No surprise to any of us in here, but the “appalling conditions” driver face are to blame.
Poor facilities and “appalling” treatment of lorry drivers is leading to a serious shortage of young people looking to do the job, it has been claimed.
I hope that claim was dismissed as lies and scare mongering by a mentalally deluded unbalanced individual 
He wont be invited to further meetings the heretic.
As so many of these claims of a driver shortage come from the people who are responsible for running the transport industry, it would seem that they’d be better spending their time trying to sort the problems instead of telling everybody there is a problem? 
mrginge:
Poor facilities and “appalling” treatment of lorry drivers is leading to a serious shortage of young people looking to do the job, it has been claimed.
I hope that claim was dismissed as lies and scare mongering by a mentalally deluded unbalanced individual
He wont be invited to further meetings the heretic.
It has been claimed, by whom? I doubt it’s “industry leaders” listening to why young people don’t fancy working for them. They don’t want them, they want cheap, disposable, malleable, yes-men, who speak little English. Stick a few bods in the office who share their language, and off they go.
UK-born young people (rightly) have been brought up to expect more (way too much in many cases). More for workers means less for bosses, so why invest in somebody, when you have a never-ending stream of people clutching three cards that say they can do the same job from the word go.
mrginge:
Poor facilities and “appalling” treatment of lorry drivers is leading to a serious shortage of young people looking to do the job, it has been claimed.
I hope that claim was dismissed as lies and scare mongering by a mentalally deluded unbalanced individual
He wont be invited to further meetings the heretic.
Speaking for myself, toilets have always been the least of the issues and yet it crops up repeatedly. Lack of toilets is maybe symptomatic of the extent of the wider attitude to drivers, rather than a significant grievance in itself.
Not being permitted to remain in the cab whilst loading, for example, is a far larger grievance for most drivers than lack of toilets at particular sites. So is a long walk to the window down a yard, which turns out to be fortified like a post office and with a clerk behind who is a little Hitler. This sort of subtle and everyday psychological violence is the far larger problem.
Drempels:
mrginge:
Poor facilities and “appalling” treatment of lorry drivers is leading to a serious shortage of young people looking to do the job, it has been claimed.
I hope that claim was dismissed as lies and scare mongering by a mentalally deluded unbalanced individual
He wont be invited to further meetings the heretic.
It has been claimed, by whom? I doubt it’s “industry leaders” listening to why young people don’t fancy working for them. They don’t want them, they want cheap, disposable, malleable, yes-men, who speak little English. Stick a few bods in the office who share their language, and off they go.
UK-born young people (rightly) have been brought up to expect more (way too much in many cases). More for workers means less for bosses, so why invest in somebody, when you have a never-ending stream of people clutching three cards that say they can do the same job from the word go.
Access to short-stay migrant labour certainly has masked the underlying recruitment and retention problem for some time.
Rjan:
mrginge:
Poor facilities and “appalling” treatment of lorry drivers is leading to a serious shortage of young people looking to do the job, it has been claimed.
I hope that claim was dismissed as lies and scare mongering by a mentalally deluded unbalanced individual
He wont be invited to further meetings the heretic.
Speaking for myself, toilets have always been the least of the issues and yet it crops up repeatedly. Lack of toilets is maybe symptomatic of the extent of the wider attitude to drivers, rather than a significant grievance in itself.
Not being permitted to remain in the cab whilst loading, for example, is a far larger grievance for most drivers than lack of toilets at particular sites. So is a long walk to the window down a yard, which turns out to be fortified like a post office and with a clerk behind who is a little Hitler. This sort of subtle and everyday psychological violence is the far larger problem.
Agree with all of that, the psychological violence bit is an interesting point, hadn’t considered that before.
Just to note that would be the boss of PD Ports… who have cracked down on drivers overnighting at Teesport and have told the Seamans Missions that they should not let drivers use the facilities as thats not within their charter-
Rikki-UK:
Just to note that would be the boss of PD Ports… who have cracked down on drivers overnighting at Teesport and have told the Seamans Missions that they should not let drivers use the facilities as thats not within their charter-
What a charmer…
No one will take “driver shortages” seriously until we’re all on £50ph and the two-week supply chain of actual food and drink our our shelves - is disrupted.
Meanwhile, rates are rising - but not to the point to suggest there are 100,000 drivers short as yet.
I wonder when driving down the M1 during the small hours of the morning if there are 100,000 trucks on the M1 at that moment, actually. 
Busy Busy Busy.
Winseer:
No one will take “driver shortages” seriously until we’re all on £50ph and the two-week supply chain of actual food and drink our our shelves - is disrupted.Meanwhile, rates are rising - but not to the point to suggest there are 100,000 drivers short as yet.
I wonder when driving down the M1 during the small hours of the morning if there are 100,000 trucks on the M1 at that moment, actually.
Busy Busy Busy.
It’s always the same story. They aren’t 100k drivers short which is an absurd number. If they can’t ring someone on an agency at 12am on Christmas morning for £5/hr they say there’s a shortage, when to any sensible person the only shortage is of managers’ brains.
It’s the same at Easter. There is no shortage - there is simply a failure to use the available workforce effectively in January and February and a failure to warehouse Easter goods beforehand in anticipation of the peak.
can you imgiane if there wasn’t a driver shortage and there was an extra 100k trucks on the road .
He’s not wrong about the age thing though.
Think I’ll do a straw poll on here to see the average age. 
DfT says there were in total 493,600 hgvs reg in the UK.
Daresay the ONS will have figures for drivers employed to drive them.
How many trucks are shift worked needing two drivers? How many have normally one driver?
Anyway does this report predict a rise in UK numbers of trucks, or a drop in ten years time? Any predictions beyond next week are suspect at the moment!
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Franglais:
DfT says there were in total 493,600 hgvs reg in the UK.
Daresay the ONS will have figures for drivers employed to drive them.
How many trucks are shift worked needing two drivers? How many have normally one driver?Anyway does this report predict a rise in UK numbers of trucks, or a drop in ten years time? Any predictions beyond next week are suspect at the moment!
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The research was done, I have posted it here in the past, there are apparently enough licence holders who also have a DCPC and are in the optimum age group to more than make up for any claimed shortage.
The attitude of road transport employers is that if you want a job you have to pay for your training and obtaining your dcpc whereas the passenger transport employers tend to offer the training etc. as part of the deal. I accept that both have problems with employee recruitment and retention but at least some do make the effort.
Perhaps if the road transport industry invested a bit more cash into the business and trained the prospective employees then they might not have such a problem.
I accept that in many professions you have to pay for your own training but this is mostly in the better paid jobs.
Rjan:
Winseer:
No one will take “driver shortages” seriously until we’re all on £50ph and the two-week supply chain of actual food and drink our our shelves - is disrupted.Meanwhile, rates are rising - but not to the point to suggest there are 100,000 drivers short as yet.
I wonder when driving down the M1 during the small hours of the morning if there are 100,000 trucks on the M1 at that moment, actually.
Busy Busy Busy.
It’s always the same story. They aren’t 100k drivers short which is an absurd number. If they can’t ring someone on an agency at 12am on Christmas morning for £5/hr they say there’s a shortage, when to any sensible person the only shortage is of managers’ brains.
There probably will be such calls going out offering such rates - in Budapest!
It’s the same at Easter. There is no shortage - there is simply a failure to use the available workforce effectively in January and February and a failure to warehouse Easter goods beforehand in anticipation of the peak.
Is there a bigger shortage of decent managers than truck drivers then?
In most other “Professions” a vast amount of the expenses incurred in maintaining their qualifications are able to be offset against tax .
If you have to fund your own courses , renewals and updates it can get pretty expensive.
Low wages , unsociable hours , lack of appreciation, an hostile environment with regulators , poor working conditions and lack of facilities are the main things that annoy drivers and put off prospective drivers .
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