Darkside:
There is a lack of staff in all manual/warehouse jobs. this is ending up with no improvement in turning round trucks.Maybe these 2000 squaddies will drive FLTs at night, trucks in the day.
Have you ever seen a bunch of squaddies unloading a truck?
If there is such a thing as a sound byte, this is a photo byte.
Are we going back to my childhood where the shops close on Sunday, the only lorries you will see are collecting milk from farms,
During the first lockdown, they couldn’t load the lorries quick enough. Drivers was one thing but lack of warehouse staff lead to stood lorries and drivers twiddling thumbs!
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Wheel Nut:
Are we going back to my childhood where the shops close on Sunday, the only lorries you will see are collecting milk from farms,
Seems to work well enough for the French.
I don’t know if there’s a legal reason; but one thing I haven’t noticed is a rush for bigger supermarkets to revert to being open 24 hours; nor does there seem to be any demand from the public for this to happen.
As to the furlough; I’d be interested to know what sort of jobs this now covers, as outside of the international travel “industry” things seem to have pretty much got back to what most of us would consider normal.
My own belief is that we (and other wealthy developed countries) have reached a point where society is consuming that much, chucking away that much, wanting to do so much & wanting everything delivered to their door, that we just will never have enough people wanting to work in the supply chain for it to all run at optimum efficiency. The only true solution is either to take a big step back in the way we lead our lives (the environmentalists ■■■■■■■■■) or more likely large amounts of automation & AI, which will come in time.
In the meantime, it’s an opportunity for drivers to make some hey whilst the sun shines with increased wages and a chance to sort of some of the problems we have with efficiency like getting a load tipped at an RDC in a decent time frame. The truth with the whole RDC issue though, is that through a complete lack of real pressure from hauliers many places have developed an attitude whereby they consider visiting drivers to be at their disposal for as long as it suits them. The ONLY way to reverse that is through a collective agreement to charge demurrage, i’m not holding my breath on that one though.
I deliver to Tesco Stores daily. No shortages of stock. I am sure the same is for Co-op, Sainsburys etc.
Maybe in the Scottish isles and Northern Ireland there may be issues but I have yet to see them.
The big issue no one is talking about is shipping containers.
Due to covid it messed up the entire system. The global economy works on containers coming in and going out. But when you shut down huge chunks of industry then containers dont go out as they dont like to send back empty containers.
qz.com/2027205/a-shipping-conta … bal-trade/
wsj.com/articles/where-did- … 1628104583
If there are shortages this is the main cause and price rises this is the main cause.
