How much do HGV drivers earn?

What the published figures say

The clearest recent figure we can point at covers Class 2. Aspion’s 2026 HGV driver salary guide reported permanent Class 2 roles at 28,000 to 36,000 pounds a year, with agency rates of 16 to 20 pounds an hour.

That is one published source rather than an official statistic, and it is a range rather than a number. Both of those caveats matter. Treat it as a sighting shot for whether an advert is in the normal band, not as a benchmark to negotiate against.

We are not going to invent an equivalent Class 1 figure to sit next to it. The pattern across the market is that C+E work pays above rigid work for comparable hours, and the job adverts themselves are the honest evidence for what any specific operator is paying today.

What actually moves the number

Licence class sets the floor. These set the rest:

• Nights out and tramping. Sleeping away from home attracts a separate payment. It is the single biggest difference between two otherwise identical trunking jobs.
• Shift premiums. Nights, weekends and bank holidays.
• Handball. Multi-drop work where you move the load yourself pays differently from drop-and-swap work where you do not touch it.
• ADR and other endorsements. Carrying dangerous goods needs extra qualification and is paid accordingly.
• Overtime structure. Whether the advertised salary assumes 45 hours or 55 changes the real hourly rate more than most people allow for.
• Sector. Supermarket distribution, general haulage, waste, tipper and plant work all price differently.

Permanent against agency

Agency pays a higher hourly rate and carries a lower floor. That trade is the whole point of it, and it is a reasonable trade for some people at some times.

What to compare honestly:

• Guaranteed hours. A high rate on an unpredictable four-day week is not a high wage.
• Holiday and sick pay. Present in one, structured very differently in the other.
• Pension. Both have one. The employer contribution is the thing to look at.
• Notice and continuity. How quickly the work can stop.

Whatever the arrangement, no lawful rate can sit below the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage floor for your age. Those rates change each April and are published by government, which is why this page links to them rather than printing a number that would be wrong by spring.

The local pay figure on our area pages, and what it is not

Every area page on this site shows a median full-time annual pay figure from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. It is real and it is local. It is also all occupations combined for that local authority.

It is not driver pay. It is not care pay. It is the middle of everyone’s earnings in that district, from warehouse to hospital consultant, and it is on the page as context for what a local labour market looks like rather than as a salary guide for the role in the heading.

Labelling it as pay for a particular job would be a fabricated salary claim, and it is worth being blunt about why we cannot simply fix it with better data: ASHE is not published by occupation at local authority level. That figure does not exist anywhere, for anyone.

The same discipline applies to the job counts on driving pages. Those come from the ONS Business Register and Employment Survey and count jobs that exist in road freight, warehousing and courier activity in that area. They are not vacancies, not demand, and not a shortage.

Reading a job advert properly

• Is the figure a salary, an hourly rate, or “OTE”? On-target earnings usually assume overtime you have not agreed to yet.
• How many hours is the salary based on?
• Are nights out paid separately or rolled in?
• Is the rate different for the first weeks?

If an advert does not say, that is a fair question to ask the employer when you apply. You apply to them directly here, so the answer comes from the people who set the number.