An advert promoting Eddie Stobart’s £200 driver referral scheme has been ridiculed online as it shows one of the company’s truckers driving with the handbrake on.
A photograph of the advert, which offers Eddie Stobart drivers a £200 bonus for referring a successful driver hire, was shared to a HGV driver jobs & news Facebook page earlier this week.
Photo: Denes Varga / Facebook
However, the ad quickly became the subject to humiliation after a number of Facebook users spotted the Stobart driver in the appeared to be driving with the handbrake on.
Eddie Stobart is of course one of the UK’s biggest road transport companies. The haulier has a long history and its trucks are a regular sight on the UK’s motorways.
The company nonetheless remains distinctly unpopular with many truckers in the UK due to less-than-attractive salaries it appears to offer. Eddie Stobart drivers are also regularly subjected to jokes and memes due to the perception they cause bridge strikes and make other schoolboy errors.
Although there are some individuals in the industry who’ve grown tired of “Stobart bashing”, and don’t want to tar all Stobart drivers with the same brush, the practice remains a staple part of trucker banter in the UK.
Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise to see many truckers in the aforementioned Facebook page make fun of the referral scheme ad.
One commented: “How about they put those £200s into making a decent hourly rate?,” while another added “He has been in that cab for ages just one job after another when he started he was clean shaven.”
Naturally, a few commenters couldn’t help but play on the bridge strikes stereotype too. One user wrote “Can you claim the bonus before or after you hit your first bridge?,” with another posting “do ya get paid more for hitting a bridge?”.
Photo: Denes Varga / Facebook