Haulage: life on the road

By Lloyd Cole-Nolan - February 17, 2022

You’ve no doubt read a plethora of articles about the HGV driver shortage. I’m not going to give you a facts and figures explanation of what’s going on. At won’t mention freedom of information requisitions from the DVLA or quote some think tank study. If you want the technical explanation of what’s going on, click here. My aim is to give you a human understanding of what it’s like to work in the industry and why many are not choosing to continue to work in it. I want to give my particular perspective on what’s happened over the last decade to cause the “driver shortage”.

I started driving HGV’s around 2007 in the north east of England. Being a young inexperienced driver, decent opportunities weren’t as forthcoming as they could have been. But even though I would generally earn just under £9ph working for a major frozen food hauler I could get some work about the £12ph mark on coaction. Which, back in those days, and in the north east, was a reasonable income. I generally saw a rise in wages and conditions.

However, there was one major change that impacted the amount of work available and the rates I received. This was the opening of the borders to eastern Europe. I saw my wage drop to next to minimum wage and I there were fewer shifts available. The eastern Europeans were prepared to work for a significantly reduced rate compared to native workers.

The haulage companies loved it. They would work many hours and for peanuts. Needless to say, even as someone with no family or other responsibilities, it was still a struggle. It would also be really annoying to read the RHA or a hauler complain about a driver shortage. The industry demand for drivers would pick up during the summer holidays and during the Christmas period – so you could experience a period of time where you got as much work as you wanted and get a higher rate. You could make a couple of grand in the week before Christmas but then during January and often into February, you would get little or no work. I can remember one year, I didn’t drive a truck until April!

Then after a while things began to improve slowly but not by a huge margin. I moved to another northern city as there were significantly more opportunities there than there were in the North East. I was able to get a reasonable and steady income from the industry. Although I was still supplementing my income via other means.

On a quick aside, when the EU introduced the CPC training requirement. I saw a few older people leave the industry. The CPC is a requirement to complete 35 hours of training in a class room every 5 years. Many people whom had done the jobs for years saw this as a bit of an insult. Many retired early. Also, at the cost of about £70 per day on average to complete one of the 5 modules, it became quite prohibitive a cost for those whom were thinking about coming into the job. Another week of lost income, plus the cost, for a job that in some cases only paid a little above minimum wage at the time.

That doesn’t leave you much of a life. If you choose a job where you stay in the truck, (called tramping) you’ll be away all the time and don’t really have a life at all. Seeing friends, family or going to the gym etc are impossible. You’ll also be pretty much at the beck and call of whomever owns the vehicle for most of your life. Shower and toilet facilities are often abysmal even if they have them. If you have to stop in a layby near a busy road, its noisy, dangerous and the truck will shake side to side with every vehicle that goes past. It’s not really a life.

There are some upsides to the work. There’s plenty of time to listen to audiobooks, podcast etc.. There’s the senses of accomplishment once you’ve delivered the good. Once you’re out the office, you generally get left alone. You can go to a driving job and complete it. So it’s easy to drive one day and do something else the next. Which is useful if you’re like me and you have multiple things on the go. Wages are finally starting to reflect the hours and conditions drivers have to tolerate. I can understand why there’s a lack of young people wanting to take up the driver’s seat.

There’s also very little progression for an anyone with ambition. Once you’re in the driver’s seat, there’s not really anywhere to go. Often entry level transport admin and managers earn even less that drivers and have more workload. You could become a driver trainer as a progression but it’s not really a full career path. In addition, for anyone thinking of paying to train to go into the industry, there is the prospect that driving will be automated at some point in the future. No one is quite sure when it will happen but, it will happen at some point. In order for things to improve (so people don’t see empty shelves or wait forever for a delivery) we need to see improvement in conditions.

As Pete North points out, the problem is across Europe and not just here. The media and political classes didn’t care about this until bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape weren’t on the shelves. There was no empathy for drivers when they were earning next to nothing for working the maximum number of hours constantly. That’s why you see quite a number of leave voters in the driving seat. In the end, if you want people to tolerate long hours, traffic, poor treatment and facilities you’re going to have to reward them for doing so.

Irrespective of improvement in pay lately, the tax and national insurance deductions system often penalizes hard working drivers who are willing to work extra shifts. Deductions are so high once you do more than four shifts a week that it’s not often worth bothering. Don’t be surprised if you see drivers doing less hours like I’m choosing to do. Although the reduction in hours is welcome for me, those willing to do the hours should see the reward for their sacrifice. Tax and national insurance is in need of reform to reflect this. Especially at a time of increasing inflation.