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High insurance strangles industry
Page 8
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NEWLY QUALWILD truck drivers under 25 are being kept out of work because they cost too much to insure, according to both hauliers and the young drivers themselves.
Insurers will usually allow companies to employ young drivers but increase the excess substantially for anyone under /5. As a result, hauliers will often choose not to take on such employees. even when they are short-staffed.
Brian Yuill. managing director of Scottish haulier Yuill and Dodds. says: "It is frustrating, particularly when there is a shortage of drivers. At the moment some who qualify at 21 are having to wait four years to get experience because it is just too expensive to employ them.
Yuill says that the company's usual excess of £5.000 is lifted to £6,000 for any driver under 25. "That may not sound very much. but £1,000 can make a big difference if someone has a few bumps and scrapes.he points out.
Yuill has taken on one or two young drivers, but admits they are -generally related to someone at the company. a son or something. We just have to be extra sure about
someone if we arc to take on the additional insurance cost."
Young drivers looking for work are often told by firms that were it not for the prohibitive insurance. they would happily be taken on.
Gary Curtis, 23, from Sheerness in Kent, ran up debts of £2,000 while successfully putting himself through the HGV test, only to find nobody would employ him because of the excess penalty. He says:-It's a bit of a kick in the nuts. I know it's not the companies' fault, but you still feel as if people don't trust you. I've approached around 10 companies already and initially they are very keen, but when they check everything out with their insurers they just find it isn't worth their while to take me on."
In a recent Skills Survey, the Freight Transport Association found that although 83% of firms questioned said they were having difficulty recruiting drivers, only one in 10 said they take on newly qualified recruits.
More than a third said insurance premiums offered on drivers under 25 had been too high, while one in 10 said it had been refused altogether.
• See Yuill and Dodds profile p61