Specific search Ihave followed with interest correspondence in Commercial Motor
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concerning the current driver shortages and, in particular, the initiatives from Ian Hetherington of the Road Haulage & Distribution Training Council (RHDTC).
Having been associated with the industry for some 50 years, I have found that driver shortages inevitably occur in times of industrial boom in both Europe and the US. And, no doubt, they will continue to do so in the future.
The luxuriously appointed Class 8 American trucks have been devised in the main to attract drivers, although I have it on good authority that their operating costs are at least 15% higher than for an equivalent European truck with a standard sleeper cab that could still do the same task.
In this country road distri bution profit margins are tight and mandatory operating standards as high as anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of Austria and Switzerland, so driver shortages cannot be overcome by offering drivers a higher rate of basic pay. It seems to me that some form of performancerelated bonus would be a more likely option.
Furthermore, while I was working for a group of companies employing drivers at substantially differing wage levels, the company paying the lower wages had a slightly higher turnover of drivers, but there was a noticeably better spirit and flexibility among the lower earners.
In the early 1970s a Dr Hellewell from Southampton University published a book called The Long-Distance Lorry Driver in which he reported that lorry drivers were attracted to the profession because they said that it gave them a degree of freedom which other jobs did not—this would in turn lead to reliable, happily employed professional drivers.
It would appear to be unusual for the majority of haulage/distribution companies to spend as much time setting out a desired psychometric driver profile as they do specifying a truck.
Jobs advertised in agencies simply say something like: "Drivers wanted, a per hour". If they were looking for a truck, they would presumably be much more specific in their requirements.
A seminar is being organised by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and co-sponsored by the AA and the IRTE, called Driver Driven Efficiency. It sets out to investigate this anomaly and to develop driver psychology in the context of driver shortages.
It will take place on 11 June at the AAs Fanum House in Basingstoke. Contact: 0171 973 7258. Roger Demiss, Lorry Logic.