Most "HGV driver salary" pages quote a single national average and leave it there. This one does something narrower and more useful: it reports what HGV and LGV driver adverts running on CareerAlert on 21 September 2026 actually state, hourly and annually, with the sample size next to every figure.
The short version: the median advertised rate is £18.00 an hour, the middle half of adverts sit between £16.51 and £19.98, and Class 1 work pays about £1.60 an hour more than Class 2 at the median.
The data behind this page
| What | Figure |
|---|---|
| Source | Live job adverts on CareerAlert |
| Snapshot date | 21 September 2026 |
| Adverts matched | 9,495 with "HGV" or "LGV" and "driver" in the job title |
| Of those, stating pay | 4,488 (47%) |
| Hourly sample | n = 3,702 |
| Annual sample | n = 477 |
| Method | Midpoint of the advertised range; single figures used as-is. A placeholder value used by one feed for unpriced adverts is excluded throughout, as are hourly rates below £8 or above £60 (data errors). |
| Rule | No figure published where the sample is under 100 nationally or under 75 for a city. |
What HGV driver jobs pay per hour
Hourly is how most HGV driver work is advertised — 3,702 of the 4,488 priced adverts quote an hourly rate, against 477 quoting a salary.
| Percentile | Hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Lower quartile (25th) | £16.51 |
| Median (50th) | £18.00 |
| Upper quartile (75th) | £19.98 |
Read that as: a quarter of adverts pay under £16.51, a quarter pay over £19.98, and half of everything on the market sits in the £3.47 band between them. An advert at £15 an hour is genuinely below market. One at £21 is genuinely above it.
What HGV driver jobs pay per year
The 477 adverts quoting an annual salary are a different, smaller slice of the market — more likely to be permanent, employed, single-site roles than agency shifts.
| Percentile | Annual salary |
|---|---|
| Lower quartile | £36,000 |
| Median | £42,000 |
| Upper quartile | £45,000 |
A third group — 248 adverts — quotes a weekly figure, typically agency tramping work: median £852 a week, with the upper quartile at £1,000. Those weeks usually involve nights out, so compare them against hourly rates only once you know the hours.
Do not convert one into the other carelessly
£18.00 an hour is not £42,000 a year unless the hours match. At 45 paid hours a week across 46 worked weeks, £18.00 comes to roughly £37,000 — below the advertised annual median. The annual figures skew higher partly because salaried roles bundle in paid holiday, and partly because the roles advertised as salaries tend to be the more senior ones.
Class 1 versus Class 2
Splitting the hourly sample by what the job title says about licence class:
| Licence | n | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class 1 (C+E) | 1,908 | £17.00 | £18.50 | £20.25 |
| Class 2 (C) | 948 | £16.00 | £16.90 | £18.00 |
| Not stated in title | 846 | £16.65 | £18.25 | £20.73 |
The gap at the median is £1.60 an hour. Over a 45-hour week that is about £72, or roughly £3,300 across a working year — which is the honest answer to "is the C+E upgrade worth it". It usually pays for itself inside a year, and it widens the pool of work you can take.
Where the work is
Ad volume by city, for every city with at least 75 live HGV or LGV driver adverts:
| City | Live adverts |
|---|---|
| London | 557 |
| Bristol | 138 |
| Manchester | 137 |
| Leeds | 122 |
| Birmingham | 120 |
| Sheffield | 114 |
| Liverpool | 106 |
| Glasgow | 103 |
| Edinburgh | 85 |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | 84 |
| Warrington | 79 |
| Derby | 76 |
One deliberate omission. Only London has enough priced hourly adverts to support a city pay figure — 331 of them, median £18.00, quartiles £16.50 and £20.20, which is to say indistinguishable from the national picture. Every other city falls below the 75-advert floor this site uses before quoting a local figure, so no local median is given for them. Pages that do quote one for every town in Britain are usually modelling it, not measuring it.
What actually moves the number
Reading through the 9,495 live adverts, the things that raise a rate are consistent:
- Nights out. 2,665 adverts (28%) mention tramping or nights out. Tramping work carries a nights-out allowance on top of the hourly rate, which is part of why weekly figures look high.
- Weekend and premium shifts. 3,857 adverts reference Saturday, Sunday or a weekend rate. Sunday is very often the best-paid day of the week.
- Overtime. 1,958 adverts mention it explicitly. Where the base rate looks ordinary, the overtime rate is often where the money is.
- Licence class. As above — £1.60 an hour at the median.
What employers are asking for
Across the same 9,495 adverts:
- Driver CPC — named in 6,228 adverts (66%). It is the single most common requirement.
- Digital tachograph card — 5,590 (59%).
- A clean-ish licence — 1,289 adverts (14%) set an explicit points limit, almost always no more than six.
- Experience — 1,145 adverts (12%) ask for a stated minimum, usually 12 months to 2 years.
- Funded or provided training — 413 adverts (4%) offer it. A small share, but they exist, and they are the route in if you have not got the licence yet.
If you are still working out how to get the licence, our guide to becoming an HGV driver in the UK covers the categories, the medical and the CPC tests in order.
Check what your own area is paying
One note on the counter below: the site’s job search matches job titles and advert descriptions, so it returns a wider set than the title-only sample the pay figures on this page are calculated from. Treat it as "how much work is out there", and the tables above as "what the job pays".
Rates move week to week and depot to depot. The fastest way to price your own market is to look at what is open near you right now — browse all HGV driver jobs, or the wider distribution and logistics category.
FAQ
What is the average HGV driver salary in the UK in 2026?
Across 3,702 live adverts quoting an hourly rate on 21 September 2026, the median is £18.00 an hour, with the middle half between £16.51 and £19.98. Across the 477 adverts quoting an annual salary, the median is £42,000. We report the median rather than the mean because a handful of very high adverts pull an average upwards and misrepresent the typical job.
How much more does Class 1 pay than Class 2?
£1.60 an hour at the median: £18.50 for Class 1 (C+E, n=1,908) against £16.90 for Class 2 (C, n=948). Over a full year that is roughly £3,300 on 45-hour weeks.
Do HGV drivers earn more in London?
On this data, no. London's median advertised rate is £18.00 an hour across 331 priced adverts — the same as the national median. London has far more vacancies (557 live adverts, more than four times the next city), but not a higher headline rate.
Why do some adverts quote a weekly figure?
248 adverts do, at a median of £852 a week. These are usually agency tramping roles where the week includes nights out and an allowance on top of the driving hours. Ask how many hours and how many nights that figure assumes before comparing it with an hourly rate.
How much can a new HGV driver expect to start on?
The lower quartile is the fairest guide: £16.51 an hour. Adverts offering funded training generally start at or near the bottom of the range and rise once you are through probation and holding your own on the tacho.
Is the pay likely to keep rising?
We do not forecast. What this page can tell you is what is being advertised today; the figures here are recomputed from live adverts whenever the page is updated, and the snapshot date is stated at the top.
Next step
If you want the new adverts rather than the ones that have been sitting there a fortnight, set up a free job alert and we will email you matching HGV driver vacancies as they appear.
Sarah Mitchell
Sarah writes CareerAlert's careers guides, drawing on the jobs advertised on the platform every day.
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