FROM THE OFFICE OF
WWW.EXPORTANDFREIGHT.COM
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport
Ken Davis M Sc FCILT, CILT Northern Ireland
DRIVER SHORTAGES: WHAT IS THE REAL SITUATION? If you are reading this edition of Export & Freight, then some deliveries are still getting through, despite the alleged shortage of 100,000 drivers. As a happily retired ex-operator, I know those of you reading this article, while still struggling to man your delivery schedule, may be tempted to throw it away, but please read on… If I haven’t got your attention yet: how about this? There’s no such thing as a shortage of HGV drivers in the UK. Now you’re paying attention. What’s my evidence for this outlandish statement? Well, the UK Minister for Roads, Baroness Vere has sent a letter, countersigned by the heads of Logistics UK and the RHA, to all UK HGV licence holders, thanking those within the industry for their contribution, and asking those with a licence but not active, to “consider returning” to the industry. According to the government, this letter is being sent to a million licence holders. That’s right, one million vocational licence holders. So, how many of these are inactive? Well, according to the governments own Office for National Statistics (ONS) there were 268,000 people working as HGV drivers in June 2021. In other words, officially, there are about three quarters of a million people in the UK, today, who can drive a lorry but chose not to. I told you there wasn’t a driver shortage. But there is definitely a crisis in getting enough drivers to get the deliveries made. Clearly, the million licence holders is a headline grabbing number, and includes all sorts of double counting, such as retired drivers, fitters, dual licence holders, even magazine test drivers, etc, but even taking the difference between the RHA’s assessment of HGV licence holders - 516,000 - and the pre-Covid ONS number of active HGV drivers - 321,000 (June 2017) - we are still looking at about 200,000 people who could drive, but choose not to.
Potential Solutions So, as I see things, there are two potential solutions to the current shortage of active drivers: 1. Leave it to the government to help; or 2. Ask why so many licence holders aren’t driving, and decide what the industry can do to fix its own problems. Let’s start with number 1. So far the Government has sent a letter, temporarily extended driving hours, mobilised the army to driver fuel, promised a “boot camp” to deliver 5000 drivers, reluctantly agreed to allow some limited
short-term immigration and watered down the driving test to separately assess the couple/ uncouple and reversing manoeuvre. I, for one, question whether we as a profession should really be supporting the lowering of hard won, empirically backed, safety standards? We can’t just blame the government. Look at it from their position. Our industry has told them there is a shortage of 100,000 drivers. The actual figure is a questionable amalgam of an RHA survey showing a shortage of 60,000 drivers, plus a net Brexit outflow of 10,000, plus 30,000 driving tests cancelled due to Covid. Even if we accept it as true, what the UK Government hears is that there are potentially 100,000 (relatively) well paid, skilled jobs available for the UK workforce, partly as a result of Brexit. Little wonder that this Government doesn’t want to fill the gap by immigration!
Longer Term Of course, longer term the Government has a key role to play, not least in providing funding to help address the age, gender and ethnic balance in the HGV driving population. They could start by delivering on Chancellor Sunak’s promise in the budget to deliver a network of better roadside facilities, ASAP. No, I think we need to look at ourselves and ask why so many drivers can drive, but don’t. We can blame an unfortunate combination of circumstances, including Covid-19, Brexit, changes to tax rules for self-employed drivers, but in truth this availability crisis has been creeping up on us for years. Look at it from the driver’s perspective. After an early start, a long hard shift, chasing the clock, battling congestion on ever busier roads, waiting to tip in an RDC where you can’t even sit in your cab because you can’t be trusted with the keys, you return to the office to be told by someone who might not even be able to drive, that the telemetry in your vehicle says you have been guilty of harsh braking. Of course, throwing money at the problem might help individual employers in the short-term, but are we now seeing the results of a race to the bottom and treating drivers as a commodity?
I propose the following steps: In the short-term (0-3 months): Every employer to contact every driver who has retired in the last 5 years, and see what is needed to get them back to work part-time, to cover peaks. This could include paying for their medical, glasses, CPC training, not giving them nights out etc, but does mean accepting that not every driver wants to, or needs to, work 60 hours a week. In the medium-term (6 months to 1 year): All our industry body leaders need to get together with 3PL’s and Retailers and other operators of RDC’s, to agree a plan on how to tackle the 2 unacceptable wastes of waiting time at RDC’s, and empty running. The solutions aren’t simple, but surely we can work together to treat inbound drivers the same as outbound drivers, and not maintain a national empty running figure of 30% which, according to the national transport statistics, is a figure which has hardly changed for over 30 years. When I operated a network of distribution centres on behalf of one major retailer, in-bound driver waiting times was not one of my KPI’s; in fact if I put more labour into tipping Goods In, I delayed Goods Out which paid my bonus. These industry KPI’s need to change, but this can only be done by us, not the Government. In the longer-term (1 year plus): As an industry, we need to work with the Government to secure funding to recruit, train and retain drivers as part of a national solution to the ageing driver population. It might even mean a freight levy to fund this, including better facilities, but will certainly mean employers taking driver development and training and the CPC seriously, as an opportunity to invest in the driving workforce, not as another box to be ticked.
Summary In summary, as a profession, we can either use the driver availability crisis as an opportunity to professionalise our approach to drivers, or we can just offer a recruitment bonus to make it someone else’s problem. As ever, these thoughts are my own, and do not represent official CILT policy.
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