news analysis Peak pricing, wage inflation and a move toward full-time employment are likely to be outcomes of the post-pandemic driver shortage
The price of a perfect storm Mark Bursa
A
s the pandemic’s stranglehold on normal life
gradually loosened, the beleaguered travel sector looked optimistically to September as the month where the comeback truly started.
Schools were back, holidays – or staycations – were over, and travel corridors began to come back to life. More planes at airports means some of the lost demand for lucrative airport runs was likely to return. And while many of the predictions came true, with private hire operators reporting a significant uptick in September, a whole new set of issues had flared up to kick demand firmly where it hurts. Joe Bitran, head of Travelhire group, said: “We thought there would be an avalanche of work at the beginning of Sepember – but now everyone is chasing drivers.” Jonny Goldstone, managing director of Green Tomato Cars, said: “We saw a massive uptick in September by around 25% – we’ll see over the next three months if it sustains.” Dominic Moyes of Nottingham’s DG Cars said the driver shortage meant the company had to cancel thousands of jobs – “in our busiest week since before Covid”. The shortage of drivers is something we knew about, and we’ve reported here in some depth. There are a number of reasons behind it, not least Brexit, which saw legions of East European drivers depart the unwelcoming environment created by the ill-advised decision to leave the EU. The pandemic played a role too. With work disappearing under lockdown, many drivers simply did not renew their licenses and took jobs elsewhere. Driving a delivery van provided regular pay with a lot less hassle for
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many drivers, and luring them back to the taxi trade may not be as easy as it was to lose them. “If your licence expired during the pandemic you were not going to cough up the £700 for the licence. – they could go and drive for Amazon at £15 an hour,” said Jonny Goldstone. With HGV drivers in short supply, some might even consider training to drive heavy trucks, given the current high wages available. Steve Garelick of the GMB union recently reported that he had secured a temporary 17.6% pay rise for HGV drivers in Yeovil – and truck drivers could be earning £30-40 an hour. How bad is the driver shortage within the taxi trade? LPHCA chair Steve Wright told delegates at the recent LPHCA conference that it could be as much as 75% down on pre-pandemic driver numbers. “The critical shortage of drivers is the biggest issue facing our industry today,” he said. “Our assessment is there are 25% of the drivers in the trade that there were two years ago,” he said. Not everyone agreed with the assessment, with one operator in the audience saying his numbers were down 25%, not 75%. Either way, it’s causing problems. “I’m sick of hearing about tanker driver shortages as our industry is in a far worse situation,” Wright added. Ah, yes. The fuel “crisis” provided another unwelcome curve ball for beleaguered driv-
ers and operators. A local driver shortage meant a handful of BP service stations had to close, but the story quickly gathered momentum. Soon it was at the top of the news media, government ministers were telling people “don’t panic”, which of course is the simplest way to cause panic. Within hours there were queues at forecourts up and down the country, and that had a significant impact on drivers who need fuel, as most of it had been siphoned out of the service station tanks by drivers who didn’t. John Coombes, owner of Kirkham Mac’s Taxis, based near Blackpool, said his drivers were having to make long detours to motorway services on the M6 to be sure of getting fuel – wasting fuel while getting there and paying inflated prices once they found supplies. Provisions were put in place after the previous fuel crisis in 2000, which would prioritise private hire and taxi drivers. But these require an executive order from government declaring an emergency – and the Department for Transport’s view is the current problems are nowhere near that – despite its own role in sparking the panic.
OCTOBER 2021
