ezydriver:
Is there a driver shortage?For the first time ever I’ve had 3 failed loads this week, all in the food supply side of things. I get the occasional 1 failed load, but not 3 in a week - 2 of which in the same night.
The reason for the failures were running out of time after waiting 3+ hours to start being tipped etc, and being pulled out. But the places I was at were rammed with lorries and drivers. It appeared to be a huge shortage of warehouse staff to load/unload that was the problem. There were plenty of lorry drivers hanging around on bays, in booking-in yards etc, doing nothing.
I don’t buy the lorry driver shortage narrative.
The driver shortage is at the point of return then. If the average driver is now returning to depot, the shift’s work done at the 15 hour point rather than the 10 hour point - that driver would seem to be having as half as much of their time wasted - would they not?
So a single driver working hours-and-a-half has “failed deliveries”,
compared to two drivers working 7.5hrs but delayed by a 2.5hour wait, making up two ten hour shifts, and costing the firm more to employ, but without the possibility of EITHER driver then “running out of time”…
Yes, this means that there will be a whole lot more drivers “standing around doing nothing” - which is something a firm might want to consider dealing with in their Full time contracts…
Eg. Lidl - pay a decent hourly rate BUT most of a driver’s shift is not driving, and it could be argued that the average Lidl driver is nothing more than a Warehouse Staffer who happens to hold a HGV licence… 
That’s one way of dealing with it…
Aldi, Morrisons, and other firms where the driver now sits in their cab, rather than in the old “Cooler” waiting room whilst being tipped by a warehouse staffer with Powered Pallet Movers rather than self-tipped with a pump truck…
RDC work where drivers can now take breaks on the bay, rather than line up down the service roads…
THESE places - will surely show a speeding-up of processing rate, rather than “newer” firms who’ve purchased a far-too-small depot, far-too-few warehouse staff, and have taken the lockdown far-too-seriously to survive the sharp economic uptick that comes (eventually) as a result of Brexit being completed, and Covid having reached full saturation among the population via herd immunity… If we’re never to be rid of Covid, then the best way to live with it - is simply not to DIE from it. Chances are, if you didn’t die already - you ain’t ever going to! Worry about more imminent dangers now, such as Bad Driving, Financial Stress, Family and Peer pressures, and of course people you’ve never met trying to constantly ■■■■ on one’s chips every damned day… 