Years ago you either went hauling for a transport company, and enjoyed the relative freedoms that allowed, ie being more or less left to your own devices no one looking over you shoulder, with teh right lorry you could belt along at 70+ without a care in the world.
Or if you were lucky enough you got a start on a company carrying their own goods.
These would usually be a bit more regimental, sometimes the job wasn’t as well paid as you could earn on general but the work and hours you put in were nothing like, often there would be pensions and other benefits, on some jobs getting into the right own account or specialist meant you’d won the driver’s version of the pools.
The job was harder overall and required some nous, but the general haulage industry was more friendly then if that makes sense, so long as the job was done, you didn’t have any prangs, the customer was happy and you didn’t take the ■■■■ too much they more or less left you alone, those who ran you knew what they were doing, best days of lorry driving IMHO, satisfying too because it involved more than sitting behind a wheel and selecting D.
Fast forward, and the biggie is surveillance, i hate it, i don’t need spying on because i do a good job for my money and always have, if companies are stupid enough to recruit monkeys and pay them peanuts so be it, they reap what they sow, but lumping us all in with the monkeys has totally demoralised the better end of the driver pool, one size never has fitted all, it never will.
Job satisfaction too, dumbing the job down ever further and expecting time served competent staff to dumb down to an equivalent of brakes to slow gears to go one size fits all rubbish doesn’t give competent drivers satisfaction, it never will, it gets you cheap basically trained bums on seats and if thats what employers want there’s plenty of them out there flitting about from job to job leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
Money is important but not the be all and end all, but even the standard general haulage outfits are spying on their workforce constantly, some otherwise useless brat is likely to be watching for you to make the slightest error, or stop somewhere for an extra pee or somewhere where they sell a decent bacon buttie, and said brat can’t wait to log it as another misdemeanor, which will then be questioned at debrief 
WTF is this debrief cobblers anyway, we didn’t abseil off the roof onto the balcony blow the windows in kill terrorists and rescue grateful hostages and receive notes with phone numbers from nubile admiring young ladies (if only), we delivered yet another lorry load of goods like we’ve been doing for nearly all of our lives, do get a grip people get over yourselves and stop with all this ■■■■■■■■.
There are still good jobs out there paying top money for reasonable workloads and up to a point if these high payers spy on you 24/7 and want to employ more chiefs than indians, well the extra pay offsets that, and these companies don’t suffer this driver shortage, you can put up with a lot of ■■■■■■■■ when your average hourly rate across the board is getting on for twice the norm.
Also there are still some smaller family type general haulage outfits about too, who whilst not being in a position to match the best for pay, still run things as old school as they can, spec proper lorries for their drivers and leave them to get on with their work without the spying, they don’t struggle to recruit cos they don’t have trouble retaining, as i said for many drivers money isn’t the be all and end all.
Companies who complain about driver shortage should look at why they find themselves in this position, it might not just be the money.
