Brexit only one factor in driver shortage

IT’S a very sorry state of affairs when a world-class food product is destroyed before it can even begin its journey to the consumer.

But such is currently the case with British milk. Hundreds of dairy farmers are being advised to throw it away because a shortage of HGV drivers is preventing it being collected.

A shortage which – if popular opinion is to be believed – is yet another of the evils Brexit has inflicted on this country.

But take a minute to inquire behind the headlines – as few people do – and the picture is a very different one.

For it becomes painfully clear that Brexit has only been one factor in creating a situation that has been deteriorating for the best part of 25 years.

Speak to haulage contractors if you want to know the truth. You will then realise why the driver shortage has steadily crept up on us rather than being an overnight issue the day we left the EU.

The fact is that the life of a lorry driver in the food and drink sector has progressively become a much less attractive one thanks partly to pressure from one particular (and predictable) quarter.

Lorry drivers used to enjoy generous rates of pay until the supermarkets swivelled their gaze to the costs of getting their goods delivered – and insisted on them being reduced. Since fuel, road tax and insurance were immutable the only option remained the drivers’ wages – and accordingly down went their hourly rates.

Then in order to reduce the amount of expensive space needed for warehousing the big four hit on the ingenious idea of time slot delivery as a way of speeding the throughput of goods to the shelves.

That all put extra pressure on the drivers, though even that was bearable (just) compared with what was to come. Because the next stage was to introduce fines for missing delivery slots: fines which some transport companies were able to absorb but which others, particularly smaller ones, couldn’t, so leaving docking the drivers’ wages as the only option.

On top of that an ageing workforce (57 on average) has found it more and more frustrating to be stuck for hours in traffic queues simply because environmentalists have blocked the construction of new dual carriageways on the grounds that a newt might be living somewhere along the route, and many of its members have simply decided there are better and easier ways of earning a living.

Meanwhile the loss of foreign drivers has not been so much a direct result of Brexit as a consequence of the value of sterling falling, reducing the margin they could expect to make over and above what they could earn in their own countries and leading them to decide to go home.

A partial solution to the problem is clearly there within the processors’ grasp if only they would seize it. Because 20 years ago when campaigners were complaining loudly about the huge number of milk tankers on the roads the processing sector got together and hatched a plan to pool resources, share tanker use and reduce not merely the size of the national fleet but also the emissions it was responsible for.

True to dairy industry form, nothing ever became of it.

Hundreds of dairy farmers are being advised to throw milk away