Why drivers walking away from HGV jobs
TODAY you carried a story in the Mercury (“Shortage of drivers delays
deep clean to town streets”, August 8) about Hinckley and Bosworth council’s shortage of HGV drivers.
Which, it has to be said, is becoming the standard response from the haulage industry as a whole to explain the problems that they face.
However, as a driver of over 40 years’ experience I am slightly confused. If we have more than 170,000 UK drivers with HGV entitlement and the industry tells us they are anything between 60,000 and 100,000 drivers short, then how can we have a shortage?
What the industry is neglecting to explain is the reluctance of many HGV drivers to actually get behind the wheel these days.
And who would? Maybe the real reason why over 170,000 drivers all say “No” when it comes to a driving job is the wages and terms and conditions in an industry stuck in a time warp.
You only have to look at some of the jobs to see the problems – a 79-hour working week, nights out paid at below minimum wage, no idea when you are getting home each day or that you might not get home; drivers’ hours regularly abused by some hauliers who are not supposed to touch hours but regularly do.
Then there are obscene starts, with companies factoring in working times so as to avoid the regulations affecting night working.
Or drivers who run out of time forced to drive a company vehicle so as to get home (totally illegal).
That’s just the hauliers. When you look at how other non-professional drivers behave towards HGV drivers, the way the public kick up a right stink if a driver parks up near their home...
Then the delivery points. Some supermarkets wouldn’t let the drivers use the toilet during lockdown, even though that was a criminal offence, or let the drivers use the works canteen where hot, nutritional food can be had... Ever wondered why the drivers are so overweight?
Then there is their habit of using the back of an HGV as “free” storage space, completely ignoring the number of drivers’ hours left, forcing the driver to spend the night out unplanned, as they run out of hours.
If you then factor in rogue hauliers who refuse to pay for the mandatory driver’s medical, the mandatory Drivers Certificate of Professional Competence – a haulier can’t employ the driver if they haven’t got one – and a refusal to shoulder any of the costs by which a driver can get trained in the first place (which is actually a tax deductible expense) and then even if they do pay, refuse to pay for the driver to attend these mandatory requirements.
Frankly, there is no need for anybody to explain to me why the 170,000 drivers would want to walk away from the career. Stacking shelves seems to me to be a better deal these days.
At least my wife knows I will be home every evening, to tuck my grandchildren into bed.
Therein lies the answer to the hauliers’ problems, which, if they continue to stick their heads in the sand and squeal for the Army to drive, will only get worse.
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