New Driver recruitment - the elephant in the room?

[ktmrider]

Two of the topics that seem to come up again and again on here (presumably because, plenty of others beside me also find them interesting) are:

1. the struggle to recruit younger people into the industry

and

2. how long before self driving trucks are a reality ?

However, I don’t recall seeing that anyone had linked the two, untill now

The usual reasons for the struggle to recruit new drivers given are something along the lines of:

poor wages / crap roadside faciliites / cost of gaining licence & maintaining DCPC / poor industry image / difficulty of securing first job (especially if under 25) / long unsociable hours / modern traffic conditions / driver fines (VOSA / parking / speed cams etc.) , i’m sure you can add your own to the list.

Thing is though, from a new driver perspective surely the prospect of self driving trucks on the horizon blows all these other reasons right out of the water.

Prior to the threat of self driving trucks, an 18 year old considering a HGV career may well have considered all the other traditional disadvantages as worth the price. If it’s what you want to do then pay the cost of training, struggle to get that first job, hope your wages will improve, look for a job with less nights out etc. etc…

But where is the incentive now to go through all that, just to THEN worry whether you’ll last 5 more years or 10 before you are on the scrapheap and looking for a new career (in your late 30s early 40s ?) because you’ve been replaced by a computer ?

[harry_monk]

It’s a combination of both, but mostly because it’s an absolutely crap job nowadays where a driver can get the sack after 20 years of service because he needed to stop for a wee when the computer said he should do the journey non-stop (Search for it on here, it’s Stobart), where firms insist on looking at you on a camera in case you pick your nose or talk to yourself, which costs £3,500 to get a licence for but pays little more than minimum wage. Neither of my kids would be remotely interested in doing the job, nobody in their right mind would.

[robroy]

Harry Monk:
It’s a combination of both, but mostly because it’s an absolutely crap job nowadays where a driver can get the sack after 20 years of service because he needed to stop for a wee when the computer said he should do the journey non-stop (Search for it on here, it’s Stobart), where firms insist on looking at you on a camera in case you pick your nose or talk to yourself, which costs £3,500 to get a licence for but pays little more than minimum wage. Neither of my kids would be remotely interested in doing the job, nobody in their right mind would.

Agree with all of that and then some.
I’m glad to say neither of my boys have followed me into this job, and they are both on better money than me.
If it had been like this at the time I started, neither would I have took it up, it is worlds apart from that time.

As for self drive trucks becoming the norm?
I may be wrong here, and way off, but I can not see it this side of 20 years.
At least I won’t be in the job by the time it becomes 100% operational anyway.

[carryfast]

Firstly there’s no real evidence that robotising the transport industry would actually be cheaper than paying truck drivers.Or for that matter train drivers,ship’s crews and pilots to do their job bearing in mind that it’s unlikely that automation of the road transport industry won’t also mean automation of rail,sea and air transport sectors.IE cost of the purchase and maintenance of the robot technology,loss of earnings and tax revenues in the sectors subject to job losses,resulting unsustainable addition to the labour supply.Thereby putting more downward pressure on incomes,consumer spending and tax revenues.Thereby resulting in the robots eventually making themselves redundant.IE the economy depends on sufficient human workers earning enough to spend on consumer products and paying taxes etc while robots aren’t consumers or taxpayers.So probably not a realistic deal breaker.At least until those issues have been addressed in the form of radical societal change.In which livable long term unemployment benefits for redundant humans are paid for from of the earnings of the robots.Which would obviously be a game changer regarding the issue of automation to be welcomed not feared and in which everyone then wins.

As for the lie concerning the employers’ ‘struggling to recruit younger people’.That’s obviously answered by the statement regarding the ‘difficulty’ of new drivers finding decent work easily.You can then add to that the fact that the British road transport industry is just generally a dumbed down,second class regime based on a staple diet of too much distribution sector and local building trade zb work.Compared to the opportunities available to Continental/Scandinavian drivers.In large part to protect the rail transport sector which is nothing new and also now more recently to take maximum advantage of cheaper East Euro wage levels and other costs.

Added to which is the ever reducing level of freedom in the job since the move from log books to tachos and now other numerous other ever increasing surveillance intrusions.To the point where even I’d probably think twice about entering the industry now.Preferring to drive something else like light vans,or cars for a cab firm or garage/hire delivery/collection or possibly even a bus thereby less regulation and less aggro,or at least in the case of buses,less hours.

[darkside]

I don’t mind the job. To be honest transport is all I know. But I am glad my son is doing a proper job, and despite his love for trucks he shows no desire to ever drive one.

On the flipside my daughter is about to leave school and when she saw the wage differences between office jobs in transport and in the real world she couldn’t believe it.

I have about 20 years work left, and where transport is at that time is anyone’s guess.

[juddian]

Addressing the second point first, no bloody way are they going to be able to put enough autonomous vehicles on the road to service our population, which is rising at around 1/2 a million a year and that will only increase for a variety of reasons i won’t go into now.

OK the main problem attracting young talent.

Our youngters are in, not all any any means, but in too many instances above all this working class stuff, they’ve been ejumacated for better things, like managing stuff or being artistic or into more socially acceptable careers, they are not into working all hours God sends with little to no prospects of climbing the slippery pole before the ink on their licence is dry.
Someone could have mentioned to them during their umpteen years of indoctrination, sorry, education, that not every bugger can be in charge, chiefs and indians

Have a chat with younger eastern european blokes who work in our game, they have no such qualms about getting their hands dirty and working their way up in a job like ours.

Only last week i was tipping together with a young Polish lad who agencies for us, bloody good lad too with his head screwed on, good at the job and takes care, polite and respectful to the company and to the customer, perfect English, agency at present but making sure he’s getting the right work record for applying when the next job goes on the board.
If he lands it, and i see no reason why not (i shall put a good word in for him), then he’s got a seriously good job for as long as he wants it.

Many of these east euro lads have a good work ethic, as well as a respect for their host country and it’s way of life, its peoples and religious or not values.
I make no comment about others that have come here who don’t have that same respect for their host nation nor are prepared to earn their place in society by hard work and good citizenship.

Thing is, put yourself in an employers shoes, which type of employee do you want?

Do you ponce about making the job acceptable for snowflakes with safe spaces and gender fluid diversity and making sure they never have to touch the load (i’m a professional driver doncha know?), or mince around on eggshells trying desperately not to offend the perma offended, or do you look out for decent reliable lads like my Polish oppo who’s here to work and snap them up?

Our lads who want to be lorry drivers will be lorry drivers and always will be lorry drivers, we have a good selection of them on this very forum, young and not so young new drivers who didn’t expect to run before they could walk and doing their best to learn and do the job right, in some ways it would be disrespectful to these new drivers who worked their way up by spoon feeding the snowflake types to fast track them into the easiest work that could be found.

[the_maoster]

^^^^^ as per usual Juddian succinctly posts pertinent and valid points. My take on it is if I were many moons younger I’d avoid this industry like I’d avoid a Thai girl with a suspicious bulge in her skirt. I only remain in it because by sheer force of personality I’ve carved a niche within a “global logistics provider” where I’m left alone to get on with my job as they’ve long since realised that hassling me is counterproductive. In order to do that they have to know that you’re prepared to walk at a minutes notice. That’s not to say I’m bolshy, far from it, but I do insist on being left alone to do the job as I see fit.

[uktramp]

Well I have my own slant on things, especially on the eastern Europeans. You are assuming that all Eastern Europeans are hard working and are good citizens along with being respectful of their hosts. This is also assuming that all English people are lazy, overweight and disrespectful. It is true of the fact there are some good eastern Europeans, I work with a fair amount of them, I also work with our own English lads. Now the fact of the matter is I have also worked with some bolchy and lazy eastern Europeans. Now heres the real facts, the poles have very low paid jobs in comparison to ours, our minimum wage is better than a lot of their high flyer role jobs that these drivers can achieve. Therefore they are very happy to come over here and work all hours for minimum wage and obviously won’t complain, they get on with it as they think they have won the lottery. Employers love this attitude of they have as they will do whatever to keep that job, we then complain as we think our wages are too low but the eastern Europeans look like they work hard without complaining, so the English get the reputation of being lazy arrogant etc, even among ourselves. Give an English man the equivalent of double his wages and see how happy and non complaining he can be. Whilst the Eastern Europeans are here working happily for the money, ours will never rise.

[slowlane]

I think it’s actually come from years of pushing the “service economy” from sucessive governments. People (in general) want things and money as their key to satisfaction, and there is no drive or encouragement for people to do actual work any more, you know, produce things, move things, invent things - tangible stuff.

Transport isn’t the only industry struggling to attract young entrants - pick virtually any “real” job and there is a dearth of young people.

[carryfast]

Juddian:
Addressing the second point first, no bloody way are they going to be able to put enough autonomous vehicles on the road to service our population, which is rising at around 1/2 a million a year and that will only increase for a variety of reasons i won’t go into now.

OK the main problem attracting young talent.

Our youngters are in, not all any any means, but in too many instances above all this working class stuff, they’ve been ejumacated for better things, like managing stuff or being artistic or into more socially acceptable careers, they are not into working all hours God sends with little to no prospects of climbing the slippery pole before the ink on their licence is dry.
Someone could have mentioned to them during their umpteen years of indoctrination, sorry, education, that not every bugger can be in charge, chiefs and indians

Have a chat with younger eastern european blokes who work in our game, they have no such qualms about getting their hands dirty and working their way up in a job like ours.

Only last week i was tipping together with a young Polish lad who agencies for us, bloody good lad too with his head screwed on, good at the job and takes care, polite and respectful to the company and to the customer, perfect English, agency at present but making sure he’s getting the right work record for applying when the next job goes on the board.
If he lands it, and i see no reason why not (i shall put a good word in for him), then he’s got a seriously good job for as long as he wants it.

Many of these east euro lads have a good work ethic, as well as a respect for their host country and it’s way of life, its peoples and religious or not values.
I make no comment about others that have come here who don’t have that same respect for their host nation nor are prepared to earn their place in society by hard work and good citizenship.

Thing is, put yourself in an employers shoes, which type of employee do you want?

Do you ponce about making the job acceptable for snowflakes with safe spaces and gender fluid diversity and making sure they never have to touch the load (i’m a professional driver doncha know?), or mince around on eggshells trying desperately not to offend the perma offended, or do you look out for decent reliable lads like my Polish oppo who’s here to work and snap them up?

Our lads who want to be lorry drivers will be lorry drivers and always will be lorry drivers, we have a good selection of them on this very forum, young and not so young new drivers who didn’t expect to run before they could walk and doing their best to learn and do the job right, in some ways it would be disrespectful to these new drivers who worked their way up by spoon feeding the snowflake types to fast track them into the easiest work that could be found.

I don’t get the definition of ‘easiest work’ in that Juddian.Is it too much to expect that a ‘driver’ rightly wants to spend the majority of the working day actually ‘driving’ preferably through some interesting terrain.

Rather than being lumbered with hub system so called ‘trunking’ involving 4 hours driving and 5 hours or more warehouse work for example.Or driving a builders truck around the local housing estates probably at best spending more time messing about with a Hiab,or at worse hand balling scaffolding etc around building sites like a bleedin building labourer,probably for worse money to add insult to injury.Or soul destroying urban multi drop.

On that note I’d guess that there are plenty of East Euros who’d actually rather stay at home doing better quality work for relatively similar money after the difference in the cost of living is taken into account,as is obvious by the number of East Euro trucks doing third country international work.IE there’s a big difference between skiving looking for an easy number as opposed to quality v zb work and it’s unfair to suggest that Brits have a worse work ethic than their East Euro counterparts.While no one is looking for an easy job in transport because they all have their downsides one way or another.Whether it’s at best losing your day time life to permanent night work on trunking or being weekended on a rolling basis in a foreign truck stop,or at worst being lumbered with the type of dross I’ve described above and there’s no more reason why new drivers should be expected to be lumbered with that crap,often damaging their career prospects in the process by getting type cast,than anyone else.

In which case I’m in agreement with Harry on that issue in that it’s often the lack of opportunity to drive a truck where and how they wish to drive it from day 1 of their career which rightly puts new drivers off.While their East Euro counterparts obviously take more than their fair share in that regard.Ironically by staying at home within their unfairly more competitive industry than bothering or needing to come here to work.Bearing in mind the disproportionate amount of zb quality work which infests the domestic industry and the arbitrary pecking orders like bs ‘experience’ conditions imposed to progress from it which,in disagreement with Harry,was bad enough for new drivers in my day.Let alone now that the international/long haul sector has been decimated.

[winseer]

Let’s throw a computer perspective into the works here:

I was a programmer before I got my car licence back in the 80’s. I switched FROM that TO this particular career, after I went after a “recession proof” job in 1988, settling at the time for my stint at RM, who in due course put me through C+E once I got my car licence privately.

Computers only know what you tell them. If you lie to the computer, give it “in denial” data, or otherwise try to distort simple facts, physics, demographics, and pragmatism - let alone Fashion and Politics - then guess what? - You’re going to end up with an incredibly expensive system that doesn’t work, kills people, and provides business for none other than the “taking over” army of Legal firms out there, who’s dream is world ■■■■■■■■■■ of bulls hit laws, unlimited liability for punters, but NO liability for THEM. If I were PM, I’d only sign robot anything into law if the lawyers took on “Unlimited Liability” for meeting THEIR end of the bargain.

Truckers should drive trucks. Computer programmers that also drive trucks should be recruited if there is ever to be any “robot-driven” trucks - ever.
There is no sign of any kind of programmer recruitment among my old stomping grounds. This tells me that IF there are actually plans to put robot-driven trucks on the roads in due course, then they are being programmed by a combination of the following, NONE of which are, or SHOULD be doing this, namely people like myself that have a background of both sides of the fence:

. Foreigners that may have different road conditions to the UK, and are therefore inexperienced in the actual nuts-and-bolts data needed to drive a truck on UK roads as opposed to their own country.
. Programmers that might live, breathe, and work here - but do not fully understand our “car culture”.
. Truckers who’s ability to program never got beyond the ability to “red flag” a passing vehicle that’s not paid their tax.
. Truckers who belong to the “9 points OK” of Computer Programmers. Garbage in, Garbage out, remember. If you’re not much of a truck driver, then even such a programmer who may be an expert
coder - is going to code THEIR faults into the robot - right?

All in all, The governments past and present have lied to us all for so long now - that they have long since passed the point of believing their own lies, and it is THIS culture that is now to blame for suppressing home-grown trading routes that originally made this nation into an empire upon which the sun didn’t set. Sea trading, Land trading. Merchant Fleet, or Trucking - they are the water and land of the same industry on the whole. What on Earth are we doing leaving such an important industry down to “foreign concerns”, which effectively leaves our status of “slipping back to third world” if we go on much longer with this daft approach to trade?

The next time someone in a suit talks about "Robot-driven Trucks - tell them to get back into Westminster, Council Office, or even Transport office - and tell the lawyers and lawmakers out there that “We’ll happily proceed with driverless trucks when the government provides our company with free unlimited liability cover for all the public and cargos that are going to be lost due to trying to take the human out of the machine”.

Driverless Trucks and Lawyers cannot exist in the same part of History - is what I’m saying here.
There’s no sign of Lawyers being dispanded any time soon - so I perceive robot trucks as “not happening mainstream in my lifetime” either.

[juddian]

Hell fire CF, what interesting terrain and exciting jobs are the new generation of drivers going to find in the Britain thats coming, get real mate.

The cities are going to get bigger and spread out, towns and villages are going to merge till you can’t tell when you’ve left one and entered the next, all there will be are roads between ports, warehouses stuffed to the rafters with chinese and indian tat and bloody supermarket distribution centres and retail parks, and mile after bloody endless mile of barrack type housing.

What we going to do build a glorified mountainous national theme park with virtual scenery and the soundtrack of a V8 twin stacked Diesel being pumped through the cab alongside repeat videos of Duel so our interpid new breed can imagine they’re back in the 80’s with a proper engine throbbing away up front and a pretend phallic design gearstick to waggle about as they puddle along at 50mph between inevitable miles and hours of solid traffic.

The transport of the future is going to be all about feeding clothing and servicing an island with at least 50% too many people on it, there isn’t going to be any romance in the game, there isn’t going to be much romance in anything, look at what this country has become since we were young men, now add another 40 years of political correctness, loss of even more personal freedoms and the massive increases in surveillance and monitoring.

Don’t worry too much about the east euros, they’re a bloody site sharper as people than we are, they haven’t allowed vast sections of their lands to be taken by aliens who cannot ever integrate, and as this place heads towards its inevitable destiny, the destiny our own people have been voting for willingly for for the last 40 years sad to say, since 1975 in fact when they believed the great betrayal that the EEC was about free trade, many of them working here will up sticks and bugger off home where they can raise their children in a safe and free society, and enjoy the fruits of their labours in their later years, as this one gradually dies and we once again pay for it all.
Irony doesn’t begin to cover the sea change in the destiny of nations.

[carryfast]

Juddian:
Hell fire CF, what interesting terrain and exciting jobs are the new generation of drivers going to find in the Britain thats coming, get real mate.

The cities are going to get bigger and spread out, towns and villages are going to merge till you can’t tell when you’ve left one and entered the next, all there will be are roads between ports, warehouses stuffed to the rafters with chinese and indian tat and bloody supermarket distribution centres and retail parks, and mile after bloody endless mile of barrack type housing.

What we going to do build a glorified mountainous national theme park with virtual scenery and the soundtrack of a V8 twin stacked Diesel being pumped through the cab alongside repeat videos of Duel so our interpid new breed can imagine they’re back in the 80’s with a proper engine throbbing away up front and a pretend phallic design gearstick to waggle about as they puddle along at 50mph between inevitable miles and hours of solid traffic.

The transport of the future is going to be all about feeding clothing and servicing an island with at least 50% too many people on it, there isn’t going to be any romance in the game, there isn’t going to be much romance in anything, look at what this country has become since we were young men, now add another 40 years of political correctness, loss of even more personal freedoms and the massive increases in surveillance and monitoring.

Don’t worry too much about the east euros, they’re a bloody site sharper as people than we are, they haven’t allowed vast sections of their lands to be taken by aliens who cannot ever integrate, and as this place heads towards its inevitable destiny, the destiny our own people have been voting for willingly for for the last 40 years sad to say, since 1975 in fact when they believed the great betrayal that the EEC was about free trade, many of them working here will up sticks and bugger off home where they can raise their children in a safe and free society, and enjoy the fruits of their labours in their later years, as this one gradually dies and we once again pay for it all.
Irony doesn’t begin to cover the sea change in the destiny of nations.

Admittedly I was looking at a more short term view of where the industry stands and where it’s headed rather than that nightmare longer term view.In which case it would be fair to say that we really need to understand what motivates people to put up with the downsides of the job and as Harry rightly says the decimation of what interesting international/long haul work we had,leaving an even larger disproportionate diet of the less attractive domestic sectors,can only tip the balance to the point where the downsides outweigh any upsides.

The only question then being can it really be that bad for the East Euros to stay at home with their lower cost of living and obviously ( so far ) more opportunities for more interesting work than that available to them and their unfortunate Brit counterparts here.Seems like a no brainer to me in that I’d prefer to stay within my own culture without having to leave friends and family.With the win win of more opportunities to drive something and somewhere better,than a builders wagon around the local housing estates etc with a job description better fitting that of building trades labourer/driver for just one example.

[ironeddie]

As someone who is stupid enough to be learning to drive a lorry I’m not worried about driverless trucks. The tech is miles off from being good enough and even then I don’t know if it’ll actually catch on.

As for crap pay. Even the worst paying hgv job I’ve seen would be a significant increase on what I currently earn, which is only a few pence more than minimum wage.

Although it has occurred to me that when min wage gets to 9 or 10 pound an hour it’ll make driving jobs a lot less attractive.

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

[carryfast]

IronEddie:
As someone who is stupid enough to be learning to drive a lorry I’m not worried about driverless trucks. The tech is miles off from being good enough and even then I don’t know if it’ll actually catch on.

I’d guess if they are going to do it it’ll go along the lines of all vehicles registered after a certain date have to be robot driverless or even possibly retro imposed maybe with scrappage grants for the redundant vehicles.IE not a case of choice and ‘catching on’ but compulsory imposition.The question then is just a case of when not if but probably no reason for the present generation of new drivers to be bothered about it.While assuming the control freakery has reached that level I’d guess that many other aspects of life will have also been affected by this nightmare all pervading controlled Demolition Man type utopia that we are sleepwalking into.People seem to have a strange habit of wanting to make life a hell for themselves in that regard.

[juddian]

Carryfast:

IronEddie:
As someone who is stupid enough to be learning to drive a lorry I’m not worried about driverless trucks. The tech is miles off from being good enough and even then I don’t know if it’ll actually catch on.

People seem to have a strange habit of wanting to make life a hell for themselves in that regard.

Amen to that, turkeys flabbergasted that the Christmas they voted for time and again has arrived every single Dec 25th

[icon]

I’ve been Driving for a living for over 25 years (Tho only this year getting a proper big boys licence )

I’ve seen the roads fall apart as more and more traffic cram onto a road network that seems little changed from the roman times it was built in. Does anyone really think the government will invest money into the upgrades that would be needed for driver less LGVs ?
Dedicated roads and segregation of trucks would be needed before you could have a hope that hobby drivers (as my CPC instructor calls them) would not soon be throwing themselves (would that be driving themselves) under trucks faster than an outtake from death race 2000. Driver less trains are far closer to reality and I still can’t see that happening tho maybe thats down to strong unions rather than technology. Just remember that aircraft have been able to fly from boarding gate to boarding gate without human intervention for years and they still put two not one highly skilled and highly paid people in the pointy end and when they do fall out of the sky it always seems to be pilot error

[carryfast]

Icon:
Dedicated roads and segregation of trucks would be needed before you could have a hope that hobby drivers (as my CPC instructor calls them) would not soon be throwing themselves (would that be driving themselves) under trucks faster than an outtake from death race 2000. Driver less trains are far closer to reality and I still can’t see that happening tho maybe thats down to strong unions rather than technology. Just remember that aircraft have been able to fly from boarding gate to boarding gate without human intervention for years and they still put two not one highly skilled and highly paid people in the pointy end and when they do fall out of the sky it always seems to be pilot error

It seems clear that they are talking about a situation in which it would be a wholesale and compulsory imposed switch to robot vehicles.Not the choice of both human controlled and robots.

As for aircraft it’s rare if ever that the take off and landing phase of a flight aren’t under pilot control.While there are examples of auto pilots failing and/or pilots losing their flying skills because of lack of regular use and practice and not intervening properly.Removing the pilot obviously isn’t going to fix that problem.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article … crash.html

[ironeddie]

Carryfast:

IronEddie:
As someone who is stupid enough to be learning to drive a lorry I’m not worried about driverless trucks. The tech is miles off from being good enough and even then I don’t know if it’ll actually catch on.

I’d guess if they are going to do it it’ll go along the lines of all vehicles registered after a certain date have to be robot driverless or even possibly retro imposed maybe with scrappage grants for the redundant vehicles.IE not a case of choice and ‘catching on’ but compulsory imposition.The question then is just a case of when not if but probably no reason for the present generation of new drivers to be bothered about it.While assuming the control freakery has reached that level I’d guess that many other aspects of life will have also been affected by this nightmare all pervading controlled Demolition Man type utopia that we are sleepwalking into.People seem to have a strange habit of wanting to make life a hell for themselves in that regard.

I doubt it’d be retro imposed with scrapage grants. The process will need to be gradual. Simply because the government couldn’t handle a massive hit on the public coffers from lots of former drivers suddenly signing on the dole, other benefits or even starting to draw their pension.

Mostly likely it’ll get phased in as hauliers replace old vehicles they’ll do so with robotic ones.

Though I doubt manufacturers will stop selling human controlled lorries. But offer both kinds. Afterall car makers haven’t stopped selling petrol or dielsel models. They do so alongside hybrid and all electric. Despite government incentives for the buyer.

Anyway I just need to work another 37 years. Just hope it takes that long haha!

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

[jakews]

I couldn’t be bothered to read all the thread, but I’m 22 and just passed my class 1. I was 2 years into a Degree in Economics, when I took a year out, did my class 1, and will be finishing my degree part time at the open university. I’ve found a job which pays me £500+ per week through the agency, suits my life style giving me plenty of time to study, and allows me to move out of my Mum’s house and get my own space as I’m now no longer some broke ■■■ home student, I think the industry is what you make of it, and while it may not be my lifelong career, it is serving me very well right now.