ETS:
Food firm in 'drastic' action amid driver shortage - BBC News
A company which supplies food to care homes and restaurants says it is taking “drastic action” to try to get round the shortage of UK lorry drivers.
The boss of Country Range said the group was buying smaller vans in the face of “significant” problems caused by a lack of qualified HGV drivers.
Managing director Coral Rose said the issue was “going to get worse” as schools and offices return to normal.
Basically she decided to buy, yes BUY a crap load of new vans for her business because she couldn’t get enough HGV drivers to drive the trucks…Why not offer to train some of their van drivers? Don’t know! I’ll tell you my theory: people just don’t want to drive HGV. They jsut don’t want to, most of them. 1) A dying profession 2) Crap wages 3) Crap hours as in too many and crazy start/finish times 4) If tramping: away from home for 3-4-5 nights a week 5) Maybe those who do want to drive dont have enough or any HGV jobs in their area; easy to say move to where the job is but what if you have family/kids in school etc. and that’s on the surface alone. Once you actually start the job you see all the other crap that comes with it like having to take a crap…in the middle of a queue on the M25 
or trying to find a place for the night or even for a 45 break…or the insanely poor driving standards (lately) of general public and fellow ‘professional’ drivers alike!
I suspect many of those few who do byte will probably toss the towel once they’ve paid off their credit card debt they accumulated to pay for their license, especially the under 30s.
Hats off her, she’s doing what she needs to do.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
I think on Trucknet we sometimes forget that not everyone is in the haulage business, people just want their stuff delivered, they neither know or care what you had to do to get it there or where you will have to park tonight. They couldn’t give a toss. Do you care about their lives? No, me neither.
She may well have BOUGHT them as opposed to renting / contract hiring as it’s a legit business expense which can be written off over upcoming tax returns. She may have had a dismal year or so due to Covid so the more she can write off the better, thus paying less corporation tax. Also, buying new would come with reliability factors when they most need it, I would bet my wages this was a major factor in their decision making, they couldn’t simply afford to let people down.
What exactly do you expect her to do?, Tell her customers not to worry, she has some new potential drivers waiting for test dates, drivers will be coming soon, can they just hang on in the meantime?
I’m somewhere between annoyed and utterly ■■■■■■ off if I order a pizza and it’s not here an hour later.
She is also, I suspect - like we all do - is competing for business in a competitive field. At the end of all of this, her customers may well say you always stepped up and delivered even thru the pandemic, you never let us down, people woudn’t have eaten dinner in our care home that night because of you, and in turn, that may have kept us in business ourselves. I suspect that alone may stand her in good stead.
I’ve never heard of Country Range or Coral Rose but she sounds like a pretty smart cookie if you ask me.
But Coral Rose? Bet either her mum or dad was a bit of a hippy…
and 2022 knocking on the door