Truck driver shortage in Europe at crisis level – and is set to get worse
Europe’s road freight industry continues to suffer from a crippling driver shortage crisis, with around ...
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The growing problem of UK driver shortages – already threatening Christmas cargo deliveries – has been taken up by an MP, former haulier Andrew Bridgen.
“We’ve got to get people involved in this industry. With the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and Freight Transport Association (FTA) we are going to lobby to help recruitment next week,” said Tory MP for North West Leicestershire.
“We need to pay more for training to get people into logistics. We need to be more proactive.”
Speaking at a ...
Comment on this article
stephen webster
September 18, 2014 at 5:42 pmTruck drivers wages are than other jobs in the U.K. as well as in Canada and the U.S. With the cost of living in Canada do not take a trucking job of less than $22.00 per hour plus free rent or $26.00 per hour with and overtime after 50 hours. Many CTA. and APTA. and OTA. or BCTA. trucking companies and agents are cheating new drivers (or new truck drivers to Canada are only paying $.40 to $.44 per mile and not paying for all hours worked based on their E-log.
ioan Dolben
September 19, 2014 at 5:31 amI have been a driver for 32 years and driven all over Europe and beyond, and currently drive (I did), and won’t be driving a truck again out of principle, as my competence to drive was when I passed my truck test many years ago.
And the reason I will not drive a truck again is that this is a tax on drivers again and will create a huge shortage of competent drivers. One small accident (not my fault) in 32 yrs is a sure sign that I am competent to drive a 50ft truck.
Good luck to the minister for transport in finding the drivers that the country needs.
Scrap the CPC to fill the vacancies, or give it automatically to drivers that have been driving over three years .
Gary sneeze
September 19, 2014 at 6:09 pmI completely agree with loan !! I’ve had my licence for twelve years and my father has had his 44 years. On principle we both decided not to do the CPC rip off course. So there’s another 2 lost drivers. Because we are not competent Hahaha what a joke. Good luck getting drivers for Christmas.
Barrie tozer
September 19, 2014 at 8:02 pmWhen the FTA and other leading figures start to talk and listen to Professional Drivers then maybe a solution could be found.
Why they treat us all like kids without any due respect, more will hang up their keys and leave.
The biggest recruitment to new Drivers is by those in the profession and how many would advize a younster to enter our profession now.
Things will continue to get worse with shelves going bare and fuel pumps empty because our leading figures know better without asking the rank and file.
Barrie tozer
September 19, 2014 at 8:04 pmTo add
See the ongoing protest page for driver comment about the DCPC and why many are leaving the profession
https://www.facebook.com/groups/774063789302839/
Paul delve
September 19, 2014 at 9:01 pmYep me to 30 years not done the cpc crap its a slap in our face so sat at home waiting for the Crisis to begin…Or should I say watching it unfold!…So be it…
goldfish
September 19, 2014 at 10:21 pmI agree, it’s a worrying state of affairs. The government will only take notice when the deliveries to the House of Commons run late or Cameron’s children don’t get their Xmas presents in time.
Too late then.
What’s next the old 3.5 tonne can allowance?
Andrew d smith
September 20, 2014 at 12:51 pmI’ve got 15 years hgv experience. I lost my job about 2 years ago now. Been unable to find full time employment or to many after the same position. I can’t afford to do the cpc training and I love driving. I’ve worked hard for the past 30 Years. Nobody wants to help so I’m thinking of giving up my hgv for something else. Don’t want to but what do you do.
Steve Harvey
September 21, 2014 at 9:46 amMore training? We are trained to our eyeballs. I have been driver for over 12 years. Driving is in my family. Now this job has had it. Hauliers paying rubbish wages, they have not realized that 39 hours in a factory gets the same pay as a driving job which you would be away from home all week. The roads are way overcrowded and the standard of driving has got beyond a joke. The people who preach the rules at us lorry drivers are the ones cutting us up to get to their meetings on time! About time they paid us a proper wage and start training these car drivers and putting black boxes in their cars to do them for speeding all the time and tailgating everything on the road. I can’t wait to find a job in a factory as i will be off the road then. Only problem is there is that many eastern europeans working in factories i can’t get a job in them!!
Big Ginge
October 04, 2014 at 10:50 am100 percent spot on. Professionals we are. So pay us a professional wage. Do people not realise that the country will come to a complete stop if there are not enough drivers to transport everything. We are our own worst enemies for not sticking together and demanding as one a better deal.
lukas
December 02, 2015 at 9:52 pmEastern Europeans are not a problem, at least they work hard, pay taxes and seat quiet whereas people from other countries who have got 4,5,6 children always complain, demand and live on benefits from our taxes. That is why government looking for other sources of budget income i.e. CPC qualification.
stephen webster
September 21, 2014 at 8:40 pmThis shortage was caused by the trucking industry not paying a high enough wages to keep people driving trucks instead of other jobs. I was at a truck driver recruiting event on Saturday and out the the 23 companies looking to hire only 2 were offering a fair wage. A number of people looking at a getting second jobs left the event laughing at the payscales being offered. I had 5 or 6 companies ask me when the other jobs truck drivers were getting would slow up, hoping that they would come back to driving trucks. The trucking rates need to have a bottom rate set by the gov. and require all trucking companies to set aside 1% of gross sales for driver training and set min wage for truck drivers with 2 or more years experience of £13 per hour or $22.00 per hour plus overtime.
steve dearman
September 23, 2014 at 10:57 ami have been a driver for well over 35 years. I started as a driver’s mate and learnt from drivers who have have long since died so from that time I gained the following knowledge:
(1) The art of rope and sheeting
(2) Loading on axles
(3) Many types of engines’ gearboxes
(4) Tyre blowouts front and back when you as a driver had to change them
(5) Trunk roads’ routes other than the motorways
(6) I drove many different types of lorry combinations including single axle trailers ‘chinese six ‘a frame drawbar’ trombone and the last of the 4 in line type trailers all.
Lots of new drivers will never work or have done any of the above. “Thank god”, some older drivers may say… but back then there was always someone around to show you… not so in the last 20-odd years. There is not many left in this industry of the skilled type.
You cannot de-skill a job such as lorry driving to the degree that it has been, and pay terrible rates and wages and expect to attract new blood. The so-called CPC is a total insult to many drivers – sitting in a classroom with someone who’s never done half the things he or she is reading to you. That is not going to help you when you’re out there in the big bad world.
We still have a group of older, retiring hauliers and drivers who, if asked and payed for their time, would pass on their much needed knowledge via driver colleges with vehicles flat and boxed. Today’s vehicles are much are more simple to drive than yesterdays, and loading them is mostly down to others on forklifts and rear loading docks, but no matter if its a curtainsided lorry or box, you as a driver are responsible for the lorry and its load – the buck stops with you.
As with any tradesman, be it brickie or plummer, you have to have certain skills before you’re let loose on someone’s site or house. How can it be not be the same for an HGV driver on our roads. Pay the the drivers the proper rates; better the conditions; give them the hands-on training and this could be changed, and it won’t risk the economy.
andy McCallum
October 06, 2014 at 7:40 amThere are new good drivers who have been put off due to the two years’ experience requirement – this needs to be addressed
jon
October 07, 2014 at 11:23 amHaving been a Class One Trucker in the UK for 20 years before heading Down Under to OZ as a Semi Trucker, I’m just reading about the ridiculous position the UK trucking industry finds itself in and to be honest, it only has itself to blame.
Had those big trucking companies embraced the skills of their drivers rather than ripping them off for many years with absolutely diabolical wages, then maybe there would be plenty stepping up to the plate to cover the growing work load now.
The government bureaucrats are also to blame in a country which prides itself in allowing, and even promoting, flexible working conditions for business. That is all except truck driving in which drivers can be on duty for a staggering 15-hour shift each day yet can only drive for 9 of those 15 hours each day followed by having to effectively take 2 days break each week.
Do the industry a favour and finally drop that stupid 15-hour shift down to a much safer 12 hours shift a day in which the driver is free to drive for all of those hours (with a mid-shift break) or do any other work followed by a very sensible 12 hours break each day. The driver would then be refreshed enough to work more days of the week should they so require.
I really don’t know any other industry in the UK which is so over-regulated and restricts drivers from being allowed to make decent money. Coupled with the new CPC rules which now adds even more bureaucracy to the job but without any more pay. Something simply doesn’t add up. I know where I’d rather be and it isn’t England!
Paul
October 13, 2014 at 10:39 pmAs said above try paying drivers a decent wage and stop making them work inhumane hours on highly congested roads .Then you might get people interested in wanting a hgv driving job. I have been a hgv driver since leaving the army in 2001 and the roads and wages have got no better and people wonder why their is a driver shortage
Steve
October 14, 2014 at 7:38 amI haven’t done my cpc because I did my driving test and paid for it when I was 21 I am now 40 and feel I am being told my experience isn’t good enough. The wages are not good enough, you can get better elsewhere, the treatment of drivers isn’t good enough, you can get better elsewhere.
You could see the difference in treatment, from one door you have the factory pickers who were asked if they could possibly work overtime tonight, and the drivers were told that they had to do a 6 hour run and told they have to do it or else.
Drivers are left waiting for 5 and 6 hours with no meals of drinks provided, nobody gives a monkeys about you.
If a driver makes a mistake he is instantly locked up and ask questions later.
The risks are immense and the pay poor along with poor treatment and experienced drivers told they need to be trained by some goon who doesn’t want to drive for a living.
The whole industry needs to wake up and see how they have been treating drivers, including how they get treated by VOSA.
For £3000 you can train to be anything else that pays better, plumbers get double or quadruple the wages drivers do and they are treated better and home every night.
PaulD56
October 14, 2014 at 11:01 amI have to say that none of the above has surprised me. I did the Driver CPC, but have not driven a truck in anger for almost 9 years. I have got no intention of driving for a living again. I work in Transport and see the problems both here in UK and in Europe everyday. This will get worse for sure and pretty soon I guess. There are a lot of drivers similar to me. Have Licence, Have CPC but not going to drive. I have seen how drivers get treated by the clients and it is not good. Driver parking facilities are extremely poor and very expensive. I am only 58 but there is no incentive to want to get behind the wheel again.I did the CPC just to keep the licence entitlement. I have been asked a few times if I would do some weekend driving.. But by the time it is taxed etc, it is not worth getting out of bed for. Someone needs to wake up and smell the coffee beans. Make it more attractive and people may be more inclined to come back to driving again. I used an agency some while ago and sorry but it had to be said that the quality of driver was seriously lacking. Either only just past the test or really not up to the standard required. With some older drivers taking up the early retirement there is a big hole to be filled.
dave
October 18, 2014 at 9:19 amTry paying a decent rate per hour. 8 quid for a professional is an insult. I have been driving for 24 years to date. And try getting transport managers who treat drivers with respect. Instead of: “If you don’t do it I will get Johnny Foreigner to do it. Cheaper.” The lack of decent management in this country is the problem – short-sighted and pompous.
Paul delve
October 18, 2014 at 8:39 pmReading the above posts which I have added to earlier I guess that what this crap industry will do is…Run to europe and bring another set of second rate drivers in when they already have bloody good drivers who are just fed up of even more regulation!..Wake up British parliament before us drivers do not return!!!
Jon2
October 29, 2014 at 8:19 amI agree with nearly all of the above. I would like to add – why are uk working to 2014 deadline when the Germans are working to 2016?
Steve
November 14, 2014 at 2:15 pmAre European drivers allowed to drive in the UK without the driver cpc, if so isn’t this discrimination against UK drivers.
How come they are safe without it yet UK drivers will be fined and deemed unfit to drive.
Very poor treatment of UK drivers by the UK government and haulage associations that are only concerned about the cost to there members.
dave
November 15, 2014 at 2:49 pmAs a driver for 24 some years now. The wages I beleave are the biggest factor in this. 8 and 9 pound an hour for driving a class one truck is frankly an insult. They say you can earn 33000 a year. But what they leave out is the five nights away in a tin can. You’ll get 100 quid there per week Whoopi do. Also the fact your working 70 hours a week. They might as well forget the working time directive. They have ways of p o a. To keep you out longer.
Who in their right mind would come into this over regulated industry. Bad management is rife. Same as government management.
It needs a top down make over with realistic wages for the skills.
Last but not least. Treat drivers like people. Not like they own us.
Alan Dover
November 18, 2014 at 7:00 pmAs a mature Trucker I am very worried and confused over new regulations requiring drivers to pass tests
in a class-room setting orchestrated by someone suited who has never touched a heavy truck in their life.
I reckon just 1 year truck driving experience outweighs +fifty times the knowledge gained passing a DCPC!
We are all being forced to jump through false hoops to please no-one but idle legislators and law-makers.
Because while they’re sleeping – It will be Truckers trucking on throughout the night making those most vital
supply connections to industry & commerce that fuels and benefits the whole nations prosperity and wealth.
In my opinion the DCPC and ticket tests are Absolutely Laughable it’s just jobs & £££’s for the boys club
If You are going to make rules and govern, then govern Us Well! If Not, then Don’t blinking bother at all !!
I have to agree with one of J. Clarkson’s famous quote’s = Please just leave us alone!
I apologise in advance. But after 30 year of professional european truck driving that’s how I really see it!
When it is your professional Q.B.E. that really does count. (Qualification By Experience)
Please Please tell us what You think? Are we as Professionals filling in secreterial rubbish?
David Roderick
November 25, 2014 at 7:43 pmIt’s not just the CPC that is making the industry unappealing it’s the ever increasing fines and lower wages than cashiers or shelf stackers. We are PROFESIONAL drivers that Joe public hates alongside councils and VDSA. … and overnight parking being expensive and insecure and with theft from trailers up year on year. Yet no one FTA RHA fight for our safety. …
Stevie
November 26, 2014 at 11:56 amIm the same, was driving class 1 for 20 yrs. Now hung up the keys. The job is the most overregulated and persecuted job there is!.
What other job is your supervisor THE TRAFFIC POLICE AND VOSA????. Any small mistake you make results in FINES AND POINT ON YOUR LICENCE! A we all know there is no leniency now with any of them due to their funding top downs from Government. Drivers are now just a EASY TO EXTORT CASH COW!
Their is no publis body to help or represent drivers as the FTA and RHA are about the buisness not the drivers!. Then you have the CPC now, just another extortion racket from government, Lets screw the drivers some more!
lucy
November 28, 2014 at 11:14 pmIve been driving 15 yrs i agree with all what above drivers have said. I am at moment desperately looking to see what other career i could do to get away from this prehistoric joke of an industry. It is i hope going to reap what is has sown. I dont know any other job where you can turn up and be forced to do a 15 hour day 3 times a week and then after up to 13 hour shifts whether you wish to or not. When you have had enough of trying to drive while desperately trying to stay awake and not kill someone. you cant just give up and go home because you are no Where near home. You have no social life and miss out on family. And on top of that you are treated and spoken to like you are scum by transport managers and desk staff. Good luck haulage industry on attracting people to work in the conditions you yourself have sunk to the depths of. Your abuse of decent hardworking men an woman disgusts me. You yourself should sort out your disgusting treatment of drivers in order to make the industry a place where new comers would wish to work instead of expecting finacial handouts and blaming government for your problems.
Matthew
December 13, 2014 at 3:47 amIf you get inwith a good form they pay the cpc for you. Wouldn’t do anything else now. Job is great. Would advise anyone who wants to do their hgv to do it because it’s different every day and not monotonous like other jobs
Rodjames
January 07, 2015 at 9:05 amI worked in this industry since 1979, I obtained my Class 3 as it was back then under the vocational scheme at 19, long since gone, over the years it got upgraded to a Class 2 by default, but most of the comments from truckers on here are relevant, I sat a 1 hour 30 minute test back in the day, gained all of my experience just doing the job, never had a serious accident in 35 years and now its CPC time! well I’m sorry I for one won’t be doing it, I’m 54 now, and getting a little bit too old for classroom antics which pour scorn on my 35 years of experience and professionalism, on top of CPC is the the driver behaviour trackers now being installed everywhere, that is basically a catylist to the fact that your employer doesn’t trust you to drive in a competent manner, as you may have guessed? I’ve hung my keys up also guys!
david,merseyside....
February 10, 2015 at 2:21 amI have been driving HGV 1 wagons for the last twenty years now I am still driving today ….years ago when you passed you HGV it was class 1 but now a days you got to pass your class 2 first and get 2 to 3 years experience before you go for class 1…it all about money with this government….cost another two grand to take your lessons and test for class 1…licence what people can,t afford to do that ….this. government should wake up and help people with the cost of lessons…or just go back to getting your class 1 licence…without going in for class 2…CPC licence don,t get me starting on that….a pen pusher tell me how to drive a wagon up and down this UK roads…
rodJames
February 10, 2015 at 11:31 amSome good points there, I think we all feel the same, but don’t expect governments to fund anything mate,they are not interested in the minions.
steve
February 12, 2015 at 11:31 amAgency has just put our wages up which has had the following ‘effect new drivers being taken on at lower rate mostly eastern European and us british and European agency drivers given less work i’ll like to know how the vetting of some these guys licences is conducted and whats the cost ‘because a few of them can’t reverse to save their lives.
Mark Stocker
March 29, 2015 at 12:49 pmThere’s a lot of whinging on here from the old guard. First off, driving is not a ‘professional’ job. A job that (once the medical & Haz/Theory tests are out the way) requires 4 days of training followed by a test ( for Class 2, 1, ADR, and HIAB) can never be compared to professional jobs like being a lawyer, doctor, teacher etc. It can’t even be compared to a tradesman who has learned their craft over the course of an apprenticeship followed by years of developing their skills. Modern trucks are so easy to drive that any young lad who’s enthusiastic about driving can get to grips with it very easily these days. Those who talk about skills like roping & sheeting, crash gearboxes, chaining etc are living in the past. These are hardly difficult things to pick up as and when needed. Driving will never attract much over minimum wage. If it did, everyone would do it. There’s far more people in this country with the licences than there are vacancies. If any haulier is struggling to recruit, then it’s primarily a simple case of increasing the remuneration slightly. Too many older drivers slag off the Eastern Europeans… I can only assume that this is because in most cases these guys are better qualified, more flexible, and harder working than most of you. This is certainly the case with the Polish guys in my place, who could teach some of our British guys a thing or two about hard work and flexibility. Times are changing, the good old days are well and truly over. Driving is now ‘a job’, just like stacking shelves, sweeping floors, and working in a call-centre. Me?… I only drive 2 days a week now and I dictate my own availability and what work I want to do. If the transport managers aren’t happy with this, they’re swiftly told where to go and poke it, and there’s plenty more work out there with other people. The job is what you make of it. Lay down like a door-mat and be treated like one, have a bit of self-respect and dictate your own terms and you will in turn be treated with respect.
Alan Dover
March 30, 2015 at 11:59 amAs a PROFESSIONAL European HGV1 driver with over 30 years knowledge. I have seen the job degraded and so badly managed by managers and sloppy authorities. (As for Lawyer’s they are basically over-paid over-valued and enjoy an easy life).
The only way us Professional Drivers are ever going to be listened to by the so called ruling classes is simply to have a ‘DAY OFF!’. That would show everybody from EMP’s- Bankers – LAWYERS TOO! all the way down to the hard working folks on the shop floor just who is holding this economy together.
I have always been a Free-lancer and negotiated my way through my profession, working for many local family run haulier’s who trusted me to transport every thing from scrap paper to space satellites (Eurospatel Toulouse)
covering Millions of Kilometres throughout the whole of Europe.
I am a Professional Driver and wear it very proudly.
(What’s your Prof then Mark?)
As for the Polish! I have worked along side them and I don’t have an issue, as I Trucked in Poland just after the wall came down 1990, but when I see UK firms hiring un-professional East European Drivers who are unable to communicate and struggle to perform reversing manoeuvres requiring skill and care, who’s damaged vehicles are held together with duck tape I realise something has gone very wrong indeed.
That’s why I have started my own web design Business.
The Unions can’t help You as they are just puppets between Government and Business, when they should of sorted the Drivers 15 hour day by now, instead they force you to fill in meaningless paperwork and tick-boxing secretarial stuff thinking they are working on the drivers behalf! Ha.
Theory tests and little plastic certificates are laughable, except for HAZ/Chem.
Now The Authorities that in forced the tickets scheme have just realised their own actions have caused a huge Drive shortage (bad management again) because Professional Drivers like myself refuse to be insulted and conform to complete non scene.
‘So I’m Out’
But I do stand firm for my fellow Professional hard working HGV Truck Drivers. A one day strike would open the eyes of many and show them what a valuable part of the world economy you play and may be treat you more fairly.
TRUCKERS NEED TO STAND TOGETHER!
Steve dearman
December 31, 2015 at 11:21 amPlease accept my apologies
The comment ‘can you rope and sheet was meant for Mr stocker not your good self I too have had to repair our lorries on the side of the road in the show sleet and rain my point was ‘yes any one can drive a old AEC Mandator say
And yes any one can throw sheets over a load
But will they get them both back safely the skills I was shown by those so called
Old guard have stood me in good stead
Over the years and although ropeing and sheeting is not so common these days it
Taught me much more about driving like how a load dealt going though a round about….I still pride my self on being not worried about what vehicle I take out it might be a A frame DB or single axle trailer on muti drop around London
I,ll still do it
Could a lawyer do our job ?
As you say laughter all round.
steve dearman
September 13, 2015 at 11:03 pmCAN YOU ROPE & SHEET?
Alan Dover (Euro-Berty)
December 03, 2015 at 12:06 pmAs a long term Professional Yes of coarse I can rope & sheet, I also could remove a damaged truck piston and cylinder liner on the roadside if I had too, change tyres, repair brakes and electrical issues, as I have gained many practical skills throughout my trucking career.
But a DCPC is absolutely of no use to myself.
I have asked so many drivers what they have gained by sitting the DCPC course and the general reply is SOD-ALL!.
I think the authorities and policy makers have made a real mess-up here, and for no reason, it’s all red tape and office type bureaucracy & non-sense.
“What a balls up” I rest my case. Regards Alan…………
Edward(Ted)Royle
January 26, 2016 at 11:15 pm40 to 44 cents a mile in canada is a little low,but it could be worse especially if you have no experience,I’m going into my 38th year of driving.Would love to drive in another country but the red tape involved to do it legally I’m thinking would or could be a nitemare.
Chris Pederson
November 09, 2020 at 9:23 pmI appreciate your explanation of how the pre-Christmas peak will be challenging for haulers. Hauling takes a long time and can be a dangerous job. I’d hope that companies would come up with ways to get new haulers involved.