There will be a shortage before then.
There was a bit of a panic just a few weeks ago when I think people where a bit busier than they expected and the retailers left things till the last minute because they do not want to hold stock
When things get back to normal there will plenty of opprortunities for good drivers
burnie1:
There will be a shortage before then.There was a bit of a panic just a few weeks ago when I think people where a bit busier than they expected and the retailers left things till the last minute because they do not want to hold stock
When things get back to normal there will plenty of opprortunities for good drivers
That’s true the week before Christmas we couldn’t get any extra drivers for love nor money of the agency, us core drivers had to do a bit of graft for once and do 2 runs 
This is what I think. There won’t be a driver shortage. In fact, there won’t be any shortages at all except for jobs in general. If you hold onto your job and keep bringing home the bacon, count yourself as fortunate because many will be denied this. There are enormous fundamental problems facing the UK economy, which will take years to work out. You won’t be seeing carpenters, builders etc setting up their own business straight out of college as the boom times of old have gone. Their status, like many others will be lowered as it won’t be a job for easy pickings and quick wealth creation. Effectively, the humble driver’r status by default will be raised in comparison. I don’t think the cpc will stop the flood of people wanting to train as drivers as there will be plenty of computer programmers and the like, whose jobs have been outsourced to another land, looking for work too. They won’t be put off by the cpc. Of course, in many years, possibly a decade or much more into the future, there might be a shortage when the currency has lost it’s value against the Chinese Renmimi and Ruppee and it will once again be economical to actually make some things in the UK/Western Europe. These ‘things’ will provide employment to manufacture and lessen the dole queues and will require drivers to shift them about. But that is quite a long way out. Finally, the Polish ‘problem’ will have ceased to be a lot sooner, as their wages and currency soon catches up with ours…and good luck to them.
Why there will be a shortage.
A few years ago, a RHA study showed the average age of a HGV driver in the UK was 55 and around 10,000 people were leaving the industry due to retirement or career change.
Looking at Govt Statistics website, there are only a few thousand licence applications a year.
Looking at the Defence Driving School website, they process 3,000+ students per year which soaks up most of that few thousand licence applications.
So…
By 2014, most lorry drivers will have or will be approaching retirement. They’ll be due a medical AND need a CPC. Many won’t bother. For the 15-20 years running up to 2014, more people will have been leaving the industry than even applying for provisional licences.
Conor:
Why there will be a shortage.
Which part of my essay didn’t you agree with?
removalboy:
I hope so, so i can get a job easier when the time comes
You’ll be welcome to it laddie!
I don’t think there will be a shortage simply because the UK government will get some sort of exemption from the CPC scheme just as they did with the WTD. If they don’t then lets face it’s only 35 hours training which is nothing; just over half a week’s work to a busy driver. Don’t know much about the course but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too taxing even to a new comer. From what i’ve been told any non UK driver will have to prove that they have done 6 months work in their home country before they’re allowed to drive over here.
Maybe the wages will rise for a few months or if we’re lucky years but they’ll soon be looking for ways to reduce cost. It appears to me that the CPC is just another way of shifting more responsibility on to the driver. If they want to make the job safer then they should look at reducing the hours we are allowed to work. Then maybe some these so called professional transport operators would have start planning their routes properly instead of just tapping the delivery addresses into google maps and calling it a plan. That would create a driver shortage.
Conor:
Why there will be a shortage.A few years ago, a RHA study showed the average age of a HGV driver in the UK was 55 and around 10,000 people were leaving the industry due to retirement or career change.
Looking at Govt Statistics website, there are only a few thousand licence applications a year.
Looking at the Defence Driving School website, they process 3,000+ students per year which soaks up most of that few thousand licence applications.
So…
By 2014, most lorry drivers will have or will be approaching retirement. They’ll be due a medical AND need a CPC. Many won’t bother. For the 15-20 years running up to 2014, more people will have been leaving the industry than even applying for provisional licences.
Who said anything about British drivers?. we can just import loads of them and far cheaper as well.
jammymutt:
Who said anything about British drivers?. we can just import loads of them and far cheaper as well.
Exactly, even the Indian call centres are getting pushed out in favour of Vietnamese workers, there must be a few rickshaw drivers who would like to upgrade to C+E
But my original post still stands, there are still too many trucks chasing too little work!
its the agencies that will be hit hardest. the wage difference between agency and full time drivers is not that much and agency drivers will have to pay for the training themselves. chuck in the renewal of the tacho plus medicals and it all adds up. plus take into consideration that there is very little work for 3 months each year (normally, last year was worse) and you get a picture. anyone with other options will take them and you cant really blame us. full time jobs will be snapped up rapidly prior to the implementation of the drivers CPC and afterwards it will be advertised that applicants must already have it just as a digital tacho is normally a requirement now. full time drivers should have everything paid for by their employers as the employers will not want to lose good drivers so it is in their interest to ensure their drivers are legal rather than risk losing them and having to recruit replacements which is always a risk in itself. the main evidence of a shortage will be during busy periods when there are fewer agency drivers around. gradually retiring drivers will also create problems as new drivers will be put off by the initial outlay for the same wage as someone with zero outlay and qualifications can earn, especially if they are under 25 and are aware of the insurance hurdle
ROG:
‘… What does everyone else think?..’
No shortage
ROG:
‘… we will get more LGV drivers from other EU countries coming here but they too are faced with the same problems …’
When Turkey joins the European Union fiasco will we seriously expect them to play the white man with the ‘training’ larks?
Twenty donkey-dung ■■■■, three coffee’s, half an hour with a young boy, all licenced, suited & booted and it’ll be ‘tally-ho’ for Dover.
We’d better either like it or leave the EU, cos it’s destined to happen in a wagon yard near you.
Turkey is very unlikely to be in the EU for the forseeable future, The French are openly hostile to the idea, including having a spat President Obama about it. The Germans don’t seem so keen, they along with many other nations are unhappy with a country as large as Turkey joining. In fact one of the only countries that seem keen is the UK.
You are more likely to see the Ukraine in the EU before Turkey, but then that might cause a massive spat with Russia and they are pumping gas to us, so maybe not.
What’s more likely to happen to stop a driver shortage (because business and govenment don’t want a driver shortage as it means wages will go up therefore so will transport costs) is drivers being allowed to come here from outside the EU and going through fast track training to get a licence and CPC.
Turkey and the EU. Tis not possible without gun towers being built upon the shores of the Bosphurus. We need an armed guard between Thrace and Anatolia.
At the moment the border can put a few off. I can’t imagine a free for all at Kapikula 
Ha Ha…Sorry, but there never has been and never will be a driver shortage. I’ve only had my license since ’81 and every year since then there has supposed to be one. I was told by an old boy at F&F Robinsons Teesside about the driver shortage and paid for my Class 1. I didn’t get a decent paid job for two years because of all the other blokes who had listened to the same old line.
The CPC is easy enough to pass and I’m sure the objections to it will have faded away well before 2014. Anyone putting it off until then will miss the dead line because of all the other drivers rushing to do it last minute. They will be given some sort of dispensation / extra time to get it sorted.
They will say “You can’t put people on the dole just because they haven’t got a bit of paper to do something they have been doing for years.” I guarantee it.
There are still plenty of blokes who can’t see themselves doing anything else. There are also plenty who could not do anything else.