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85,000 drivers short within a year?
Page 55
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reported by John Darker
The reconstituted national council would concentrate on transport and distribution matters and overall policy, leaving the management of the Association to a national executive board. These proposals, to operate from April 1974, would enable the FTA to deploy resources efficiently and do justice to the major isssues confronting transport executives.
WITHIN a year the current shortage of 50,000 drivers could increase to 85,000, with all the additional constraints on the economy this implies, unless decisive action is taken, Mr Eric Tindall, director-general of the Road Transport Industry Training Board, warned the conference.
And although the professional haulage industry employed well under one-third of all hgv drivers it provided two-thirds of all hgv driver training facilities, he reminded delegates. Over the past 10 years the volume of freight /ton mileage had risen at a rate 50 per cent faster than that of growth in industrial output. If the economy expanded by four or five per cent a year the volume of ton-mileage would rise by 12 to 15 per cent in two years.
Some four per cent of the working population were employed either driving hgv or as immediate supporting staff. For industry generally, road transport costs were estimated at about 10 per cent of the total costs but they were certainly not given this degree of resources, and emphasis on forward planning.
All sectors of the economy reported hgv driver-shortages but though the RTITB had produced a detailed analysis of hauliers manpower needs, no equivalent work had been done for other hgv fleet operators. Hauliers currently employed 140,000 hgv drivers. The RTITB estimated that 350,000/400,000 were employed by own-account operators.
Driver demand Mr Tindall suggested that the major growth in demand for hgv drivers would be felt by professional road hauliers since their share of all goods carried increased from 38 to 43 per cent over the past five years. The RTITB estimated that the professional haulage industry needed to train 20,000 new hgv drivers a year to replace permanent wastage and provide for expansion. To this had to be added a minimum of 10,000 existing drivers needing conversion or refresher training. Recent forecasts suggested that the number likely to receive training in 1973/74 would be 20/22,000 — 8/10,000 below the longer-term requirements. Own-account fleets should be training 30,000 new drivers a year and 'perhaps 20,000 existing drivers should be receiving some form of conversion or refresher training.
Thus, said Mr Tindall, the total training load was of the order of 80,000. The position would worsen after January 1 1976 when adherence to EEC shorter hours' regulations commences. This implied a further requirement of at least 20,000 drivers in professional haulage fleets and 50,000 in own-account fleets.
A survey of 70 RTITB Group Training Associations had shown a current shortage of 4000 drivers; 58 per cent of GTAs reported shortages of 6-15 per cent and three Groups reported shortages of over 25 per cent — a total shortage of at least 50,000 drivers.
Regions varied and Groups in London averaged shortages of over 200, compared with a national average of 60. Of the 11 Groups reporting shortages under 5 per cent, nine were in Scotland and the North of England and only two in the Midlands and South.
The current shortage of drivers was less important as an absolute figure, than as the base-line for a situation likely to get rapidly worse. In-scope GTAs had 550 training places available and company centres 370, a total of over 900 and this figure would rise to about 1000 by the end of 1973 /74, sufficient to train 25/30,000 drivers and meet the full demands of professional hauliers. However, they employed only 28 per cent of all hgv drivers (140,000 out of 500,000) and the Board's estimate of the training needs of own-account operators was about 50,000 a year.
A Board survey, said Mr Tindall, had sought to establish just what training facilities were available to own-account operators. Statistics showed that out-ofscope employers were utilizing 20 per cent of GTA facilities and about 15 per cent of in-scope company centre facilities. In addition, there were some 250 commercial driving places available and these were largely utilized by out-of-scope employers.
Out-of-scope facilities were sufficient to train some 15,000 hgv drivers a year. Added to in-scope facilities, there were sufficient places in total to train 45,000 drivers, still 35,000 below the estimated requirement. Hence, within a year the current shortage of 50,000 could rise to 85,000.
Two surveys showed the movement of trained drivers from professional haulage fleets to other operators. One survey revealed that 18-20 per cent of drivers trained by GTA members moved to ownaccount fleets within a year; the other that 80 per cent of those recruited as hgv drivers by professional hauliers had no previous hgv experience.
On the margin It was the Board's view that professional hauliers operated frequently on the margin.
When times were good own-account operators supplemented their carrying capacity by calling on outside contractors.
When the economy had a down-turn these contractors were shed. While this was perfectly proper it meant that a 10 per cent swing in the economy could effect a 50 per cent swing effect on professional haulage.
"The peculiarities of our scope situation mean that we are trying to operate a most sophisticated form of manpower planning, in an environment which is probably more volatile than any other industrial situation.
My board has frequently pressed Government to combine all transport activities within the scope of one Board," he said.
Mr Tindall outlined a number of suggestions to help to solve the problem of driver shortage. He felt the Training Opportunities Scheme was fortunate in getting £100m from the State while a mere £30m was available for planned industrial training through training boards. The split of funds devoted to training in general should be re-examined.
While it was to be hoped that more money would be made available to GTAs, which today trained more than half the professional haulage drivers, there was the alternative of compulsory collective action under legis lation — a levy on all operators' licences or on all hgv licences. It might even be possible to train counter-cyclically so that drivers were trained for a pool of labour when the economy was at low pressure for use in periods of boom. It might be prefer able to safeguard the facilities during lean periods. The co-operative efforts of the FTA
and other bodies to produce a career structure for drivers and others from 18 to 21 years was encouraging. He hoped the gap from school-leaving at 16 could also be bridged.