3 vital improvements in HGV driver conditions to avert future shortages
It’s no surprise that we are experiencing a driver shortage. The greatest surprise is that the situation has been invisible to the general public for so long. It took bare supermarket shelves to being the point home to a nationwide audience.
Low pay, poor working conditions and being generally treated as disposable dogsbodies are the three main themes that constantly recur when drivers are asked their opinion.
The situation may take 3-4 years to resolve before driver numbers return to something approximating normality. But be warned – all efforts to attract new drivers may come to naught when they realise the often ugly reality of life as a UK HGV driver – unless conditions change.
So what needs to be done and who can do it?
Better pay
Anybody in the haulage industry knows how the race to the bottom for cheaper labour costs has panned out. It worked to a certain extent when we had an inflow of cheaper foreign drivers but damaged the industry by weakening it. Cost became almost the sole criterion for winning new business. Now driver costs are being forced back up by the law of supply and demand.
However, we are skipping over this factor because it is driven by market forces and not something that can be controlled in the same way as change to the driver environment.
#1 Trucker rest stops
The fact that many of these have been closed over the past decade indicates that they are not profitable for the operators. That’s the bottom line. So the UK needs to create either a profitable demand stream or set up a public service under government control.
Unlike our French counterparts, UK citizens are notoriously slow to take to the streets in significant numbers. French truck drivers frequently protest by blocking the autoroutes around Paris or the Channel Tunnel access roads. And that is partly the reason why they enjoy so much better rest facilities than UK drivers do.
The Relais Routiers provide very decent shower and meal facilities, where you can get a 3-course dinner for around £12. Secure parking does not cost the earth and there is a plentiful network of these stops all over the country.
The UK government recently stated an intention to build better trucker facilities in this country. While we would not hold our breath over any government promises, such an initiative is vital to improving life on the road.
#2 Changing peoples’ attitudes to HGV drivers
Like many other occupations, drivers were escalated into the ‘key worker’ category recently. However, they are still practically invisible as an identifiable cohort despite their trucks being hard to ignore on our roads. People simply have no idea of what the job is really like.
This is where media such as Channel 5 can exploit the knowledge gap with a series of TV programmes that tell it like it is.
Social media carries a lot more weight than TV and newspapers amongst the younger generations. That has introduced the phenomenon of influencers, who garner large followings on channels such as Instagram and TikTok.
One such example is 22-year old Becky Giles, who has been driving for her family’s agricultural haulage business for the past four years. Her TikTok videos have a following of almost 150,000 young people. She brings a little glamour to the job of being a HGV truck driver, which will certainly inspire other young women to at least consider it as a career choice and help to raise the occupation’s profile.
#3 Better support in the job
It’s a lonely occupation in the main. Physical and mental health suffers and can easily go unnoticed by employers. Greater awareness allied to improved communication and feedback with drivers is key to bringing these issues out in the open.
Then there are frequent destination problems where a company receiving a delivery make life unnecessarily difficult for drivers. That can be as simple as not providing adequate driver facilities (or none at all, despite the law) or applying draconian rules and regulations if a driver misses the delivery slot by 5 minutes.
This is a catch-all category but an area that the industry and organisations such as the RHA and Logistics UK should be seen to be tackling vigorously. Or should it be left to a trade union to come in and organise drivers? Perhaps the industry would prefer to get its house in order voluntarily!
About AVAIL - your driver solution
At AVAIL, we’re working on resolving the driver shortage problem. We’re not a traditional agency, but a driver solution that matches HGV drivers with Operators for a set low fee of £7.50 per driver per day all through the AVAIL platform. Our online platform uses specially designed software that can be used anywhere at any time, the platform has just over 12,000 drivers active on the platform and are all IR35 compliant.
If you would like to see the platform in action, then book in for a demo with our New Business team, or if you aren’t ready for that. Email our New Business Manager, David Roberts with a question david.roberts@availtechnologies.co.uk