Young blood in the right jobs
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Much has been said about the need to attract fresh blood into the industry and in some ways we're doing a good job. Suttons recently had more than 700 young people apply for a handful of places on its graduate scheme, and Norbert Dentressangle receives 1,000 applications for the 10 graduate vacancies it has every six months. But then that's not surprising: at a graduate level, the industry is
an attractive place to be. It pays relatively well, it's clean, and you get to go home every night. However, we still need to attract youngsters into the arguably less desirable end of the industry in the warehouses and behind the wheels of trucks.
It strikes me that lots of people are tackling this issue in their own admirable ways. There's the good work done by Think Logistics, and we've reported on numerous apprenticeship schemes, and several hauliers give talks at schools. But what we need now is to pull all this together.
And while I'm on my soap box... why don't we introduce a GCSE module that concentrates on road haulage, truck driving and warehousing? Will Shiers Editor