoothly. As the paperwork from the orders were transfered to me inside I would check that everything was in place and I would send the paperwork over to the transport department. My day would end with a handover to the night shift.
I learnt how much work goes into organising a delivery to multiple stores across the country. Sending thousands of pounds worth of goods from the warehouse to the shops in England, Wales, Scotland and Northen Ireland. Towards the end of my time at DHL we started to send deliveries over to mainland Europe. I also learnt a great deal about how important time management is within this sort of role, which is something that I have taken into my work, academic and personal life. 
I also learnt how important it is to be adaptable witihin this role, you may have to perform a task that may not be in your job description, but it if is detrimental in assisting the work load and your colleagues you should always be willing to adapt to new situations. 

Management and Co-Workers were all incredibly friendly, I found management to be incredibly approachable and easy to talk to and managed to maintain a good working relationship with them even when it was stressful within the warehouse and office. My colleagues were also incredibly friendly, we were able to maintain a relationship where we would need to be professional but also able to maintain a friendly atmosphere both inside and outside of work.

The hardest part of the job was when situations were out of my control and I would have members of staff take out thier frustrations on me, this was a regular occurrence during peak time, but I learned not to take it personally and just do my job to the best of my ability. 

The most enjoyable part of my job was constantly being busy and being able to talk to all different levels of staff and being the person who would connect the warehouse to the transport department.

A typical day at work would be a busy day as per usual in any workplace, everyone would be in a friendly and helpful environment. First of we would all start off on the phons accepting calls from drivers and next. Dhl would be delivering upholstery items for next. Drivers would ring us advising us of any issues not being able to get to a customer property due to the road being narrow or a customer not being in at the property or there running late or have broken down. My role then would to move onto admin work changing addresses for customers which next have emailed over if a customer has a mattress that needs collecting I would raise a manual collection and book it in with the customer. I also had to manage offshore deliveries such as northern island, southern island, highland haulage and Paul Davis freight. My job was to ensure the trailers went over on time for customers to get there deliveries if that did not happen I myself would need to find out why the trailer was late and when deliveries can be taken out and contact all customers to advise, I would also be working off a lot of different spreadsheets created by myself with orders of the customers which are for the islands incasr there were any problems. Also reply back to any emails sent over and work on a delivery database which has all the previous day delivery fails I would need to manually go through each one individually and see it has failed for the right reason and the correct reason if not amend the reason failure and then email this spreadsheet over to next to advise them of what deliveries have failed and need rebooking in or reordering if item was damaged.

I learnt a lot of different skills working there and gained a lot of experience on working on different spreadsheets, databases etc although there was no chance of progression it was a great company that taught me many different skills and knowledge.

Management were great if you had any problems you could talk to them and they would handle it with professionalism.

All co workers were friendly and we was all always helpful towards each other made great friends.

There were no hard parts of the job as it was all enjoyable.

I worked here for a couple of months as a courier driver, 90% of your colleagues are real funny characters who will help you out with whatever you ask. Always up for a laugh and are genuinely nice people. 

The real issue is the actual job is so depressing. You’ll arrive in the morning to the depot, get to your parking bay and have a mountain of about 50-100 boxes for you to organise for your route, just chucked onto a pile, at times your designated van is nowhere to be found and your manager responds with “dunno” when you ask them where it is. Then you have to map out your own route on google maps on your phone, absolutely ruined my phone’s battery as it pretty much is on all day and on charge so you know where you’re going. 

Management won’t even look or talk to you unless you make a mistake or fail some deliveries, then it’s straight into their office to discuss how you need to improve. 

You’re encouraged to “eat and drive” instead of taking your allocated 1 hour break. They say to only take your break if you have time, you’re suppose to work and prioritise deliveries and collection over everything. I ended up getting fired because too many times I took my full 1 hour break and would miss 5-6 deliveries. 

Also, most boxes are around 10-15kg which is fine, but occasionally you’ll have to deliver boxes from 40kg-60kg, and just expected to lift them on your own, I once got sent out with large wooden crate that was around 3 metres wide and about 30kg, and told “try your best” when asked how I was going to deliver it to a 3rd floor flat, luckily the customer came out to help me. I also never received any formal training, or health and safety briefing, my first day they just sent me out with a colleague who wasn’t qualified to train me and I ended up just watching him do his job for a week, then was sent out on my own.

I once got sent out with a van that had near to no breaks, a fully loaded 3.5 tonne van, that meant I had to break for an extra 5-10 seconds before it would stop. When I rang my manager to tell him, he laughed and said “Haha, just try not to kill anyone”. Good one. 

As you can see, not the best place to work, pay is pretty good though, but the hours are so unsociable, it’s meant to be 08:30-18:30 but 70% of the time you won’t be finished until between 19:00-19:30. 

whilst i was working for 24-7 inside DHL, a typical working day would start by going into a short briefing to find out the exact count to pick and exactly what the team would be doing e.g which depot certain people would pick.
Then i would go into the admin office to collect all the routes to be picked that day by the team. After i would split the routes into the different depots and hand them out. Once that was done myself and 2-3 others would check all the routes that were picked and put them  into bread cages in the correct route order. When each route is complete we would then find the correct cage label stating what  customer account number is in each cage and fill in the load plan so that the nights and loading team can find what each route contains e.g how many bread trays to each customer and how many cages are on the routes. We would then push each cage into location and wait for the other bread delivery to come in to complete all routes. Once the second delivery was in we would tip the vehicle and place all stock into picking location ready to be picked by the team. Whilst the rest of the team was tipping the stock i would sign the drivers paperwork collect all damages and over stock from the first delivery and note it on to returns notes back to the supplier i would then go on to count and check off all stock on the new delivery taking out any overs sent in and i would PERN off any shorts from the customers before the team starts to pick. Finally when all the routes for each depot are picked the cages would be sealed/closed and locked ready to be loaded.
In my opinion the hardest part of the day was the time deadline for some depots to be picked and ready to go as vehicles would be waiting for the bread department to leave on time.
Whilst i was there i learned to keep to dealines and plan my time successfully without leaving any task unfinished.
My co-workers were the best part of working there alongside the management team as they are all supportive and will help with anything needed, we all were so close almost like a family unit which was in conclusion the best part of my job working there at DHL.

Your main learning is via experienced drivers you are paired with. Once familiar with processes its a lot easier get tasks done. When you start days can be long until become more efficient with best practice. Good days you finish earlier, bad days 12+ hours.  They will look to rotate you on to support van if your weekly hours get crazy and to take some stress off. Keep your head down, get on with the job and you'll be fine. 

Need to be ok with heavy lifting (anything from 1- 150kg items - furniture/appliances/electricals) and good communicator with your colleague navigating entry/logistics. Your forearm muscles/grip take a pounding for sure.  Be careful as some colleagues try to pull you into ego lifting. Doesn't feel right/safe for you..2 man it.  Confidence and technique/strength may come later. 

Shift patterns do go across the weekend. 6 am starts. Did have a 4 day pattern that was Thurs-Sun or a Mon- Fri pattern that was mainly white good installations (washing machines/dishwashers/american fridge freezers). Don't know where your headed until you come in and get your route. (North West mainly, bit of yorkshire and Wales on support van)

Though I've never worked somewhere with as many disciplinaries hanging over staff as here, or seen as many staff discarded so easily and cheaply. You are just a number and you will be made an example of. They have zero tolerance policy on reversing without your 2nd man out of vehicle to watch you.  You are just a number to them and there is little loyalty, support if you end up in that disciplinary process. There seems to be an unachievable standard expected regarding accidents, manoeuvring etc whilst also expecting you to get your routes done in line with expected timelines. You are often in high stress situations in difficult residential areas not designed for trucks and human error seems to be punished harshly and without much nuanced understanding via a cold, rigid H&S procedures that can't account for what is faced on the road day in, day out. 

Depot manager is a pathological liar who chronically tells grandiose lies that stretch and exceeds the limits of believability. He has high levels of self assurance that helps him lie successfully. He's never at the depot, and it's left to be micro managed by the under manager. She is cruel, oppressive and grevious with no people skills, and because of her, the depot has a high turn over in staff...because of  her bad management styles and poor communication. Young unexperienced people get promoted very fast, so the can be controlled by the management...as they are easily manipulated. Most fail very quickly. The tears we have seen with managers breaking down in the depot or going on the sick. And the worrying thing.....nobody from above can see this. Because he pathological liar is so deceitful. 
one day this depot will be exposed, and something will be done to stop this dreadful management style.....but how many more people must suffer before this is stopped and management replaced.
I am just thankfull for spending so long with these dreadful managers, because the have shown me exactly, not what kind of people I want to be around or become.

Time for the cowards to gain a voice...are you afraid to tell the truth...
If you become one, unite together...and act like men, you could put a stop to people suffering..... Or is it because.......things are too easy for you long term employees...... It might actually become fair....and your work load becomes equal to the people that suffer?
Or keep quiet and be treated with favouritism....the benefits are more rewarding? especially if you work over the garage on a Saturday?.
Sad to see personall gain at the expense of other people...be ashamed of yourselfs.


Wake up area manager....wake up CEO...these people are bringing this company into disrepute...........and in time you will answer for this. So act now to save your jobs.

Lastly......everyone that works at ebbw vale....read this and be honest to yourself.......or have you been corrupted by the pathological liar.

Up-sides: Great career progression opportunities within the company (cross-department) partly due to the lack of grad programmes in Operations (unlike many competitors) and therefore it's easy to scale the ranks once in the door. The DHL takeover brought some benefits which were largely token with the exception of a slightly improved overtime rate (which was already unofficially in use anyway) but they took away some things (bonus) and introduced others (marginally higher pay rise than usual yearly rise) which essentially balanced out to the same money at the end of the month - but incentivising bad conduct in the process (as employees couldn't lose their bonus anymore!).

Downsides: Pay was extremely low compared to competitors at the same level, which was made up by almost mandatory overtime - with long hours being the dish of the day. Managers had to sign contracts opting out of the weekly working hours cap regulations (which actually is presented to  all employees along with their contract if in Operations) - if you didn't sign it you wouldn't last five minutes in management.

9 hours per day was factored into the contract as minimum daily hours, making 45 per week (just below the legal 47 without opting out as previously explained). Working most Saturdays (at no notice) and some Sundays in addition to working long hours in the week plus daily overtime due to breakdowns etc made for a terrible work-life balance, especially given the shift cover for leave was so poor. 

It was very hard to book holiday as a result as there were few appropriately skilled individuals available to cover and generally the managers seemed to be expected to cover multiple responsibilities which in other companies would all be separate (eg transport manager, warehouse manager, operations manager all rolled into one). Managers were also expected to get their hands dirty like a supervisor which in other companies would be unacceptable.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Warehouse worker 34 salaries reported	£26,654 per year
Truck driver 40 salaries reported	£37,881 per year
Transport manager 16 salaries reported	£38,133 per year
Warehouse lead 19 salaries reported	£25,212 per year
Team leader 5 salaries reported	£29,046 per year

Working at DHL: company overview and reviews

DHL

DHL ratings

Popular jobs at DHL

Salary satisfaction

Jobseeker tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected