News / Truck driver shortage in Europe at crisis level – and is set to get worse

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Europe’s road freight industry continues to suffer from a crippling driver shortage crisis, with around half a million vacancies.

According to the International Road Transport Union’s (IRU) annual driver shortage analysis, driver vacancies in Europe represent around 12% of all positions, and was broadly the same last year, largely due to depressed economic activity.

The IRU research found that 70% of European road freight operators surveyed had experienced severe, or very severe, difficulties in filling positions, although that was slightly down on the 71% who experienced the same problem last year.

However, Natalia Corchado, strategic planning and business specialist at the IRU, said the situation was likely to get worse next year.

“Very few companies expect to have less difficulty next year – there is an aging workforce, and economic growth in Europe is expected to get to 1.5%, which will mean more activity, and we expect the 12% of unfilled positions to grow to 15%,” she said.

The situation is even worse in two key near-shoring locations, Mexico and Turkey, where driver vacancies have risen to 15% and 17%, respectively. In absolute terms, Mexico has a shortage of around 100,00 drivers and Turkey 93,000, although both have shown a marginal improvement from last year.

Ms Corchado said the industry had three levers to strengthen its workforce: recruit more female drivers; recruit younger drivers; and recruit drivers from other countries.

“Around 47% of the staff in Europe’s transport companies are female, but among truck drivers only 4% are female,” she said, adding that globally around 7% of truck drivers are female.

“However, when we looked at job satisfaction levels from surveyed drivers, we found that women are much more likely to recommend the profession than men – once they take the wheel, they generally are more satisfied with their job than male drivers,” she said.

Meanwhile, the lack of younger drivers is expected to be compounded by the number of drivers aged over 55 increasing – in the US, 29% are above that age, rising to 36% in Europe and an astonishing 47% in Australia.

At the same time, just 7% of US truck drivers are under 25, dropping to 4% in Europe and 5% in Australia.

“This means that 36% of European truck drivers are expected to retire in the next 10 years, and half a million in the next five years, and this will almost certainly add to the gap we see today,” she added.

Currently, just 6% of truck drivers in Europe are non-European nationals and, while recruiting from outside the EU could offer immediate solutions to the shortages, “it is complicated due to current work regulations” – and there are concerns over driving standards.

However, the IRU’s director of certification and standards, Patrick Philipp, said a programme sponsored by the European Commission for Transport, the Steer2EU project, was under way to bridge the legal gaps between the EU and a set of third countries – Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

“What we mean by this isn’t recruiting drivers, but professional drivers. This is not about poaching drivers from other countries to work in the EU, which is social dumping, it is about raising and establishing standards in these countries as well.”

A Steer2EU workshop is scheduled to take place in Brussels to discuss the status of the project.