I guess an ageing population where skills haven’t be taught or passed on is causing these kind of problems across all industries and it will only get worse.
Greed could be a contributing factor and the fact a lot of baby boomers had/have worked extra time to supplement their pensions depriving opportunities for the up and comers - now the pensions have returned back to pre “recession” days the hats can be thrown in without much sweat, add to that increasing bureaucracy (also by the baby boomers in charge) adds justification to call it quits and makes the capital requirements to enter such an industry prohibitively expensive AND complicated.
I personally don’t think the government should subsidise HGV lessons as that is unfair on those of us who have had to work hard, save hard and invest in these skills ourselves only to end up getting lower paid jobs due to the over-supply of drivers.
Radar19:
Simple reason is people aren’t prepared to put up with being talked down to, ■■■■■■ on and left to spend nights in services that rip you off, a layby in the middle of nowhere or fighting for a space in the few good truckstops we have left in this country.
Wrong - there clearly are lots of drivers out there who are prepared to put up with everything you mention. Hence there is no shortage, and the goods are getting onto the shelves as normal. Meanwhile those drivers are sitting in the lay-bys and rip-off service areas deluding themselves that there really will be “jam tomorrow” and the nasty, grasping employers will be forced to put the wages up next week/month/year. Sadly they will not and the the situation will remain pretty much as-is until the next “economic crisis”, when it’ll start all over again.
teflon:
The rise of training agencies is also to blame you can train to be a painter or whatever with no guarantee of a job at the end of it how many of you work for companies that train there own staff.
I know where I am currently contracted were advertising for drivers to fill around 20 newly created vacancies. Not one agency driver was taken on from what I heard. They moved some of their existing drivers to the vacancies and put warehouse guys through their licence. My guess is that like the contract I walked away from to do this one, they want to keep a pool of regular drivers on agency for peak periods so they wont employ them. If they take them on then they are reducing their pool of spare drivers