In the words of the great David Bowie…‘‘Is it any wonder’’…
Could it have something to do with…
It beng an underpaid job with derisory ridiculous hours, usually ran by idiots who have never done it, who instil stupid and unfair rules on drivers akin to schoolkids, of which are policed by them watching you on a camera, so they can charge you for any accidental damage, after you getting too tired to concentrate, because they run you ragged and casually just expect you to do 15 hour days after a 9 hour rest, with 70+ hour weeks, for what equates to essentially only 45 to 50 hours worth of pay?
Nah surely not.
Put it this way when I was 20 yrs old, I could not wait to be a trucker,.a tramper in fact.
I was Mr Keen.from Keen st, Keentown, County of Keen, I was even stupid and naive enough to buy my own trucks at 23.
Would the job appeal to me today.
Read my first paragraph for a clue.
Make the job actually ‘‘attractive’’ with incentives of excellent t’s & c.s…instead of abdolute pi55 poor ones,.and provide facilities that correlate with Century 21.
And see what happens.
The Road Haulage Association said 200,000 drivers were needed in the next five years to avoid a repeat of the shortage in 2021 which saw empty shop shelves.
Yep.
Maybe Mr Mcwilliams of BJS Haulage should go and speak in schools to try and encourage people into the industry… but give an HONEST insight into the reality of the job. He might have work coming out of his ears and not enough drivers to do it, wonder why.
Good firms never be short of drivers.
And The HGV Girl who is ‘sales and operations coordinator’… sounds like another non job, mainly on social media telling people how great it is. Probably more interested in how many likes she gets promoting the training school. How many years experience does she have navigating a hgv around our road network that is already crammed with trucks. Will she mention the chronic lack of parking, facilities etc..
Yeah I agree,.although I do think that it is right, that there are not many young people wanting to come into the industry…or are daft enough to for the reasons listed.
Maybe Sadiq Khan should try and support and promote it.
He does his best to make trucks and drivers as welcome as possible in his city alone and a pleasure to visit it.
He even plays games with drivers…setting them a series of challenges, like an initiative or endurance test.
Young people today don’t want blue collar jobs, many have an aversion to physical labour (Carryfast may have been onto something trendy, all those years ago ). They even expect to start at the top.
Real reason I reckon is the cost involved to obtain your licence about £3k at a guess.
And as is proved people will work for low wages and long hours that will never change.
Removing the rants you’ve said pay and hours and longwindedly - recognition.
Top 3 (no industry gets everything) could be
Reduce expectation to max the hours
Facilities for breaks and rest periods
Review of wages and employee benefits
It’s funny how many post strive to max or exceed their hours or push to the extreme of compliance - such as taking low bridge routes because they may be able to fit under despite it being contrary to signage, going against company rules ‘coz I’ve always done it’ attitude.
Just starter but much needs to be done off the road, in the ‘office’ as well
Leaving aside recompense and ridiculously long hours that appear to be the “norm” across vast swathes of the industry I think that micro management is a major factor in youngsters not wanting to pursue driving as a career.
When I started one of the major draws was the fact that you were trusted to do the job and left alone by and large. Many times I’d set off on a Monday morning with a wad of delivery notes and the first and only time I’d contact the office was on a Thursday afternoon or Friday morning when I was empty and asking for instructions.
That was freedom imo and is one aspect that I miss.
Rants?
I was pointing out what may be stopping young people entering the industry mate, with stuff that regularly goes on within it,.a list more than a ‘rant’.
I personally have nowt to ‘‘rant’’ about mate…trust me.
Through my own initiative I have managed to carve out a relatively easy and enjoyable niche job within a firm who practice most of the stuff I listed, so most of it does not apply to me,.and the bits that do I try and deal with and manage, and so far have succeeded to do so.
End day you could offer jobs at £25 and hour and still get idiots maxing out there hours just because .
main reason is maybe to many idiots on the road to much traffic. To many cameras roadside and in truck ones.
Everything is monitored etc.
Plus all stupid at times health and safety sit on the naughty chair while being tipped etc.
Plus youngsters these days most are work shy want to do as little work as possible. Or they want work from home jobs and an easy life..
The poor snowflakes would never. Cope. And god help them if they got sent out when it was snowing
There’s some very interesting videos on social media of a young lady driving for Stagetruck all the UK and in Europe, she comes across very well.
Another video to see is about a deaf young lady HGV driver.
I can’t imagine many female drivers wanting to join the industry on the grounds of over night safety in a stinking lay-by, the reasons being no sanitary conditions to access hot water to wash, take a shower or not having a toilet to use.
The majority of drivers are middle aged men or are very close to retirement and most mostly white Caucasian’s, I don’t see many Oriental , Indian,African or coloured drivers on the roads, it’s not being pernicious, nefarious or egregious, it’s a matter of fact and the comment is not meant to be racist.
Drivers are their own worst enemy and bring on things themselves to not to be trusted with a few bad apples that ruin it all for the good drivers on the roads, as an example by looking back at the history of how we are all treated by the authorities to the days of no tachograph’s when log books were used, these were used in attempts to commit fraud, they used a list of lodging houses and accommodation when sleeper cabs were non existent.
Then came in the paper disc analogue tachograph’s that were nicknamed frisbee’s as they were thrown out of the cab window to hide the evidence of tachograph fraud.
Rogue hauliers paid their drivers trip money of which is now illegal, the financial incentive was to carry out as many trips as possible jeopardising the general public for road safety due to fatigued drivers doing one hits without the adequate daily rest required by law.
A court case many years ago resulted in long prison sentences for the two brothers that owned the company and their drivers also received prison sentences for fraud by throwing away the complete tachograph machine to destroy evidence of one hits of 21 hour shifts with no sleep, the paper trail proved their exact movements for a conviction by the CPS, by linking up bank card spending activity, ferry times, and the delivery times at the destinations that didn’t tally up to what the drivers were saying in court.
To do this they used wires in the tachograph hence running on the wire as a saying, other devices were pulling out the fuse to make the rest functionally appear on the trace record on the tachograph, the vehicle was in motion at this time.
Unscrupulous drivers became very inventive and perspicacious in fitting secret switches to select the rest mode on the tachograph when driving by having switches hidden in coffee percolators and on the dashboard of the cab.
Yep I remember most or all of those things…and I am sorry to say I’ve done most of them myself.
Thing is mate I don’t know if you are talking from experience or what you have been told by older drivers…but those were different days/different ways, and much different job.
It is extremely difficult to put it into the context of today to make others understand who were not there…Those who were driving in those days will know exactly what I mean.
It was the ‘done thing’ in those days, the way the job went…so yeah,.definitely something HAD to be done and it was…
So much so we are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum in terms of over regulation, compliance,.and very little (to no) tolerance.
I aint trying to justify those days either, just saying as it was.
In those days I was an owner driver, I wrote the book on fiddling tachos, and all the rest of the b/s.
Today I am totally opposite I run totally 100% legally, and would do it no other way…especially while working for someone else now as opposed to myself,.
But even as an owner driver today, the stakes and consequences are far too high and serious.
Anybody who runs bent today, and especially those who are thick enough to risk it as an employed driver, deserve all they get imo.
The days of routinely getting away with it and blind eyes turned are loonnng gone…and rightly so.
No they enter the industry to drive a truck.Not find out that there aren’t enough truck miles in the job and they need to make the time up with other duties like warehouse labouring.
Or at best doing local multi drop around the local housing estates and shops.Or a 13 hour night shift for 8 hours money because the guvnor can/will only pay for driving time.
Unless of course they pass the face fits ‘experience’ test.Then they might find a decent job but doubtful when the whole of Eastern Europe has taken most of the work with any miles in it.
